New Report Shows Majority of Marketing Tool Pain Stems from Data Accessibility, a Key Blocker to Effective AI Adoption

As AI spending surges, marketers say disconnected data is holding back results across the $150 billion martech industry

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Marketers are reaching a breaking point with technology overload. After years of investing in platforms, channels, and automation tools to build the right martech stack, most say their marketing suites are not delivering, and are, in fact, the most challenging part of the job. But that's only part of the story. New research from Hightouch, the leading data and AI platform for marketing and personalization, reveals that even though marketers most often cite tools as their top pain point, 75% of the time, the reason is disconnected data.

The report, Has Martech Failed Marketers?, analyzed 384 conversations with marketing leaders and uncovered a striking disconnect between ambition and execution. Even as AI dominates industry discussions, most teams say they cannot fully activate their tech stack or personalize experiences the way they want to.

“Marketers are realizing that AI cannot be effective when bad data is its context,” said Tejas Manohar, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Hightouch. “The next wave of marketing innovation is not about adding more software. It is about activating the data foundation that makes AI actually work.”

Key findings from the report include:

• 95 percent of marketers struggle to find or target their audiences effectively
• 75 percent of martech pain points trace back to data issues rather than the tools themselves
• Only 10 percent of marketers feel they're using AI effectively today, but 75 percent want to use AI more often and for more use cases
• Fewer than 2 percent believe they’re using AI for personalization successfully, and less than 1 percent feel they’ve achieved one-to-one personalization.

The findings show that while martech has long promised efficiency, automation, and speed, disconnected data and technical bottlenecks keep teams from achieving the outcomes AI was built to enable. Nearly every marketer surveyed expressed excitement about generative and agentic AI, but most said their organizations are not equipped to use it confidently.

The core issue is data readiness. AI is only as strong as the data it learns from, and most marketing teams are still dealing with fragmented systems and reliance on engineering support that make advanced personalization, as well as the ability to understand and act on company data, difficult to scale. As the martech landscape surpasses 15,000 tools, the research underscores a simple truth: marketers do not need more platforms; they need smarter, connected data behind them.

“Speed and scale mean nothing if you cannot reach the right people,” added Manohar. “This is a wake-up call for every marketing leader chasing AI. Data is not just part of the strategy. It is the strategy.”

The study spans marketers across B2B and B2C sectors in industries including retail, fintech, entertainment, healthcare, and SaaS. It reveals the “pain behind the pain,” showing that while many marketers blame their tools, it is disconnected, inaccessible, or inactionable data that continues to hold back performance and AI adoption.

To dig deeper into the findings and explore how marketers can address these data challenges, Hightouch will host a webinar with Scott Brinker, Editor of chiefmartec.com and one of the industry’s leading martech analysts, on November 13. Brinker will join Hightouch Head of Product Marketing Lizzie Yarbrough and Product Evangelist Adam Greco to discuss why data has become the central bottleneck in marketing and how companies can build the foundation needed to make AI work.

Read the full report, Has Martech Failed Marketers?, at hightouch.com/has-martech-failed.

About Hightouch

Hightouch is the leading Composable CDP and AI Decisioning Platform that empowers companies to activate their data warehouse to power personalized marketing and business operations. Trusted by leading brands like Autotrader, Spotify, Cars.com, Grammarly, and PetSmart, Hightouch enables anyone to deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize performance marketing, and move faster by leveraging data and AI across their organization.