In the post-Covid era, organizations are recalibrating their marketing strategies to make better use of data and analytics to stay ahead of the competition. Increasingly, it is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) who has to take the lead to drive digital adoption and become the organization's digital evangelist. Data is everywhere and the CMO is increasingly expected to use multiple sources of data analysis and marketing intelligence for growth and revenue. Customer buyer journeys changed significantly during the pandemic: Buyers prefer to undertake a self-education journey, learning about the product rather than engaging with a salesperson right from the start. This puts the onus on marketers to provide prospective customers with the right content at the right time via the right channel.

Data has become the most valuable currency in business. But without the right tools or intelligence, its true value will not be realised. According to a MiQ survey, 43 per cent of US and UK brand marketers think that the lack of measurement of business impact, such as sales or growth, is the main hurdle to investing more in data analytics. But if marketing metrics are not the same as business goals, why are campaigns measured against them? Marketing should align with the same goals as the rest of the company, in order to measure tangible business results.

In 2018, artificial intelligence began making its virtues clear to the marketing industry in tangible ways. So, what does AI have in store in 2019? The fact that consumers habitually juggle content streams has long been a thorn in marketers' sides. This year, marketers can expect some relief because AI is great at quickly making sense of convoluted data sets. AI will make it easy for marketers to track consumers' moves across platforms and channels.

In 2018, artificial intelligence began making its virtues clear to the marketing industry in tangible ways. So, what does AI have in store in 2019? The fact that consumers habitually juggle content streams has long been a thorn in marketers' sides. This year, marketers can expect some relief because AI is great at quickly making sense of convoluted data sets. AI will make it easy for marketers to track consumers' moves across platforms and channels.

Salesforce announced Monday that it has agreed to buy Datorama, which employs artificial intelligence to provide marketing intelligence and analytics. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reuters cites Israeli media reports that it was over $800 million. Although the company is headquartered in New York City, about half of its 400 employees are in Israel. While there is no shortage of firms offering analytics and marketing intelligence, Datorama has emphasized it can present the advertising and marketing data from a variety of tools -- the company says the average marketer has an average of 70 data streams -- inside one cloud-based dashboard, where AI helps generate automated reporting, insights for decision-making and ways to optimize campaigns.

Thanks to the rise of AI and the failings of data management, the new face of marketing technology is both more and less human. For years, marketers have been talking about data, collecting it and preparing for the coming revolution. But something new has happened on the road to utopia: the volume and variety of data have exploded. No longer rare and hard to gather, data is everywhere, and organizations are failing to keep up with its variability and quantity. No longer data deprived, these companies have become data blind, over their heads in information they can't properly distill or draw insight from.

Last year a former product team peer referred Datorama to connect with me. Usually I don't review vertical industry analytics solutions but the marketing angle was appealing to me. Secret be told…I fell in love with data back in the early 90s during my marketing major courses…marketing research, statistics and statistical process control. I am an American Marketing Association member and have always truly relished marketing throughout my technical career. After a briefing with Datorama, I was shocked to learn how many data sources the average marketer today has to aggregate in reporting.