Acxiom EMARKETER report: 80% of B2B marketers see ROI from identity data, but 55% call it siloed
Acxiom, in partnership with EMARKETER, released a new report today on B2B marketing data and identity. The report surveyed 112 U.S. agency and marketing professionals. It found 80% of marketers see better return on investment from identity efforts, especially in personalization. But 55.4% say their first-party data is still siloed or only partially connected.
What the Acxiom and EMARKETER data and identity report found
The report is called “Data and Identity: From Marketing Capability to Company Asset.” It surveyed 112 U.S.-based agency and marketing professionals. The goal was to measure identity maturity, data readiness, and where companies plan to invest next.
Marketers report real gains from identity work. 80% say they have seen improved return on investment from identity efforts. The biggest gains came in personalization, at 40.2%.
But fragmentation is still holding many teams back. 42.0% of marketers rate their customer data foundation as somewhat or very immature. And 55.4% say their first-party data is siloed or only partially connected across systems.
Marketers build identity from several data types layered together. Email and hashed email lead the list at 65.2%. First-party authenticated IDs come next at 52.7%, followed by device or mobile IDs at 50.0%.
Interoperability, or the ability for different systems to share and use the same data smoothly, is becoming the new bar for success. Only 23.0% of marketers say their systems are fully interoperable today.
Looking ahead, 60.7% of marketers plan to increase investment in identity resolution over the next 24 months. Their top priorities are unifying customer views and adding AI and advanced analytics, each cited by 38.4% of respondents.
Where the Acxiom EMARKETER identity report data comes from
Acxiom and EMARKETER announced the findings in a joint press release on July 10, 2026. Acxiom is the connected data and identity company owned by Omnicom. EMARKETER is a research firm known for marketing and advertising benchmark data. The report was developed by EMARKETER in collaboration with Acxiom.
Why fragmented data matters for B2B marketing growth
Fragmented data creates real business problems: campaigns that don’t reach the right accounts, personalization that falls flat, and measurement that can’t tie spend to results. Gartner’s 2026 CMO spend data already shows awareness and conversion eating 62.6% of media budgets, leaving less room for the identity infrastructure that makes that spend work harder. B2B buyers already show low trust in generic marketing, according to a LinkedIn study finding 74% of B2B marketers say buyers distrust traditional marketing. Fragmented identity data makes it harder to earn that trust back with relevant, well-timed outreach.
Buyer insight tools are also evolving fast. NewtonX recently launched synthetic personas for on-demand buyer insight, a sign that marketers want faster, cleaner ways to understand buyers. None of that works well on top of scattered, disconnected data.
Talking Shift: an ROI number built on broken data deserves a second look
Eighty percent of marketers in this report say identity work improved their ROI. At the same time, 55% call their own data siloed or only partly connected. Those two numbers sitting side by side deserve a second look. Systems that cannot share data cleanly often feed the same reports marketers use to measure ROI. A team measuring results through a fragmented data pipe is trusting numbers that pass through the same gaps they just described.
Start Some Shift’s take: an ROI number is only as reliable as the plumbing that produced it. Half-connected data makes for a shaky pipe. Marketers who report gains from identity work should ask a harder question first. How much of that ROI is measured cleanly? How much is estimated around the gaps? Fixing the pipes should come before trusting what flows through them.
What the Acxiom EMARKETER findings mean for B2B marketers
- Audit your identity stack now. Find out how many of your systems can actually share data, since only 23% of marketers say theirs fully can.
- Treat identity as a budget line, not a side project. Fold it into the 2027 planning cycle alongside media spend.
- Push for real interoperability between your CRM, CDP, and ad platforms before adding new point solutions.
- Track personalization ROI specifically, since that is where marketers report the strongest identity gains.
- Watch AI initiatives closely. 38.4% of marketers are pairing identity investment with AI and analytics work, and messy data will limit what AI can do.
- Set a plan to unify first-party data across teams, since more than half of marketers still call theirs siloed or partial.
What to watch next on B2B data and identity investment
Watch whether the 60.7% of marketers planning to boost identity investment actually follow through in 2027 budgets. Also watch whether interoperability across major martech platforms improves, since that 23% figure is the one most likely to move as vendors respond to research like this.
