Data and AI on Marketers’ Minds: The Missing Link Between Ambition and Reality

In the third edition of the "Musings of MarTech" LinkedIn Newsletter, Mukund Shastri, Chief Data Science Officer at Comviva, explores the widening gap between the ambitious potential of AI in marketing and the real-world challenges marketers face with data. While AI promises hyper-personalization and automation, its success hinges on clean, ethical, and integrated data. Mukund dives into issues like fragmented data, biased inputs, and regulatory hurdles, offering a clear-eyed view of what’s holding marketers back. He outlines a pragmatic path forward—investing in data governance, closing the AI talent gap, and ensuring transparency in AI systems. For marketers looking to move from hype to real impact, this article is a must-read.

For years, marketers have aspired to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. Artificial intelligence (AI)—especially Generative AI—makes this possible by promising hyper-personalization, automating content creation, and enabling intelligent decision-making. Take Netflix’s recommendation engine, which analyzes billions of viewing habits to suggest content with uncanny accuracy, or Amazon’s AI-driven product recommendations, which account for a significant portion of its sales.

AI is rewriting the rules of marketing—from crafting hyper-personalized campaigns to tailoring interactions with an efficiency that human teams alone can’t match. Yet this revolution has a caveat: AI's effectiveness depends on the quality of data it receives. Poor-quality, siloed, or biased data cripples even the most advanced AI models. The real challenge? Ensuring data is actionable, ethical, and seamlessly integrated—not just collected.

Where Marketers Struggle With Data and AI

1.    Data Chaos: More Isn’t Always Better

Marketers collect an overwhelming amount of data—customer behaviors, social interactions, transactional records, and more—but too often, it’s fragmented, inconsistent, or locked in silos.

Imagine a retailer using AI for product recommendations. If purchase history, browsing data, and loyalty profiles aren’t unified, AI delivers generic or misleading suggestions. Result? Frustrated customers and wasted budgets.

A 2024 CMO survey reveals the biggest barriers to scaling AI:

• Data privacy concerns (37%)
• Lack of in-house AI expertise (35%)
• Technical integration hurdles (29%)

2.    The "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Problem

AI thrives on high-quality, structured data. However, too often, marketers feed their AI engines with incomplete, biased, or outdated data, which leads to faulty insights and poor campaign performance. A major bank, for instance, launched an AI-powered credit scoring system—only to find that it disproportionately rejected younger applicants due to historical biases in its training data. Instead of improving financial inclusion, AI reinforced old inequities.

3.    Privacy and Compliance Minefield

Data-driven AI can’t operate in a vacuum. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA require brands to handle customer data transparently and ethically. However, many marketing teams struggle to balance AI innovation with compliance.

Take Vodafone, which uses GenAI to analyze anonymized customer calls for service improvements. Their approach works because they prioritize data privacy, transparency, and customer trust. Companies that don’t follow suit risk regulatory fines—and, worse, losing customer confidence.

Bridging the Gap: How Marketers Can Fix Their Data and AI Problems

1.     Invest in Data Governance: AI success starts with clean, structured, and well-governed data. Marketers need clear data ownership, standardized formats, and real-time updates to make AI-driven personalization work.

2.     Close the AI Talent Gap: 51% of marketing leaders say AI expertise is a critical skill for the future. Upskilling teams and hiring AI specialists can help organizations turn data into real marketing intelligence.

3.     Build Transparent AI Systems: Consumers trust AI-driven marketing only when they understand how it works. Clear opt-in policies, explainable AI models, and responsible data usage should be part of every AI-powered campaign.

The Next Step: Mastering AI in Marketing

Marketers who tackle data and AI challenges today will be the winners of tomorrow. The recently published Global CMO Survey Report goes further into these questions, providing practical insights on how companies can manage AI adoption, overcome data hurdles, and build marketing strategies that actually deliver.

📥 Download your copy now and take the first step toward AI-powered marketing success.