Validity Report Finds Marketers Adopt AI Ahead of CRM Data Quality
Validity's State of CRM Data Management in 2026 report shows marketing leaders face pressure to deploy AI despite incomplete CRM data readiness.
A new global report from Validity finds that marketing leadership has advanced AI adoption faster than improvements to CRM data quality. The State of CRM Data Management in 2026 report surveyed 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals across the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
Leadership Acts on Suspect AI Outputs
Nearly 78% of C-suite and 92% of SVP/VP respondents said they have acted on an AI recommendation they later suspected was wrong because of bad underlying data. This compares with 41% of individual contributors. Additionally, nearly 60% of C-suite respondents and 52% of SVP/VPs reported feeling pressure to implement AI tools now despite knowing their underlying data is not ready.
According to Demand Gen Report, 67% of C-suite respondents admitted campaign data is at times manipulated to make results look better to leadership, nearly double the 38% rate reported organizationwide.
Autonomous AI Decisions Increase Risk
Two out of three organizations increased the number of marketing decisions delegated to autonomous AI agents in the past year. Just 21% of marketers said their CRM data is very well prepared to support AI.
Poor data quality contributed to revenue loss for 62% of organizations. Nearly a third of teams spend six or more hours a week fixing and reconciling data. Poor data has also contributed to compliance exposure for 63% of organizations and delayed or scrapped campaigns for 67%.
Preferred Fix Is Real-Time Data Monitoring
Marketers identified continuous automated monitoring that catches and fixes data issues in real time as the top capability that would most increase confidence in CRM data, cited by 39% overall and 47% among C-suite respondents. This ranked ahead of consolidating onto one unified platform at 23% and adding third-party data validation or enrichment at 19%.
According to Demand Gen Report, 41% of organizations reported having a dedicated data governance team or owner specifically to manage regulatory and privacy risk.
Report Details
The report is based on responses from 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals. The full State of CRM Data Management in 2026 report is available from Validity.
