Your Frankenstack Won’t Get You Through 2026

ddc229
Oct 3
2 min read

Most publishers are running four or more systems to manage audience data. Yet Omeda’s report shows 85% of them still feel under-equipped.

That’s because more tools don’t equal more capability. They equal silos, duplication, and wasted spend. A bloated tech stack promises control but often delivers confusion.

The Hidden Costs of Frankenstacks

Problem Area	Impact
Silos	When data lives in five places, no one has a full audience picture. Sales sees one thing, editorial another, and marketing another. That misalignment doesn’t just waste time — it undercuts revenue conversations.
Redundancy	Paying for overlapping features in three platforms isn’t efficiency — it’s leakage. In a flat-spend environment, every redundant tool is a drag.
Execution Slowdown	Disparate systems mean manual exports, API patches, and constant IT involvement. That’s not sustainable when speed-to-market matters more than ever.

Real-World Lessons

Bloomberg Media bet on simplifying. Instead of layering on tools, they built their own first-party data lake and used it to power advertising, subscriptions, and personalization. Subscriber conversions jumped 28% year over year.

The Total Monetization Mandate shows how alignment collapses when every department optimizes a different tool. Without shared KPIs and systems, trade-offs between ads and subscriptions become political, not strategic.

Omeda clients using integrated CDPs report faster activation and clearer reporting because their audience data actually lives in one place.

What to Do Now

Streamline workflows
Cut tools that duplicate features.
Unify data
Pick one platform to be your source of truth.

Tie tech to revenue
If a system can’t show how it supports grow / activate / convert motions, it’s clutter.

The Bottom Line

Walking into 2026 with a lean, unified system means walking in ready to prove — and monetize — your audience.