Os recursos de que uma empresa precisa se for para se destacar no marketing orientado a dados estão se expandindo rapidamente. Antes da pandemia, uma marca armada com recursos básicos de marketing digital poderia criar e executar uma estratégia de marketing bastante madura. Mas manter ou melhorar esse nível de maturidade tornou -se mais difícil no ambiente de hoje, o que é marcado pelo aumento dos preços, volatilidade do mercado e tensões geopolíticas. Tecnologias avançadas como a IA, generativa AI (Genai), computação em nuvem, economias de dados do consumidor e engajamento omnichannel exigem que as empresas obtenham e implantem conhecimentos adicionais. (Consulte “Os quatro disruptores.”)
Os quatro disruptores
- AI and Generative AI (GenAI). AI and GenAI enable businesses to harness data for strategic insights and to automate and optimize marketing processes such as media buying, targeting, personalization, and creative production. This leads to more individually tailored and engaging customer experiences. AI and GenAI also contribute to greater efficiency and effectiveness in marketing campaigns.
- Arquitetura em nuvem. Economias. Commoditization of technology, along with new and readily available software and AI solutions, is exponentially increasing IT complexity by encouraging a siloed marketing architecture and by triggering regulatory and technological constraints on where and how companies can store data.
- Consumer Data Economies. A qualidade e a quantidade dos dados serão essenciais para os modelos de IA do futuro. As empresas exigirão vastas quantidades de dados proprietários para gerar insights exclusivos que diferenciam suas marcas. Além disso, os dados sustentarão muitas decisões estratégicas e servirão como um ativo valioso de monetização para marcas. fora de casa. Essa multidão de pontos de contato oferece novas oportunidades de vendas e engajamento, mas também cria um ambiente extremamente complexo para os profissionais de marketing navegarem, uma vez que os comportamentos de atenção e compra dos consumidores podem mudar por ponto de contato. (Veja o Anexo 1.) Neste relatório, descrevemos como as marcas podem promover sua maturidade de marketing para se tornarem verdadeiros inovadores, alavancando soluções orientadas por AII e Genai para elevar as estratégias de marketing e otimizar automaticamente os criativos e a ativação.
- Omnichannel. In today's market, nearly all consumers have access to technology—such as mobile devices, connected TV (CTV), social media, gaming, augmented and virtual reality experiences, and connected products—on top of traditional advertising and promotion initiatives like TV and out-of-home. This multitude of touchpoints offers new opportunities for sales and engagement, but it also creates an extremely complex environment for marketers to navigate, since consumers’ attention and purchase behaviors can change by touchpoint.
Fortunately, these four disruptors also create a significant opportunity for brands to substantially improve their maturity and, consequently, their productivity, profitability, and overall competitiveness. (See Exhibit 1.) In this report, we outline how brands can advance their marketing maturity to become true innovators, leveraging AI- and GenAI-driven solutions to elevate marketing strategies and automatically optimize creatives and activation.

A necessidade de novos recursos
Data-driven marketing has evolved quickly since we published our previous report in 2021. To maintain or enhance their maturity, brands must do more to embed data, conduct full-funnel marketing planning (including offline), and deliver technology-enhanced Experiências do consumidor diariamente. Os desafios são tão agudos que o nível médio de maturidade do marketing caiu 8% de 2021 para 2024, de acordo com nossa última análise de mais de 100 marcas na Europa, Oriente Médio e África. (Consulte “Metodologia”.) Durante o mesmo período, os recursos diminuíram em geral. (Consulte Anexo 2.)
Metodologia
Google and BCG have collaborated since 2018 to uncover and explore the key success factors for marketing maturity, which we have always understood to be a journey, not a destination.
Our goals in 2024 were threefold: to study the shifts in context and trends that influence brands’ marketing maturity; to evaluate the evolution of the capabilities that drive maturity in light of these changing trends; and to understand how mature brands act and develop their resilience to market changes, thus providing a roadmap for less mature companies to emulate.
During our research, we interviewed more than 50 practitioners, including leading EU brand and technology experts, to assess the state of marketing today. We surveyed more than 100 brands in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa across 11 industries to assess how marketing maturity has evolved, and we conducted more than 20 one-on-one executive interviews to assess leaders’ priorities and to gain insight into the reasons underlying certain decisions.
We found that the key enablers of digital marketing continue to evolve, and that it no longer makes sense today to interpret marketing as a static set of capabilities. Instead, the relevant capabilities must continually evolve to unlock benefits holistically. (See the exhibit.)


That decline does not necessarily signal that companies have done anything wrong; rather, it indicates that the bar for marketing maturity is constantly rising. Today, a mature marketing operation must be AI- and GenAI-driven. In our 2024 report, we have identified 19 capabilities essential for companies as they develop their marketing maturity.
Based on our research, these 19 capabilities fall into three broad capability categories (see Exhibit 3):

- Foundational Capabilities. These are must-have, baseline capabilities. They enable continuous improvement and learning via advanced ways of working and a capability acquisition model that balances insourcing and outsourcing. Foundational capabilities include agile collaboration, specialist skills, and integrated planning.
- New Table Stakes Capabilities. These capabilities used to be “nice to have,” but they have now become the standard for unlocking value. Brands that lack these capabilities should hurry to acquire them. New table stakes capabilities include user identification, integrated planning, test and learn culture, data enrichment and monetization, and targeting audiences and sources of first-party (1P) and second-party (2P) data.
- Elevated Capabilities. These game-changing capabilities capitalize on new trends and technologies that will drive future growth. Elevated capabilities include privacy readiness (in response to cookie deprecation), end-to-end measurement, personalized experiences (through owned channels), data-enabled media activation (for example, campaign automatization), predictive power and embedded AI (including advanced adoption of AI models for forecasting and planning), data-driven content (content Personalização com base na segmentação) e, mais recentemente, reimaginação do fluxo de trabalho de Genai.
Based on brands’ level of maturity across these three sets of capabilities, and in keeping with our previous
Marketing digital
Análise, categorizamos as empresas pesquisadas em quatro níveis de maturidade que refletem a adoção e a proficiência das marcas com as 19 capacidades essenciais: nascentes, emergentes, conectadas e multimomentas. Independentemente do nível atual de maturidade de uma marca, ela deve se concentrar na criação de capacidades nos três conjuntos de recursos descritos acima. No entanto, os recursos mais valiosos para se desenvolver diferem para marcas em diferentes níveis de maturidade:
- nascente. Essas marcas estão apenas começando suas jornadas digitais e orientadas a dados. Eles medem os resultados de marketing com as técnicas básicas de medição BASIC e alavancam principalmente dados de terceiros (3P). Eles reconhecem o valor potencial de IA e Genai, mas permanecem em uma fase exploratória. Como resultado, sua abordagem de ativação e execução é desconectada nos pontos de contato. Eles têm uma pilha de tecnologia de marketing centralizada e integram planejamento on -line e offline para atividades de marketing. As marcas emergentes começaram a aproveitar os dados 1P sobre dados 3P para atividades de marketing e tendem a comprar mídias que aproveitam soluções simples orientadas pela IA (por exemplo, algoritmos de lances acionados por IA). Eles podem alinhar a medição com as configurações do Indicador de Desempenho Principais (KPI) da empresa e alavancar a computação em nuvem para suportar soluções de IA e Genai. Eles podem automatizar cada vez mais a ativação e a execução, com as equipes integradas planejando viagens contínuas contínuas. Em particular, eles usam tecnologias avançadas (como algoritmos de IA para orçamento e otimização e genai para personalização de conteúdo) para apoiar suas estratégias. Eles aproveitam os dados 1P e 3P em várias áreas de negócios - incluindo marketing, vendas, finanças e operações - que são totalmente suportadas pela infraestrutura em nuvem. Eles podem medir os resultados de marketing de ponta a ponta, o que lhes permite melhorar diariamente a segmentação e a personalização. Essa tarefa está ficando mais difícil porque novos recursos de marketing devem ser desenvolvidos - constantemente elevando o bar. Embora as marcas nascentes e emergentes sejam relativamente fortes nas capacidades fundamentais, elas têm um déficit pronunciado em novas apostas de mesa e capacidades elevadas. (Consulte o Anexo 4.)
- Emerging. These brands have taken the first steps toward digital transformation and are now leveraging the returns from their initial investments in marketing maturity to fund the next steps. They have a centralized marketing technology stack, and they integrate online and offline planning for marketing activities. Emerging brands have started to leverage 1P data on top of 3P data for marketing activities, and they tend to buy media that leverages simple AI-driven solutions (for example, AI-driven bidding algorithms).
- Connected. These brands have reached a level of digital and data integration that supports a culture of experimentation. They can align measurement with business key performance indicator (KPI) settings and leverage cloud computing to support AI and GenAI solutions. They can increasingly automate activation and execution, with integrated teams planning seamless consumer journeys.
- Multi-moment. These brands stand out as true innovators in the marketing landscape. In particular, they use advanced technologies (such as AI algorithms for budgeting and optimization and GenAI for content personalization) to support their strategies. They leverage 1P and 3P data across multiple business areas—including marketing, sales, finance, and operations—that are fully supported by cloud infrastructure. They can measure marketing results end-to-end, which enables them to improve targeting and personalization daily.
Companies that find themselves in the first three levels want to move up, and those few that occupy the multi-moment level need to work hard to maintain and improve their position. This task is getting tougher because new marketing capabilities must be developed—constantly raising the bar. Although nascent and emerging brands are relatively strong in foundational capabilities, they have a pronounced deficit in both new table stakes and elevated capabilities. (See Exhibit 4.)

Curiosamente, marcas mais avançadas obtiveram uma pontuação mais alta em recursos elevados do que nos recursos fundamentais. De fato, suas capacidades fundamentais são apenas marginalmente mais maduras do que as de empresas de baixa vencimento. Isso pode sinalizar que empresas mais maduras construíram com sucesso essas fundações para desenvolver capacidades novas e mais elevadas, mas não devem tirar os olhos das capacidades fundamentais. As marcas devem evitar criar recursos dispersos que não tenham total integração. Em vez disso, eles devem adquirir recursos como parte de um plano estratégico holístico projetado para obter os benefícios da maturidade em toda a empresa. Identificamos quatro maneiras de desbloquear essas novas oportunidades, cada uma das quais exige alguns dos 19 recursos essenciais para as marcas, à medida que desenvolvem sua maturidade de marketing orientada pela IA. (Consulte o Anexo 5.)
Four Practices to Unlock Maturity Benefits
As important as capabilities are, they do not create maturity and value on their own. Brands should avoid building scattered capabilities that lack full integration. Instead, they should acquire capabilities as part of a holistic strategic plan designed to realize the benefits of maturity across the enterprise. We have identified four ways to unlock these new opportunities, each of which requires some of the 19 capabilities that are essential for brands as they develop their AI-driven marketing maturity. (See Exhibit 5.)

Desbloquear 1: Ativar a tomada de decisão estratégica ao vincular o desempenho de marketing aos resultados estratégicos por meio de que a execução é de destaque. Vinculando canais on-line e offline), cultura de teste e aprendizado e pilha de tecnologia de destino (permitindo a medição e a configuração do KPI como ferramentas para a tomada de decisão, como adotando plataformas avançadas baseadas em nuvem que divulgam o conhecimento comum para apoiar a tomada de decisão). The capabilities underlying this unlock include strategic KPI setting, integrated planning, end-to-end measurement (across the journey, linking online and offline channels), test-and-learn culture, and target tech stack (enabling measurement and KPI setting as tools for decision making, such as by adopting advanced cloud-based platforms that disseminate common knowledge to support decision making).
"É fundamental para integrarmos dados offline e on-line para orientar nossos investimentos de maneira mais eficaz em todos os canais. Por exemplo, tentamos conectar o comportamento na loja com campanhas digitais para avaliar sua eficácia. A IA nos permite preencher a medição e as lacunas de dados. Conjuntos de habilidades especializadas aproveitando os parceiros ou inspirando recursos estratégicos. é crucial. Estratégias isoladas de coleta de dados orgânicas 1P e 2P para coleta e ativação de dados proativas, orientadas a objetivos e enriquecidas podem gerar valor demonstrável. The capabilities underlying this unlock include targeting audiences and data sources (for example, by using enriched 0P, 1P, and 2P data from multiple sources to create one-to-one audience personalization), privacy readiness for a cookieless future, user identification, data enrichment and monetization (such as by focusing on mature use cases with demonstratable returns to maximize data value, consumer value, and Confiança).
Unlock 2: Foster integrated teams with AI and GenAI specialist skill sets by leveraging partners or insourcing strategic capabilities. The capabilities underlying this unlock include agile collaboration, specialist skills, data-driven decision making, adtech centralization, and GenAI workflow reimagination (that is, integrating GenAI along the entire marketing value chain of activities to enhance productivity).
“Partnering with specialists who have the right skill sets is crucial. We do not merely utilize our partners as craftsmen, but also as strategic advisors. We orchestrate their efforts toward our shared objectives and encourage them to exchange insights and perspectives to maximize our benefits,” said a marketing director of a European e-commerce company.
Unlock 3: Ensure actionability of data rather than mass data collection. Shifting from isolated organic 1P and 2P data collection strategies to proactive, purpose-driven, and enriched data collection and activation can drive demonstrable value. The capabilities underlying this unlock include targeting audiences and data sources (for example, by using enriched 0P, 1P, and 2P data from multiple sources to create one-to-one audience personalization), privacy readiness for a cookieless future, user identification, data enrichment and monetization (such as by focusing on mature use cases with demonstratable returns to maximize data value, consumer value, and trust).
“Moldamos proativamente nossa agenda desde o início para nos preparar para um futuro de cozinheiro. Utilizamos tecnologias movidas a IA para identificação do usuário, medindo a eficácia e tomando decisões informadas em que o Decloren de Jerketing é o que é um dos recursos que não são de uma empresa de mercado. Execução de casos de uso selecionados que impulsionam o impacto dos negócios, em vez de perseguir a mais recente tendência do mercado. Eles usam a automação da IA para otimizar tarefas, elevar estratégias e personalizar criativos e ativação. Os recursos subjacentes a esse desbloqueio incluem conteúdo orientado a dados, ativação de mídia habilitada para dados (ou seja, campanhas automatizadas para ativar a coordenação e o seqüenciamento dinâmico entre os canais), energia preditiva e IA incorporada, e as experiências personalizadas. Mudança constante e dinamicamente ”, observou o chefe do digital em um varejista líder. Hoje, diferentemente do passado, as empresas não podem simplesmente acelerar uma área ou capacidade específica de recuperar o atraso. Para buscar os benefícios de maturidade e desbloqueio, as marcas devem se desenvolver em vários recursos em paralelo. Com base em nossos resultados, definimos um roteiro distinto para o uso dos quatro "desbloqueios" para avançar a maturidade de uma marca para o nível mais alto. (Veja o Anexo 6.)
Unlock 4: Prioritize smart execution of select use cases that drive business impact, instead of chasing the latest market trend. The most mature brands have successfully implemented AI and GenAI in their everyday activities, with proven impact. They use AI's automation to optimize tasks, elevate strategies and personalize creatives and activation. The capabilities underlying this unlock include data-driven content, data-enabled media activation (i.e., automated campaigns to enable dynamic coordination and sequencing across channels), predictive power and embedded AI, and personalized experiences.
“AI has changed how we view audiences. We have shifted from a segment-based perspective to an outcome-based one. This has increased our effectiveness because audience definitions are constantly and dynamically changing,” noted the head of digital at a leading retailer.
Roadmap to Improve Maturity
Whether a brand’s marketing maturity level is nascent, emerging, or connected, it needs a strategy to move to the next level and eventually achieve multi-moment status. Today, unlike in the past, companies can’t just accelerate a specific area or capability to catch up. To pursue maturity and unlock benefits, brands must develop across multiple capabilities in parallel.
Our research, including interviews and case studies with brands, enables us to chart the most direct path to increasing brands’ maturity level. Building on our results, we have defined a distinct roadmap for using the four “unlocks” to advance a brand’s maturity to the highest level. (See Exhibit 6.)

Com este roteiro em mente, as marcas devem focar sua atenção e recursos para dar o próximo passo na curva de vencimento - e não de onde estão os níveis de que estão dependendo de mais depender. Para marcas nascentes, emergentes e conectadas, identificamos os três recursos mais importantes a serem adquiridos para avançar para o próximo nível. outras empresas. Para alcançar o maior impacto no menor período de tempo, essas marcas devem priorizar três recursos. (Veja o Anexo 7.) Primeiro, eles precisam se concentrar em se preparar para um mundo de cozinheiros e garantir a prontidão da privacidade. Segundo, eles precisam selecionar estrategicamente a tecnologia apropriada e definir claramente a propriedade entre marcas e parceiros. Terceiro, as marcas precisam fortalecer seus investimentos em mídia digital para desbloquear a personalização e as experiências holísticas.
Roadmap Priorities for Nascent Brands

Nascent brands should focus on closing the wide maturity gap that separates them from other companies. To achieve the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time, these brands should prioritize three capabilities. (See Exhibit 7.) First, they need to focus on preparing for a cookieless world and ensuring privacy readiness. Second, they need to strategically select appropriate technology and clearly define ownership between brands and partners. Third, brands need to strengthen their investments in digital media to unlock personalization and holistic experiences.

Prioridades de roteiro para marcas emergentes

Emerging brands have assembled the basic building blocks for maturity (mainly data quality, and people training and upskilling). Their next challenge is to execute and connect all inputs and outputs into strong and multidimensional systems of measurement that will allow brands to make strategic decisions. To this end, they should focus on three capabilities that will help them unlock value faster and more effectively. (See Exhibit 8.) First, they should prioritize the alignment of KPIs with long-term strategic goals. Second, they should establish end-to-end measurement capabilities. Third, they should invest in AI-driven predictive analytics, and integrate AI and GenAI into their everyday operations.

Roadmap Priorities for Connected Brands

Connected brands have built new algorithms, deployed the tech stack, and ensured the right data feeds. But those measures account for only about 30% of what it takes to reach the multi-moment level—the highest stage of maturity. The remaining 70% involves improving change management and other people-related processes to embed innovation as a collaborative way of working. To this end, connected brands should focus on building up three distinct capabilities. (See Exhibit 9.) First, they should capitalize on their tech and digital investments by onboarding the whole organization onto new ways of working, using enhanced agile collaboration and elevated execution. Second, they should strengthen data-driven decision-making processes to help develop a holistic approach to data science and market trend analysis. Third, they should transition from generic creative ideas to leveraging GenAI for hyperpersonalization and embedding AI-driven solutions into all levels of strategy formulation and execution.

Conclusion
As new and powerful technologies and tools—such as AI and GenAI—continue to emerge, facilitated by widespread adoption of cloud computing, brands have a huge opportunity to improve their marketing maturity and thus increase their productivity, profitability, and overall competitiveness. The skill set necessary for AI-driven marketing maturity is expanding and becoming more demanding, but the potential payoff is significant.
Every brand should assess its position on the maturity curve. By focusing on the capabilities that most powerfully support the four unlocks of AI-driven marketing value, brands can steadily improve their approach and become true innovators, incorporating advanced technologies into their marketing operations.
The authors thank Tommaso Passalacqua, Daniele Frigerio, Frank Hohenleitner, and Ambra Giuliano for their contributions to this study.