Seeing through the Marketing Data Mirage - and how to avoid it!

Marketing performance looks healthy on the surface, but most marketers face a serious challenge: the data they use isn’t connected to real buyer behaviour. In DemandScience’s 2026 State of Performance Marketing, 750 senior marketing leaders were surveyed on their Performance Marketing strategies.

The top-level takeaway is that most Marketing organizations operate within a “Marketing Data Mirage.” What is this mirage? How is AI making it worse? And how can Marketers avoid it? It seems that in a Marketing Data Mirage, the data signals are wrong. Marketers think things are good, but the signals they are relying on aren't tied to actual buying behavior. The biggest performance gaps, the report says, don’t come from media choices but from upstream inputs such as signal quality, content effectiveness, tool integration, and measurement reliability.

In other words:

• There are lots of clicks but no conversations.
• Intent signals look good, but ...