Marketers Are Fueling the Algorithms but Not Their Own Intelligence. That’s About to Change.

Marketers might be forgiven for assuming they've achieved clarity in the glittering age of automated media and algorithmic targeting. After all, trillions of data points flow from Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Amazon, and TikTok into neatly packaged dashboards. But beneath the promise of real-time analytics lies an uncomfortable truth: most marketers have no idea what they’ve learned from their creative work.

Shelly Palmer, a veteran tech commentator and CEO of The Palmer Group, offered a blunt diagnosis:

“AI is only as smart as the data you feed it, garbage in, garbage out.”

This remark reflects a deepening concern among brand leaders that marketing teams are training someone else’s artificial intelligence instead of their own.

At stake is something marketers have long taken for granted: creative control. Not just of what they make, but of what they learn from it.

Platform Gains, Marketer Losses

Every campaign, ad variation, social video, and headline experiment is now grist for the machine-learning mill. But the mills in question belong to the platforms. The insights extracted from your campaigns typically stay with them, creating compounding intelligence you don’t own.

This growing asymmetry, where brands invest in creative but fail to retain the intelligence it generates, is raising alarms. While brands obsess over media efficiency and real-time KPIs, they’re losing grip on the creative signals that fuel long-term learning. The result is a kind of strategic amnesia.

Without a clean, owned, and structured view of what creative assets perform best, marketing organizations repeat themselves. They produce redundant campaigns, overlook past learnings, and spend millions optimizing content they no longer remember deploying.

A Hidden Budget Sinkhole

The inefficiency has a price tag. According to Gartner,

“Marketers waste approximately 29% of their budgets due to duplicated efforts caused by siloed data and fragmented analytics.” (Source: Gartner Marketing Data & Analytics Survey 2023, summarized in Gartner Blog Network)

McKinsey adds that

“66% of CMOs identify siloed data as their most significant obstacle to agile, data-driven decision-making.” (Source: McKinsey & Company, "The State of Organizations 2023")

Adweek reported

“Brands struggle with cross-channel fragmentation, leaving money and opportunity on the table due to disconnected analytics.” (Source: Adweek, “Why Brands Are Struggling with Data Fragmentation,” Nov. 2023)

The Rise of Creative Data Sovereignty

In response, a new philosophy is taking hold: Creative Data Sovereignty. The premise is simple but radical—marketers must own and structure their creative performance data just as rigorously as they manage financial data or customer CRM records.

George Mathew, Managing Director at Insight Partners and former CEO of Kespry, stated:

“The data substrate matters. The foundational data you use defines your ability to leverage AI fully.” (Source: George Mathew, quoted in Insight Partners AI Symposium 2023)

Platforms like mktg.ai are emerging to meet this need, positioning themselves as creative intelligence systems. By integrating creative content and performance data across channels, they promise a unified view that makes it possible to evaluate which campaigns work, and why.

John Baker, CMO of the International Center of Photography, described the transformation this way:

“The minute I turned it on and saw the analytics, I instantly knew what changes needed to be made.”

From Fragmentation to Intelligence

According to insights platform Zappi,

“Ads with strong creative effectiveness deliver up to 12x the ROI of underperforming content, with even modest improvements delivering 30% gains.” (Source: Zappi, "Creative Effectiveness Benchmarks Report," 2024)

Still, most marketers have no system for surfacing such creative intelligence across efforts. As the regulatory landscape evolves—between GDPR, Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency, and the deprecation of third-party cookies—the value of owned, first-party performance data has never been higher.

SLT Creative’s 2025 CMO survey found that:

“81% of marketers consider AI core to their strategy; 76% cite data storytelling as a key capability.” (Source: SLT Creative, “CMO Priorities for 2025,” January 2025)

Nestlé’s Shift to Creative Intelligence

One brand that illustrates the shift toward structured creative learning is Nestlé. In a multi-market campaign for Purina, the company undertook a comprehensive internal initiative to analyze creative performance across over a dozen markets. By tagging and categorizing key visual and messaging elements such as pet breeds featured, product packaging styles, call-to-action phrasing, and background settings, Nestlé was able to map performance patterns by market, format, and audience.

According to public statements made in marketing forums and industry events, Nestlé saw:

• A 66% increase in adherence to internal creative best practices

• A 15% improvement in media efficiency

• Faster campaign delivery through reduced creative redundancy

(Source: Nestlé case summaries shared during World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Marketer Week 2024)

As Gartner analyst Mike Froehling recently emphasized:

“Brands must shift from passively feeding platforms to actively owning their marketing insights. Creative data ownership is not optional—it’s critical.” (Source: Gartner Webinar on Marketing Strategy, Q4 2024)

The Way Forward

What’s emerging is a new model for how marketing works—not just as a storytelling engine, but as an intelligence system.

Each day brands delay structuring their creative data, they fall further behind. They teach platforms how to optimize reach while learning nothing in return.

The call to action isn’t theoretical. It’s operational.

Audit Your Systems

Begin by auditing your current systems. Identify where your data resides and how it flows.

Structure Your Assets

Next, structure your creative assets. Ensure that every piece of content is tagged and categorized effectively. This will allow for better analysis and insights.

Claim Your Creative Intelligence

Finally, claim your creative intelligence. Use the data you own to inform your strategies and decisions.

Because in the AI-driven marketplace ahead, marketers who fail to build their own insights will soon be outlearned by those who do.