The Data Skills Gap That's Plaguing the Ad Industry

Most people enter advertising because they love the creative work—writing compelling copy, building smart strategies, designing campaigns that connect with people.

Then someone asks them to prove ROI, and suddenly, they're drowning.

Funnel's 2026 Marketing Intelligence Report found that 47% of in-house marketers and 32% of agency marketers struggle to keep up with the data-driven aspects of their work.

Surprisingly, only 12% have automated their data-related tasks extensively. And that's the real problem: marketers feel overwhelmed by data work, but they're not using the tools that could solve it.The gap isn't a skills problem; it's a systems problem. And the solution isn't learning more, but finding the tools that allow you to work smarter.

The Perception Problem: Why “Data Skills” Feel Unattainable

Here's why that 47% struggles: most marketers think “data skills” means technical expertise they don't have. They imagine needing to learn SQL, master complex dashboards, or understand statistical modeling just to answer basic questions like:

• Which campaign drove the most revenue?
• Which channel actually performs best?
• Where should we invest more budget?

So instead of building deeper data skills, they default to what feels manageable. They copy numbers between platforms, maintain spreadsheets that break every month, and pull reports that show clicks and impressions, not business impact.

They do this despite the fact that it’s time-consuming, difficult, and doesn’t really give them the answers they need.

Marketers Care About Data—They Just Don’t Have the Time to Master It

It’s not that marketers don’t care about data. In fact, 77% say improving their data analysis skills is “very important” to them.

The problem is what “getting better at data” seems to require: learning new tools, navigating complex dashboards, picking up technical skills that they never learned in school and that feel far removed from the work they were hired to do.

All of that has to happen on top of managing campaigns, reporting to clients, answering leadership questions, and keeping performance moving forward.

So data improvement gets deferred. Not ignored, just…postponed. And then postponed again. And again.

It’s not that marketers don’t value data skills—it’s that the path to mastery feels steep, technical, and time-consuming on top of an already full workload.

What Actually Closes the Gap

Here’s the part that often gets missed: most marketers aren’t trying to become data scientists. They’re trying to answer practical questions:

• What’s working?
• What isn’t?
• Where should we invest more—or pull back?

Consider the difference: A marketer using disconnected tools might spend 45 minutes pulling data from Google Ads, their call tracking platform, and their form tool just to answer “How many qualified leads did last month's campaign generate?" With centralized reporting, that same question takes 30 seconds—they open one dashboard and see the answer, already connected to revenue.

When reporting is clear, centralized, and easy to access, the need for deep technical expertise drops dramatically. When performance data lives in one place instead of across half a dozen platforms, marketers spend less time assembling answers and more time acting on them.

The gap closes not when marketers learn more tools—but when the tools stop demanding so much from them.

What This Looks Like in Practice

This is where platforms like WhatConverts come in—not as a replacement for data skills, but as a way to make them less of a barrier.

Instead of forcing marketers to stitch together reports from Google Ads, call tracking tools, form platforms, and spreadsheets, WhatConverts brings those pieces together automatically. Calls, forms, and chats are captured in one place, along with the attribution data that explains where each lead came from.

That means marketers don’t have to:

• Export data from multiple platforms
• Reconcile mismatched numbers
• Build custom reports just to understand performance

They can log in and see lead activity, sources, and outcomes in a single view.

Just as importantly, the reporting is already structured around the questions marketers are actually trying to answer. Which campaigns are driving real opportunities. Which channels are producing noise. Where budget is paying off (and where it isn’t).

The result isn’t “more data.” It’s less data work.

Marketers still interpret results and make decisions, but they’re starting from a cleaner, more complete picture—without needing advanced technical skills to get there.

From Overwhelmed to Capable

The data skills gap isn’t going away. Expectations will continue to rise as marketing becomes more measurable and more accountable.

But closing that gap doesn’t mean every marketer needs to become deeply technical.

It means removing unnecessary friction between marketers and the information they need to do their job well.

When systems are designed to surface insight instead of raw data, marketers can operate confidently with the skills they already have. They spend less time managing information and more time improving performance.

That’s when data stops feeling like a burden and starts doing what it was meant to do all along: support better decisions.

Ready to eliminate data overwhelm on your marketing team?