A focus on data and martech – and the fear of missing out – may be undermining long-standing advertising effectiveness principles as a focus on segmentation, targeting, and personalised advertising distracts from the notion that reaching a wider market may be more effective. 

Why it matters

The temptation in the last ten years has been to see advertising and marketing as a feat of engineering, due to the explosion of new technology, and to outsize its importance in the marketing toolset, according to Samuel Brealey and Michael Taylor.

But, they argue in an exclusive article for WARC, the tools we...