eMarketer: Marketing automation is only as effective as the data behind it. What data obstacles do marketers still face?

Weiser: The biggest data challenge is still attribution. For Shutterstock, the average customer interacts with four touchpoints before making a purchase. That means we’re spending on them four different times, and if we don’t know the ROI [return on investment] of each of those media touchpoints, then we can’t make a decision about which one drove the purchase.

A lot of companies get frustrated because they can’t figure out attribution with mathematical precision, and they don’t want to live in a messy space. That’s why they stick with last-touch attribution—because it’s neat and clean. But I’d rather see more companies experiment.