Future-proofing your brand tracker: Four essential questions

What questions do you need to ask about your brand tracker this year? Our EVP John Bird writes more about how to future-proof your brand tracker in his new article on the How Brands Are Built blog.

He maintains that traditional brand trackers must evolve to remain effective. With advancements in technology, shifts in consumer behavior, and the growing role of AI, brands can no longer rely on outdated methodologies to guide decision-making. John emphasizes the need for continuous evaluation and adaptation, ensuring that trackers provide meaningful insights that drive strategic action.

Here are four essential questions that brands should be asking about their trackers in 2025:

1. Am I operating in a silo?

Silos within organizations create barriers to collaboration, limiting the value that brand trackers can provide. John underscores the importance of integrating insights across departments—marketing, sales, and product development—so that research findings drive business-wide decision-making. "Eliminating silos allows for a more cohesive understanding of operations and customer insights, enhancing decision-making across the board," he explains.

2. What internal and external data sources can we integrate?

Brand trackers should not operate in isolation. To get a fuller picture of consumer sentiment and market trends, John encourages researchers to incorporate complementary data sources such as behavioral and transactional data, customer feedback, and ad hoc research findings.

For example, reputation tracking should go beyond standard brand health metrics to include real-time insights from social listening and product reviews. “Integrating such data streams when examining reputation can bolster the traditional tracker model, empowering businesses to make more informed decisions, adapt to changing circumstances, and proactively shape their brand image,” he says.

3. Have I fully considered the role of new technologies?

With the rise of generative AI and research technology (ResTech), many organizations are questioning whether they should continue traditional tracking or shift entirely to passive measurement techniques. While AI, big data, and behavioral analytics play an increasing role in market research, John argues that trackers still serve a critical function.

“Despite the recent explosion of genAI and ResTech, replacing trackers entirely with passive techniques is not a great idea,” he notes. Instead, the best approach is to restrict trackers to measuring key metrics that cannot be captured elsewhere while using emerging technologies to supplement rather than replace traditional methods.

4. What more could I do to best support and understand the impact of our marketing campaigns?

With increasing restrictions on digital tracking—such as the phase-out of third-party cookies and stricter data privacy laws—marketers are losing access to key performance metrics. In this shifting landscape, brand trackers can play a vital role in evaluating campaign effectiveness.

John highlights the importance of using trackers to measure long-term brand impact rather than relying solely on direct response advertising metrics. “It is not possible to rely solely on big data and digital measurement, as these techniques often miss the context and deeper audience understanding that market research methodologies can provide,” he explains.

The future of brand tracking

Tracker studies remain a cornerstone of strategic decision-making, but they must evolve to keep pace with the modern data ecosystem. John’s advice? “The relevance of brand trackers depends on restricting them to those things that you really need to measure and that you can’t get elsewhere, and then to use ResTech, new tools, and sources (even perhaps synthetic) to supplement, not to replace.”

By asking the right questions, integrating diverse data sources, and leveraging new technologies, brands can ensure that their tracking studies remain valuable in 2025 and beyond.

To learn more about how to future-proof your brand tracker, read John’s full article here: https://howbrandsarebuilt.com/brand-tracker-2025/