Your Frankenstack Won’t Get You Through 2026

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.

---