Believe it or not, your tech stack isn’t the problem

Marketing today moves fast — new platforms or solutions drop almost daily. But while it might be easy to point to an overabundance of tools as one of the most disruptive agents of chaos in marketers’ lives, the truth is that your martech stack isn’t the problem.

The real issue is a lack of connectivity between platforms, preventing consistent, simple execution.

Each tool in your stack was built for a specific function — measurement, performance optimization, customer experience — but instead of working in harmony, they often operate in silos. According to Forrester’s Q4 2024 Identity Resolution Survey, 66% of marketing leaders surveyed say they use 16 or more marketing technology platforms today, yet fewer than half say their stack is well integrated.

This implies that technology is hampering, rather than facilitating, marketing excellence.

According to Forrester, 70% of marketing leaders say identifying audiences across touchpoints is more difficult than ever. The result? Marketers cite their top challenges as the inability to deliver personalization, difficulty scaling marketing efforts, ineffective AI onboarding and wasted marketing spend.

More tech isn’t the answer — better integration is

When marketers hit roadblocks, their instinct is often to add another tool — a customer data platform or an AI-powered personalization engine — hoping it will fill the gaps. But layering more tech on top of an already fragmented ecosystem typically makes the problem worse. More tools mean more data silos, more inconsistencies and more time wasted reconciling conflicting information.

Instead of adding complexity, marketers need a unified solution that ensures seamless data flow across the entire ecosystem. This is where identity resolution platforms come in. These solutions connect and reconcile fragmented customer data, enabling a unified and actionable view across all martech tools — no matter how many marketers might be using them at any given time.

The missing link: Identity resolution

Identity resolution serves as the connective tissue between disconnected systems, enabling brands to unify customer data across platforms and channels. Without it, companies struggle to engage with their customers meaningfully across the full breadth of their interactions — or even to recognize them at all.

Think of identity resolution as the backbone of a high-functioning marketing engine — ensuring that customer relationship management (CRM), ad platforms and analytics tools work from the same customer profiles. Instead of just collecting data, you’re activating it to power smarter, more precise marketing strategies.

And the numbers back this up. According to Forrester, 93% of companies leveraging identity resolution meet or exceed their customer experience goals, while 88% report success in improving customer insights and understanding. Additionally, 79% achieve better data-driven decision-making and adaptability.

An integrated martech stack — with identity resolution technology at the core — can enable marketers to deliver truly personalized experiences, optimize targeting and measurement and maximize marketing efficiency. By resolving identity across platforms, marketers can improve customer engagement, enhance AI-driven decision-making and scale campaigns effectively — all while reducing inefficiencies and wasted spend.

This means marketing teams minimize time troubleshooting data and more time executing high-impact, data-driven campaigns that drive measurable results. The companies that embrace identity resolution and seamless integration aren’t just keeping up — they’re gaining a competitive edge.

We talk a lot in our industry about change, but what hasn’t changed — whether it’s 2000 or 2025 — is our fundamental role as marketers: reaching the right audience, with the right message, in the right context, at the right time.

To do that, and make the big, strategic bets that will help move their businesses forward, marketers need a more complete view of their data. No matter how many cutting-edge platforms you have in your tech stack, they don’t mean much if you can’t get them working together.

Identity resolution is the key to unlocking that full view.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.