• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, January 29, 2015

Nearly all (90%) of marketers believe individualized marketing is the future, moving “beyond segmentation to true one-to-one personalization in a real-time context,” per a new report from Teradata, a data analytics and marketing firm.

Teradata surveyed over 1,500 marketing and communications executives worldwide in the fall of 2014 for the report, which can be found here. Teradata ran a similar report in 2013 and compared the results of the two studies.

Marketers are closer to the desired “one-to-one personalized” future than ever before, according to the report. Teradata notes that for 78% of companies, data-driven marketing is “embedded or strategic,” an upgrade from the “ad hoc” approach that was prevalent in 2013.

“It seems that while a year ago most of the pieces of the data-driven puzzle were scattered on the table ad hoc, today many more are strategically connecting with other pieces -- beginning to show, or at least hint at, the outline of the final image,” the report reads.

Marketers are seeing the benefits of Big Data -- but they’ve also taken note of the challenges that come along with it. In 2013, 46% considered data to be the most underutilized asset in marketing organizations, but in 2014 that number jumped to 87%.

In fact, as marketers wade deeper into the sea of Big Data, the obstacles they face change. Three of the top five “obstacles preventing marketing from becoming more data-driven” were all different in Teradata’s 2014 report compared to its 2013 report.

In 2013, marketers cited the lack of a process behind the use of data, inadequate technology, a lack of funding, lack of human talent and skills and a lack of a consensus belief that data-driven marketing is important as their biggest challenges.

In 2014, those obstacles shifted to include data security concerns, a lack of data within certain departments and inadequate CRM databases. Funding and agreement that data-driven marketing is important remain top issues.

Nearly all executives (92%) surveyed agreed that integrating data across teams would lead to more efficiency. That’s backed by the 80% of marketers surveyed that said “silos within marketing prevent them from having a seamless view of the campaign and of the customer across channels.”

However, a different report from Teradata released earlier this week suggests that CEOs aren’t seeing the big picture on Big Data. The CEOs tend to overestimate how clear-cut and effective their data-driven strategies are.