Analytics

30+ Marketing Statistics That Explain Why Measurement Feels Broken in 2026

May 27, 2026

min read

Illustration of a gardener wearing a hat and overalls watering a modular garden with different sections containing vegetables and flowers. The segmented garden plots represent data visualization concepts for analytics, data segmentation, and measuring growth through metrics.

Gaining a comprehensive view of the customer is becoming increasingly difficult for marketing teams. Audiences spend time across a plethora of channels. AI is heightening expectations, even as it helps with execution. Budgets and capacity are limited. 

On top of all those challenges, marketing measurement and attribution feel broken. It’s continually becoming harder to understand what’s actually working, and reporting ecosystems that are supposed to provide answers are impossibly complex.

The data supports this visibility gap, too. We’ve compiled 31 recent statistics from industry leaders and key martech brands that provide context behind why it’s so hard to report on marketing results today. Read on for the cold, hard data and explanations on what these numbers actually mean for marketers.

Marketing is highly measurable, but often not in a cohesive way

Today’s marketers have more data and tools than they know what to do with. But key audience insights are often spread across disparate platforms and channels, which can obscure what’s most important to pay attention to and act on. Clarity is the missing ingredient. And the resulting uncertainty slows teams down and limits long-term performance:

  • On average, marketers use six different tools or platforms to analyze performance, with more than a third using seven or more tools. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

  • One-third of marketers regularly realize a campaign is underperforming only after it’s too late to make meaningful changes. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

  • Only 18% of marketers say they have a clear view of what’s working, while nearly half report limited or inconsistent visibility. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

What this means for marketers: More dashboards don’t always mean more clarity, and that’s exactly what marketers need most. Central, real-time visibility shows them when and why their audience takes action at every touchpoint—but it’s also what many are missing.

Attribution is murky, and confidence is wavering

Where are your customers coming from, and how do they find you? Answering these core attribution questions has long been one of marketing’s toughest challenges. The recent data suggests that marketers still feel dubious at best about their attribution strategy:

  • Only 28% of marketing professionals consider their attribution strategies very successful (best-in-class) in achieving strategic objectives. (Source: Ascend2 Marketing Attribution Report, 2024)

  • Just 31% of marketing professionals are extremely confident in the accuracy of their marketing attributions. (Source: RevSure and Ascend2, State of Marketing Attribution Report, 2024)

  • More than half of marketers (56%) always or often rely on gut instinct or past experience when making marketing decisions. They’re also more than twice as likely to trust their instinct or past experience over quantitative data when they need to move quickly. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

  • 70.6% of AI traffic arrives in GA4 without referrer headers and is labeled as “direct.” (Source: Loamly, State of AI Traffic Report, 2026)

What this means for marketers: Most marketers aren’t particularly confident in their attribution, and they don’t default to trusting their data, especially when moving quickly. As channels change and expand, referral data is getting even harder to pin down. Marketers need better, more reliable ways of drawing a direct line between their campaigns and the revenue they drive.

AI is both a challenge and a performance booster

Artificial intelligence is at the top of everyone’s minds, especially as executives continue to encourage teams to explore new ways to use AI to speed and strengthen the business. For marketers, AI represents a complication and a support:

  • 68% of US consumers report using at least one AI tool in the past three months, including 19% who use it to discover or decide on brands, products, and services. (Source: McKinsey ConsumerWise survey, 2026)

  • AI Overviews in Google search results correlate with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page, compared to similar results without an AI Overview. (Source: Ahrefs research, 2026)

  • 75% of marketing organizations now use at least one form of AI. High-performing marketers who use AI agents report a 20% increase in marketing ROI, 20% increase in customer satisfaction, 19% increase in conversion rates, and 19% decrease in marketing costs. (Source: Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 2025)

  • CMOs report that generative AI investments are delivering ROI primarily through improved time efficiency (49%), improved cost efficiency (40%), and increased capacity to produce more content or handle more business (27%). (Source: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey)

  • Only 16% of marketers said that they regularly use AI as part of their standard workflow to measure or analyze marketing performance. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

What this means for marketers: AI is noticeably changing how people buy products and services, adding new obstacles and forcing new strategies in search and content. Even so, early results suggest that AI benefits marketing programs, helping teams move faster and gain deeper insights. The technology represents a massive opportunity for performance measurement and analysis, but it’s currently underused there.

Social is a top channel that presents additional attribution challenges

Billions of consumers use social to connect with their friends and with brands. While it’s one of the most popular and versatile marketing channels, it also poses real measurement challenges:

  • Organic social media is the most common channel in marketers’ current mix, with 72% adoption. But organic social is also the top channel where they experience visibility gaps in reporting. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026) 

  • 68% of social marketers report being concerned about the ROI of their social activities, with 69% saying that engagement is the top metric they track. (Source: Hootsuite Social Trends 2024 Report) Bitly’s Marketing Visibility Report also found that engagement and audience growth was the number-one most important metric for marketing teams today. While often easiest to track, engagement often doesn’t tie directly to business outcomes.

  • 81% of consumers are swayed by social media to make spontaneous purchases multiple times a year, and 13% of all social media users currently make in-app purchases, a number that rises to 50% among Gen Z. (Source: Sprout Social Index, 2025)

  • Just over half (56%) of marketers make performance decisions at the overall program or campaign level. Only 14% evaluate performance at the individual interaction or touchpoint level. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026) 

  • Less than half of marketing leaders (44%) rate their social team at the expert level when it comes to measuring the business impact of social. (Source: Sprout Social, The 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing)

What this means for marketers: Engagement is the go-to social metric, but ROI is still elusive. Marketers need real-time data on the actions their audience takes in response to specific campaigns, not nebulous metrics that don’t connect to business impact.

The complexity of the customer journey

Today’s audiences don’t take a single linear path—and they certainly don’t move neatly through the traditional funnel. They jump across platforms and channels moment by moment, giving marketers more chances to connect with them while also making each interaction more unpredictable:

  • Only about a third of marketers (36%) say their current marketing reporting gives them a comprehensive view of how customers move across channels and touchpoints. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026) 

  • Only 24% of marketing professionals consider their marketing attribution model “extremely successful” at capturing the full customer journey. (Source: Ascend2, Marketing Attribution Report, 2024)

  • Consumers required an average of 8.5 touchpoints before purchase in 2021. That number increased to 11.1 touchpoints by 2025. (Source: NP Digital survey, published 2025)

What this means for marketers: Customer journeys are longer and more complex than they’ve ever been, and reporting technology often fails to capture the full scope of their interactions and engagement across channels. Brands need simple clarity to link their marketing across every customer connection.

Budget (unsurprisingly) holds marketers back

Many marketers are sadly accustomed to the new normal of lower budgets and higher expectations in recent years. But as the attribution and channel landscape continues to shift, the same budget often goes even less far than before. The impacts of budgeting on revenue and results are hard to miss:

  • 2025 marketing budgets remained flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2025, unchanged from 2024. Yet 59% of CMOs said they have insufficient budget to execute their strategy. (Source: Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey)

  • Companies spend 19.9% of marketing budgets on marketing technology, yet only 56.4% of purchased martech tools are actually being used. Nearly half of marketing leaders identify a significant gap between their martech technology payoffs and their expectations for those payoffs. (Source: Duke University, Deloitte, and the American Marketing Association CMO Survey, 2024)

  • 23% of marketers say that an increased budget would have the biggest impact on improving their marketing performance over the next year. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

  • The number-one factor that limits marketers’ ability to act on performance insights is budget or plans already being locked in. (Source: Bitly Marketing Visibility Report, 2026)

What this means for marketers: The data shows that a lack of budget can create uncertainty and limit performance results, but uncertainty also impacts where and how teams spend the budget they do have. 

When asked to do more with less, AI marketing tools can be a powerful asset for deeper insights and faster execution, especially when it comes to performance measurement and analysis. AI can help fill some of the gaps left behind by limited budgets or capacity, while also shoring up visibility. 

Closing the visibility gap with Bitly

Marketers need actionable, real-time data to help them understand their audience and execute campaigns that connect. But as we’ve seen, attribution question marks, complicated customer journeys, and limited budgets hold them back. Marketing measurement feels broken, and closing the visibility gap starts with simple clarity across all their campaigns. 

Visibility turns each audience interaction into measurable results. Bitly’s trackable touchpoints show businesses of all sizes exactly what’s working, simply and clearly. With Bitly, you can connect the dots on every channel to see the full picture of what’s working—and do more of what works. Gain back the visibility your marketing team needs: Sign up today to get started.