Data is Making You Dumber (Here's Why)

Data is Making You Dumber (Here's Why)

From Lab-Grown Marketing by Evidenza by Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo

January 5, 2026 · 25 min · Season 2 · Episode 6

About this episode

The episode discusses how an overload of data can hinder decision-making in marketing.

Marketers love data. More dashboards. More cuts. More “just one more slide.” But what if more data doesn’t make you smarter — it just makes you slower?This week on Lab Grown Marketing, Jon and Peter go deep on the signal-to-noise ratio and the uncomfortable truth hiding inside modern marketing teams: sometimes the thing you’re asking for is the thing delaying your best decision.They kick things off From the Feed with a tweet that hits a little too close to home — why adding more information can actually make automated systems (and humans) worse at choosing. Then in Million Dollar Data, they reveal results from a synthetic survey of 1,000 global CMOs… and yes, the numbers will surprise you. Most leaders swear more data helps them make better decisions — but the same people admit something else that completely flips the story.If you’ve ever felt “data-driven” right up until you were data-driven off a cliff… press play. 02:18 — From the Feed: more data = slower decisions 4:12 — Million Dollar Data: 1,000 CMO survey results (the paradox) 9:58 — Marketing Mental Models: The horse racing study

People in this episode

Hosts: Jon, Peter

Topics covered

  • data
  • marketing
  • decision making
  • CMO survey
  • signal-to-noise ratio

Keywords

  • data-driven
  • dashboards
  • marketing teams
  • synthetic survey

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