It’s all surveys today, Dear Reader.  First, this Nielsen study finds that marketers rate audience targeting and creative as more important for campaign success than personalization or journey-based messaging.   Most believe that effective targeting requires behaviors as well as contextual data.  Lots more here on channel growth and effectiveness, ROI measurement, marketing objectives, and related topics.

Nearly one-third (31%) of marketers plan to replace their current marketing automation system in the coming year, according to this Ascend2 study.  Another 43% are unsure about their plans.  Unfortunately, buyers prioritize price (58%) and ease of use (54%) over integration (22%), feature breadth (21%) and feature depth (19%), so their next system isn’t guaranteed to meet their needs, either.  Perhaps related: just 22% rate their marketing automation program as very successful.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.