According to Amplitude’s State of Analytics Report, which surveyed 145 executives and marketing managers, the majority of analytics users were not data scientists, but mid-to-high level managers in the product development and marketing departments. Some 86% of respondents said that analytics were an important factor in business decisions.

However, respondents did say that the cost of analytics tools and the sometimes-complicated interfaces were major pain points. Still, 70% of the respondents said that they planned on using event-based analytics at some point in the near future. An event is a measurable action that a consumer can take in response to an ad.

Seventy-three percent of respondents use or have used analytics to understand how to increase engagement and retention. Marketers also wanted to know what other apps consumers used and whether consumers were using competitors’ apps.

Also, 90% of respondents said they only use out-of-the-box analytics tools, while 9% said they use a mixture of out-of-the-box and in-house tools. Conversely, 60% said that they used more than one out-of-the-box tool set. This indicates that there still isn’t a one-size-fits-all measurement that marketers can use to understand their customers.

Google Analytics was the most popular tool set for businesses to use without modification. The report also indicates that marketers are migrating towards more complex tool sets in order to get more nuanced insights, as opposed to sticking with surface-level conclusions about campaign performance.