A common theme heard among market research leaders is that often, generating insights for marketing teams is not really the issue. There’s often plenty of data. It’s turning that data evidence into real world decisions, strategies, and tactics that can make an impact and that marketing teams can act upon.
Special thanks to the TMRE speakers who participated in our survey. We would also like to thank all the speakers attending TMRE 2026 this year. See you in Denver!
From Data to Decisions
What challenges have you faced in implementing insights-driven marketing, and how did you overcome them?
“Insights are often one of many inputs decision-makers are getting, so sometimes other influences win out. Putting research into the language of those stakeholders helps create context, though, and gives them more reasons why they should act on the findings you’re sharing.” —Emily Neville, Director, CX Research, Rocket
“The hardest challenge isn’t generating the insight. It’s making it land. Working supplier-side means constantly translating between what research reveals and what a brand team is ready to act on. That gap between knowing and doing is where most insights work quietly dies.
A few patterns I’ve had to learn my way through: Clients receive insights, but brands need implications. I learned to deliver “so what’s” and “now what’s” not just findings. The shift from reporting to strategic recommendation is where supplier-side researchers either grow or plateau.
Budget doesn’t always follow rigor. The workaround: anchor research value to a business decision or strategic platform already in motion. Insights attached to live decisions survive. Additionally, I’ve learned to “strategically spend” where possible and as EARLY as possible.
Decks get read. Frameworks get used. The deliverables that changed client behavior weren’t the most comprehensive ones. They were the clearest — built around a single idea a brand team could carry into a brief without me in the room. (This last one took me longer than I’d like to admit.)” —Sofia Vazquez-Barrios, Director of Consumer Insights, North America, Fine Fragrance Experience, DSM-Firmenich
“The biggest challenge in implementing insights-driven marketing is not usually a lack of data. It is turning evidence into decisions people trust and can act on.
One challenge is measurement confidence. The ARF work on retail media networks as an example shows that reporting can look unified while the underlying methodologies differ across networks. Closed-loop measurement is strongest in retailer-controlled environments, but weaker offsite or across more complex omnichannel settings. That makes it harder for marketers to know what evidence should guide budget allocation, campaign design, and performance evaluation.
A second challenge is organizational ownership. The ARF x Ad Club buy-side research points directly to overlap and breakdowns among shopper, brand, commerce, media, analytics, agencies, and retail partners. Insights-driven marketing only works when those groups agree on what is being measured, who owns the decision, and how findings will be used.
A third challenge is overinterpreting metrics. The ARF attention work shows that attention metrics are useful, but only when marketers understand what each metric actually captures and interpret it alongside media weight, reach, frequency, creative quality, and campaign context.
The way to overcome these challenges is to make research more decision-oriented: define the business question upfront, clarify metric definitions, ask vendors for methodological disclosure, use incrementality where possible, combine quantitative benchmarks with qualitative explanation, and communicate uncertainty clearly. The goal is not just to produce insights, but to create enough confidence that teams can act on them.” —Tracy Adams, Sr. Director, Research & Insights, The ARF (Advertising Research Foundation)
“One lesson I’ve learned through MSI is that the biggest challenge usually isn’t generating insights. It’s helping organizations trust and act on them.
Marketing leaders are making decisions in an environment that’s faster, more complex, and filled with competing sources of evidence. It’s not enough to present findings. Researchers need to connect insights to the business decision, be transparent about uncertainty, and explain why the evidence is credible.
The organizations that do this well don’t treat insights as reports. They integrate them into decision making. That means involving stakeholders early, framing research around business questions, and focusing on recommendations rather than just results.
I’ve found that when insights teams position themselves as partners in decision making, rather than providers of information, their influence grows significantly. That’s a theme we hear consistently across MSI’s practitioner and academic communities, and I think it will become even more important as AI changes how research is produced and consumed.” —Keith Smith, Managing Director, Marketing Science Institute
“The biggest challenge is usually not a lack of insight. It is the gap between insight and action. Research can arrive too late, sit in a presentation, or get simplified into a few generic takeaways. Teams may understand the consumer, but still struggle to apply that understanding across the many decisions involved in developing a campaign, product or experience.
We have addressed this by making human understanding more continuous and easier to use. Twin Communities allow teams to test ideas, explore scenarios and challenge assumptions throughout the decision process, rather than waiting for another full research project. This helps keep the original insight alive as the work evolves.
At the same time, we are careful not to treat AI simulation as the answer to every question. For strategic, culturally sensitive or high-risk decisions, we return to real people and culture through fresh research, co-creation and immersive experiences. This brings in the depth, empathy and context that AI alone cannot provide.
The final piece is involving researchers beyond the findings stage. We bring insight, strategy, marketing and creative teams together to turn learning into clear choices, then test and refine those choices as they develop.
The lesson is simple: insights-driven marketing requires more than good research. It needs a system that keeps teams close to people, makes understanding available at the moment of decision, and carries it all the way through to execution.” —Niels Neudecker, Managing Director, North America, Human8
“Lack of buy-in by senior leadership. It is nearly impossible to move forward without this. Overcome by demonstrating impact of research, bit by bit.” —Bart Borkosky, CRO, OvationMR
“Overcoming ‘Analysis Paralysis via Dashboard Saturation.’ Modern enterprise marketing teams do not suffer from a lack of data; they are actively drowning in it. When every department has its own real-time looker studio or analytics platform, the organization creates an infinite loop of low-leverage, superficial data-tracking that offers zero actual impact. Teams mistake a rising chart for a strategic breakthrough, leading to hyper-tactical campaign optimization that fails to drive true brand equity or long-term pipeline velocity.
To shatter this inertia, in a past company I implemented a strict ‘Insights-to-Action SLA’ (Service Level Agreement) across our entire marketing infrastructure.
First, we radically consolidated our reporting matrix, eliminating over 60% of our vanity operational dashboards. We replaced them with a single, centralized data repository managed by a cross-functional insights team. Second, we mandated that no insight could be brought to a leadership briefing unless it was accompanied by a clear, bifurcated ‘Hypothesis and Capital Allocation Plan.’ The presenter had to explicitly state:
1. The exact customer friction point or market anomaly identified.
2. The specific creative, product, or media-spend pivot required to exploit it.
By forcing data to immediately defend a specific strategic pivot before it was ever socialized, we transformed our insights function from a lagging, defensive reporting archive into a high-velocity, predictive steering engine. This structural boundary completely eliminated passive data collection, increased the volume of campaign experiments we could run, and ensured that every dollar of our marketing budget was tethered directly to validated, high-leverage consumer behavior rather than corporate guesswork.” —Patrick Ward, Director, Institutional Marketing, Vanguard
TMRE Session Spotlight: Making Effectiveness Happen
TMRE 2026 will be held in Denver on October 5-7, and will highlight the session, “Making Effectiveness Happen: How Insights Drive Outstanding Effectiveness,” presented by Jeff McCrory, Chief Strategy Officer + Partner, Mischief @ No Fixed Address.
The best organizations don’t measure effectiveness—they live it. And it starts with putting the consumer at the heart of every strategic decision, not as a data point, but as the foundation everything else is built on.
This session will bring you the inside story behind some of the latest Effie U.S. Gold winning brands who used the power of an insight to outperform the competition and drive growth. Expect a candid conversation packed with practical tools and thinking you can apply to your own work immediately.
Click here for more TMRE 2026 registration information and the show agenda.
Video: “Data Driven Marketing: How to Make Better Decisions,” courtesy of The Futur.
