ORLANDO – Marketers can’t prove the value of their ad investments without direct access to their own data, and that needs to change, says David Fogarty, evp of data excellence and privacy at the Association of National Advertisers.
In a conversation with Beet.TV’s David Kaplan at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference, Fogarty said advertisers continue to face “tremendous waste” in digital media. They also lack visibility into how campaigns perform, largely because they don’t have full access to log-level data from platforms and intermediaries.
“Marketers have to leverage their power as customers and demand access,” he said, noting that he took the same approach as a practitioner: “If we’re going to do business with you, this is a must.”
Data access, attribution and ‘all-party’ strategy
Fogarty urged marketers to invest in first-party and “zero-party” data, or information customers willingly share, as the foundation for accurate attribution and direct engagement. The ANA’s “all-party data strategy,” he said, aims to help brands combine owned, partner and platform data in privacy-safe ways to improve measurement.
He also recommended complementing marketing mix models with incrementality testing — experiments that show what portion of sales lift comes directly from advertising.
“You can actually see who received ads and who didn’t,” Fogarty said, “and that lets you measure true outcomes.”
Identity and unified data frameworks
With connected TV and retail media producing vast but fragmented datasets, Fogarty said the ANA’s 2026 agenda will focus on identity. The goal: help brands unify signals across channels through identity graphs and both deterministic and probabilistic matching.
That, he said, requires centralized data platforms: “data warehouses, data lakes and customer data platforms that are always on and API-connected.”
He also called for companies to form internal “data councils” that bring together marketing, media and analytics leaders to align strategies.
Data quality and the role of AI
The ANA recently released a Data for AI playbook emphasizing data quality.
“Bad data quality equals bad AI,” Fogarty said. Fewer than 10% of marketers consider their data AI-ready, even though most recognize its importance. To improve accuracy, the ANA encourages members to adopt Six Sigma principles from manufacturing: defining problems, measuring defects and instituting control processes to eliminate bad data.
Balancing privacy and performance
On privacy, Fogarty said marketers can’t simply delegate compliance to legal teams.
“Marketers need to build brand trust. That’s what drives opt-ins and data sharing,” he said. He urged companies to embrace data ethics and privacy-enhancing technologies such as clean rooms to comply with laws while maintaining innovation.
“If you’re going to deploy AI strategies, customers need to trust that you’re using their data ethically,” he added.
ANA’s five data priorities for 2026
Fogarty outlined the ANA’s five focus areas for next year:
- Modernizing Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM 4.0): Updating the decades-old framework with new data inputs and algorithms.
- All-Party Data Strategy: Enabling responsible data collaboration across ecosystems.
- Brand Trust: Embedding privacy and ethics as pillars of marketing.
- B2B Data Investment: Expanding sophistication in a sector that represents half of ANA members.
- Talent and AI Skills: Updating data playbooks to include AI competencies.
The ANA will also debut a proprietary Data, AI and Marketing Science Maturity Model to help members prioritize initiatives and estimate their potential financial impact.
“We think this will propel marketers to the next level,” Fogarty said.
