“So a lot of data, but maybe not a lot of alignment.
That observation from our recent webinar will feel familiar to any marketing, media or insights leader trying to explain performance across brands, channels and markets.
Media teams have access to extraordinary volumes of information. Digital platforms supply real-time campaign metrics. Retail media networks provide their own measurement environments. Agencies, local teams and specialist vendors contribute additional data. Sales and market measurement sit elsewhere, often at different levels of granularity and on different reporting cycles.
More data should create greater clarity. Too often, it creates a larger reconciliation problem.
The issue is structural, not temporary. TV, digital, social, print, out-of-home and retail media each use different measures. A global brand may also encounter different vendors, naming conventions, product hierarchies, and periodicities in every market. The same audience can be reached across several ecosystems without a consistent way to compare coverage or connect activity with wider market performance.
The business consequences are significant. Questions about campaign planning, share of voice or cross-market budget allocation can quickly become discussions about data trustworthiness. Analysts spend time checking files and clarifying measures before analysis even begins, and even then, leaders could be entering planning meetings with several versions of the truth.
This is why data management has moved beyond the back office. In Redslim’s 2025 research into Consumer Packaged Goods and Consumer Healthcare companies, 96% of interviewed businesses were already harmonizing data. Revenue Growth Management was the leading use case, cited by 52%, with marketing mix optimization second at 44%. The message is clear, connected data is increasingly part of the growth agenda, not simply an operational task.
Marketing leaders are already balancing growth expectations, constrained budgets and pressure to invest in AI.
Gartner termed this the CMO Trilemma, and while marketing leaders are busy trying to balance the books, less time can be spent recognizing changes in consumer demand, competitor activity and channel performance quickly enough to act.
A CMO's challenge in managing rising growth expectations, AI-driven transformation, and constrained budgets.
This becomes even more difficult when each reporting cycle starts with manual consolidation. Every hour spent reconciling media spend or rebuilding mappings is an hour not spent investigating an emerging opportunity. Every delay between a market signal and a usable view reduces the value of the signal itself.
For global and regional teams, the problem is particularly acute. A taxonomy that works in one country may not hold in another. Media and sales data may use different brand structures or periods. Local nuance matters, but without common standards it becomes hard to compare markets confidently or decide where further investigation is needed.
The desired commercial outcome is not a perfect dashboard. It is greater speed-to-decision: shorter reporting cycles, more dependable cross-market comparisons and more time for teams to interpret performance patterns.
A recent survey of CMOs by NIQ found that 74% of marketing leaders feel like they are under more scrutiny than ever to improve ROI, while 40% use 5 or more tools as part of their measurement toolkit resulting in 5 differing interpretations of ROI.
Aligning media and market data creates a stronger basis for those conversations. Teams can compare media spend and sales trends side by side, monitor allocation across channels and markets, and identify patterns or gaps that warrant deeper analysis.
This does not, on its own, calculate media ROI or prove what is working. Those conclusions require additional data and analytical methods. What a connected foundation does provide is a consistent starting point for better and faster budget discussions, and data adequately prepared for Marketing Mix Modeling, forecasting and scenario planning.
Redslim supports this by turning fragmented, ever-changing external data into READY data products: Reliable, Explainable, Adaptable, Discoverable and Yours. It is a managed approach designed to keep data comparable as sources, channels and business requirements change, while operating within or alongside the client’s existing data stack.
In reality, technology cannot remove media complexity. But the right data foundation can stop that complexity from consuming every planning cycle.
The organizations that respond fastest will not necessarily be those with the greatest volume of information. They will be those that can trust what they have, understand it quickly, and use it to surface the next commercial question.
Watch our recent webinar where Redslim’s Business Development Director (APAC), Steven Lindsey, discussed the biggest challenges facing media teams with Global Commercial Director, Nils Thott. You can view the webinar on demand here.