In today’s data-driven advertising landscape, while the vast majority of businesses recognize data as essential to their marketing strategy, only a fraction of smaller businesses effectively use advanced analytics to inform their decisions. This can make it challenging to drive more value from advertising investments.
Fortunately, advancements in accessibility and usability are unlocking new possibilities for marketers.
The analytics gap
Consider a small business owner asking: “Are my ads actually driving incremental sales? Which customer segments deliver the highest lifetime value? What combination of marketing touchpoints creates the most efficient path to purchase?” These questions, once answerable only by large enterprises with dedicated data teams, now represent the accessible power of advanced analytics.
Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can aspire to analyze customer behavior across months or even years, understand the true impact of their advertising investments, and identify their most valuable customer segments—all without requiring extensive technical resources.
Defining advanced analytics
But what exactly is meant by “advanced analytics”? Unlike standard reporting that shows basic metrics like clicks and conversions, advanced analytics connects the dots across your entire business. It securely combines signals from multiple sources—your advertising, your customer interactions, your sales data—to reveal the complete picture. It allows businesses to track customer journeys across the marketing funnel, create custom audiences based on sophisticated behavioral patterns, and implement precise strategies informed by deep customer insights rather than guesswork.
These powerful capabilities are becoming more widely available. The technical barriers to advanced analytics continue to lower, enabling companies of all sizes to make more informed decisions in the digital marketplace.
Tools are becoming accessible
SMBs have a wealth of first-party data: from customer purchase histories and seasonal buying patterns to product preferences and shopping behaviors. A retailer’s data might reveal which products are frequently purchased together, while a direct-to-consumer brand might discover how long customers typically consider a purchase before buying.
But historically, the tools to unlock these insights have been out of reach. Siloed, complex query languages, lengthy implementation processes, and the need for dedicated data science teams created barriers that only larger enterprises could overcome.
Today’s technology is changing this dynamic. Advanced analytics platforms are bringing enterprise-grade capabilities to businesses of all sizes through intuitive, self-service interfaces.
The emergence of data management solutions and clean rooms helps to bring siloed signals scattered across channels together, building a solid data foundation for advanced analytics that run on top. These tools are becoming increasingly accessible to SMBs through applications that do not require users to write code for realizing advanced insights, including point-and-click solutions built on top of underlying query logic. These capabilities enable advertisers and agencies to unlock valuable insights without extensive technical resources, accelerating their path from data to decisions.
A marketing manager who previously spent hours wrestling with spreadsheets can now log in to see instant, customized visualizations of campaign performance. Pre-built templates and no-code solutions enable this manager to independently explore sophisticated analyses that once required technical expertise.
For example, instead of requesting basic reports about last month’s campaign performance, a marketing manager might ask their analytics team to help understand why certain customer segments respond differently to various ad formats. The analytics team can then focus on revealing these deeper patterns rather than pulling routine metrics.
This not only accelerates day-to-day decisions but transforms collaboration with analytics teams—shifting conversations from basic reporting requests to strategic initiatives that drive business growth. The analytics team can focus on complex custom analyses, while the manager gains deeper insight into which strategic questions will yield the most valuable answers.
For instance, a brand can quickly identify which products are most effective at attracting first-time customers, informing future product promotion strategies. They can analyze purchase patterns to create segments of high-value customers based on spending behavior, then use these insights to guide new product launches and cross-selling campaigns.
Advanced path-to-purchase analysis reveals how different audience segments interact with various ad formats before converting, enabling more precise media mix decisions. These insights, previously requiring complex data analysis, are now becoming more accessible through intuitive interfaces and templates.
Turning insights into action
While these tools streamline access to insights, success requires clear objectives, consistent measurement, and commitment to data-driven decision-making. The most successful businesses start by identifying key questions they want to answer, then leverage these new tools to find those answers.
The time to embrace these capabilities is now. Organizations can begin by identifying their most valuable data sources—from customer purchase patterns to campaign performance metrics—and establishing processes to collect and organize this information consistently.
Start with a single, high-priority business question, like understanding which customer segments drive the most value, and use that as a catalyst for broader adoption. Build cross-functional habits where marketing, analytics, and business teams regularly collaborate on defining questions and acting on insights.
These tools don’t replace technical expertise; rather, they amplify it, enabling faster, more informed decisions based on real data. Success comes not from having the most data, but from asking the right questions and acting on the insights revealed.
The democratization of advanced analytics access isn’t just a technological shift; it’s an opportunity for businesses to transform insights into action. By making advanced analytics more accessible, businesses of all sizes can make faster, more informed advertising decisions based on real data and measurable results.
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Aby Angilivelil is a director at Amazon Ads, leading Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). As a seasoned Amazonian, he has been a part of Amazon Ads since 2019 and helped to develop the Amazon Ads Partner programs, product, and technology—helping build a network of thousands of verified Amazon Ads Partners.