The modern CMO is navigating a paradox: Consumers demand seamless, personalized experiences across every touchpoint - yet marketing budgets remain stagnant. In fact, 59% of CMOs say they don’t have enough budget to execute their full strategy, and 63% report increased pressure from CFOs to prove ROI.

This tension is forcing a strategic reckoning. Traditional approaches to growth like fragmented data, siloed teams, and channel-by-channel optimization are no longer sufficient. To meet rising demands with constrained resources, leading CMOs are turning to a powerful (and crucial) lever: data connectivity.

But not all data connectivity strategies are created equal. The most effective share a few guiding principles: they prioritize first-party data as the foundation, enrich it with diverse signals, and ensure adaptability through interoperable systems and a human + AI feedback loop.

Here’s how leading brands are using data connectivity to redefine what’s possible.

1. Unify the Audience Strategy Across the Lifecycle

A unified audience strategy starts with a connected data foundation. When marketers can integrate first-party, third-party, and contextual data into a single, dynamic customer profile, they unlock the ability to engage with precision at every stage of the journey. Composability takes this one step further with even greater flexibility, control, and resilience by keeping data within your secure environment. This means identifying high-value segments not just by demographics, but with real-time behaviors, intent signals, and lifecycle stage to weave the story of who their audiences are. At the heart of data connectivity is a universal ID, which represents an individual across devices and touchpoints. That’s where approaches like Generative Audiences become powerful. This ID tells you who an individual is and what their actions are but doesn’t fully explain why they act or what influences their decisions. By linking identity with signal-based data to uncover behavioral, cultural, and commerce signals, marketers can move beyond static profiles to understand customers and better anticipate their needs.

Making it real: A global financial services company needed to implement a smarter, scalable identity solution to connect the dots between known customers in their database and anonymous site visitors. By unifying identity across touchpoints, they were able to recognize and engage previously unreached consumers, resulting in $200 million in incremental annual revenue. By understanding who your visitors are, what they need, and how to meet those needs faster, brands can strategically turn opportunities into growth.

2. Deliver Consistent Intelligence Across Channels

Disconnected data creates conflicting insights, disjointed experiences, and missed opportunities. With a connected data infrastructure, CMOs can ensure that every channel operates from a shared single source of truth. This consistency enables smarter targeting, more effective suppression strategies, and unified measurement. Just as important is that data can be leveraged across interoperable platforms to the specific teams that need it, getting more value from the tools they already have.

Making it real: Imagine you just had a terrible travel experience and talked through it with the call center to get a refund. Minutes later, while trying to decompress on your phone, you’re served a cheerful social ad from the same brand promoting the very service that let you down. It’s damaging.

Now imagine if that call center interaction had been instantly connected to the brand’s media systems. The social team could have suppressed that ad, or even better, delivered a message acknowledging the issue and offering a follow-up incentive. That’s the power of connected intelligence - turning a negative moment into a chance to rebuild trust and loyalty.

3. Fuel End-to-End Campaign Performance

Data connectivity doesn’t just improve planning or activation; it transforms the entire campaign lifecycle. From audience discovery to creative optimization to ROI measurement, connected data enables marketers to move faster, act smarter, and prove impact more clearly by reaching real people, not proxies or bots based on verified identity and recent activity.

Making it real: Consider a major CPG brand that integrated its media, sales, and loyalty data to power end-to-end campaign orchestration. By using predictive models to identify likely switchers and activating those audiences across digital and in-store channels, the brand saw a 3x improvement in media efficiency. Post-campaign, they were able to tie exposure directly to in-store sales, giving the CMO the confidence to scale the approach across markets.

4. Create Higher Performing Audience Segments

One of the most powerful outcomes of data connectivity is the ability to build smarter, more effective audience segments. By connecting identity with behavioral and contextual signals, marketers can create dynamic audiences that evolve in real time. This means marketers can move beyond assumptions and reach real people with relevance that reflects who they are right now, not who they were yesterday.

These segments can then be activated directly on media platforms through semantic matching to go far beyond what’s possible with traditional media targeting.

Making it real: A leading auto brand used a consumer ID through dentsu and partner data to define audiences in specific income levels and household size to find those who prioritize functionality over luxury to surpass what traditional targeting efforts could uncover. When activated, they saw a 116% higher CTR and a 42% more efficient CPC. For CMOs, smarter segmentation leads to better targeting, which leads to better performance, and ultimately, better use of media spend.

The Starting Line

Data alone isn’t enough. What sets leading brands apart is their ability to connect and activate it across systems, teams, and touchpoints to unlock personalization that brings new growth potential.

Whether leveraging first-party data or tapping into the largest consumer set of any agency, dentsu’s approach to data connectivity is grounded in a simple principle: data should work harder for marketers. Our extensive curated data partnerships are selected at the highest standards to ensure quality and best coverage. Combined with an adaptive, interoperable architecture and a human + AI feedback loop, this foundation ensures connected data is actionable and future-proof.

If you’re ready to move from fragmented data to fully connected experiences, and want a partner with both the technology and the strategic expertise to make it real, reach out to our experts here. Build smarter marketing from the start.

Learn more about dentsu.Audience’s solutions here.