It’s clear that big data is valuable, but there’s so much of it—often siloed and locked away—that marketers and agencies alike can have a tough time measuring performance. A more integrated approach between data and creative is increasingly important with the rise in programmatic spending, so how can businesses keep up?

From departmental silos to media companies that refuse to share data due to strong privacy regulations and public scrutiny, measuring performance and tracking which media spend offers the best results are common thorns in marketers’ side. And when businesses are unable to measure data with efficiency, consumers are deprived of the personalized, relevant experiences they come to expect when handing over all that data.

The problem gets even more difficult with the rise of new players and platforms entering the arena. As the adoption of voice platforms like Amazon’s Alexa grows, for example, marketers will find themselves more beholden to platforms that might make data-crunching an even bigger challenge in addition to social and traditional search. Some of the biggest players are also the most resistant in sharing user data, facing pressure from regulators and the public to use it responsibly. But marketers need it to effectively inform their ad spend and create experiences optimized for each touchpoint on the consumer journey.

Programmatic’s Popularity Requires More Efficient Data

With programmatic ad delivery on the rise (41% of businesses are investing more in programmatic next year, and an additional 20% said they intend to invest significantly more, according to an Adweek Branded report), efficient access to data for measuring the performance of content becomes all the more important. But where there’s a challenge, there’s opportunity: MediaMonks CEO Victor Knaap believes the programmatic trend will prompt businesses to better integrate data into their creative process. “Programmatic is put into the outer areas of tech, start-ups and media buyers,” says Knaap, “but it is actually a canvas for delivering better creative.”

When data is built into the creative process early on, you can build much more personalized content optimized for the context of the platform. One elegant example is the U.S. Air Force website, which draws on user data to deliver dynamic, targeted content for a more relevant user experience. The U.S. Air Force needed such a data-driven approach because queries in the recruitment process ate up time and money. By tending to prospects’ needs and concerns through the content, they could better identify the most qualified applicants. And that’s important to note: the point of the website revamp wasn’t to generate more recruits, but rather more qualified ones. This heightened the need for highly accurate and actionable data.

First-Party Data to the Rescue

To achieve these goals, brands are hoping to leverage first-party data by investing in data management tools or offering platforms of their own. The U.S. Air Force website again serves as a great example of how brands can offer their own platform to meet these needs. Visitors begin their journey by providing key details like who they are, their work experience and what they hope to gain from a career with the force. This provides a starting point to surface up content that will grow more relevant as they browse.

Customer data platforms are useful, but it can be tough to choose the one that best fits your overall strategy or brand needs: according to the Adweek report, martech vendors have risen from a paltry 250 to about 7,000 over the past six years. Those equipped to provide a more integrated approach with marketers’ creative efforts and planning will undoubtedly prove the most attractive partners.

Aligning data with creative requires a flexible design. Once more, let’s look at how the U.S. Air Force website does it: by tracking users’ paths through the content, the front-end dynamically adapts to produce content on-the-fly. Variables in content include the images displayed, content headlines as well as the body copy itself. Suggested content for continued reading ensures users will never run out of content—and every time they click to read something else, they’re helping to train the website to identify the content they’re most interested in.

This AI-enhanced approach to A/B testing resulted in a 60% increase in conversion rates and 35% increase in higher-quality applications. While this technology is relatively advanced, any business can benefit from identifying opportunities to design with a modular, more flexible approach.

Creative is the crux where marketing and business interests meet the interests of consumers. It’s essential, then, that the marketing message is designed from the ground up to best fit the platform it’s delivered on. This makes it all the more important to adopt a performance-driven approach to creative that recognizes the context in which users interact with them.