For the first time ever, more than half (53%) of the marketers answering MMA Global’s State of Attribution survey said they’re using multi-touch attribution (MTA).  Users report an 8% return on investment increase from MTA and 71% say it’s a critical part of their measurement toolkit, along with media mix models and experiments.  But many are concerned that tracking restrictions with make the necessary data less available.

Contact center managers have a different take on AI: Talkdesk reports that 87% feel at least moderately familiar with AI applications in the call center and 85% believe it’s important.  But they list security, infrastructure, resistance to change, and lack of quality data as the top barriers, not training.  Oddly enough, fewer companies report having deployed AI systems than one year ago.

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.