• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, July 23, 2014

“Marketers envision a real-time, one-to-one future.”

That’s the takeaway of a new study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of MediaMath, a demand-side platform (DSP). Forrester interviewed 18 senior marketers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific in the retail, financial services and consumer packaged goods industries for the report.

The report features one page explaining what the marketers’ visions are, followed by five pages of challenges and one page of recommendations. That’s not the most encouraging ratio; it seems like marketers are staring down a mountain of problems between themselves and their vision.

Most of the challenges, Forrester explains, revolve around data. The gist: investing in data both financially and from a company mind-set perspective (getting senior leadership on board), knowing what data is meaningful, finding new data, managing that data and finding ways to actually use it -- all while respecting a consumer’s privacy.

The conundrum lies in the fact that while data is the problem, it’s also the “foundation” of the envisioned "real-time, one-to-one future" -- one that is not trusted.

Just 31% of global data and analytics technology users “completely trust” the data quality and results analysis of their organization’s business intelligence applications, per Forrester. Another 61% “somewhat trust” the data -- a solid figure if you are optimistic, but laughable if you think “somewhat” and “trust” don’t belong next to each other.

“Do you trust me to pay you back?”

“Somewhat.”