>most of the "data-driven" marketing and analytics is basically marketers bullshitting each other Most of the ones you hear about. You know, the ones who were

>most of the "data-driven" marketing and analytics is basically marketers bullshitting each other Most of the ones you hear about. You know, the ones who were SEOs or content writers or programmers before waking up one day and deciding to be marketers. Marketing degrees have mandatory statistical courses. The good marketing programs take them very seriously. However a lot of schools focus on the communication side of marketing, which leads a very significant chunk of the marketing analyst positions to be filled by people with economics and accounting degrees. The Internet is actually quite new and has just begun maturing. A lot of people working in digital marketing do not really understand what marketing is. When you meet somebody on the street and ask him what marketing is, he will describe advertising, or more precisely mar. communications. So when the internet became this giant medium for doing all sorts of commerce, big companies and schools couldn't fill the skill gap fast enough, so the gap was filled by self-learners coming from all sorts of backgrounds. When they wanted to build up their "marketing skills", naturally they defaulted to learning about marketing communication instead of the economics-orientated part of marketing. This is why digital marketers obsess with their site and drool over a/b tests and such. The web site is a communication medium. They've put themselves in this box equating marketing and communications. Too bad for them, because graduates nowadays are digital native too, so they have no problem navigating the internet and learning html/css.