The FINANCIAL -- The amount of data at marketers’ disposal is only growing, and in the case of some forward-thinking companies the results of the “Big Data” explosion are already being felt. But for most marketers, web analytics data is still too much, with too little context.

According to research from Econsultancy and web analytics consultancy Lynchpin, a majority of marketers worldwide say that less than half of all the analytics data they collect is actually useful for decision-making. Just one in 10 companies thought a strong majority of analytics data was helpful, and less than a third said somewhere between half and three-quarters of all data was useful.

As emarketer reported, in many cases, web analytics are still not tied to a broader business strategy—and some companies reported not even having such a strategy. In addition to the 14% in that situation, 34% said analytics were not integrated at all with their business plans. The most common integration strategy was for companies to share key performance indicators across data from the web and elsewhere.

It’s also not clear that more experience with analytics data is making companies better at using it. Client-side marketers surveyed by Econsultancy and Lynchpin were less likely in 2012 than in 2011 to say analytics “definitely” drove actionable recommendations, and they were more likely to say analytics were not integrated into broader strategies or with other sources of data.

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