What 3 events in 1 week showed us about AI and data quality: TAGGRS at Digital Analytics Summit (DAS), RTB Day & SMX Advanced

Between 29 September and 1 October we attended three events: SMX Advanced Europe in Berlin, RTB Day in Amsterdam, and the DDMA Digital Analytics Summit, also in Amsterdam. The audiences were different at each one, and so were the formats. All three agendas heavily featured AI.

That is not surprising in itself. What was more interesting is how rarely the conversation went one level down, to the quality of the data those AI systems are working from.

The three events

SMX Advanced Europe is a three-day conference for experienced search marketers, held at the Meliá Hotel in Berlin. It runs two parallel tracks covering SEO and GEO on one side and PPC on the other, followed by a separate Deep Dive day of hands-on sessions. The program assumes a high level of existing knowledge and is built for practitioners rather than newcomers.

RTB Day is an invite-only series organized by RTB House for senior performance marketers, running across nine cities. The Amsterdam edition was the first one held in Benelux and took place in The Loft at the A'DAM Toren.

The DDMA Digital Analytics Summit is the largest digital analytics event in the Netherlands and is now in its fifth edition. It covers data, AI, privacy and experimentation in a single day at Hotel Casa Amsterdam. 

AI was the dominant topic, but the data layer was not

Across all three agendas, most of the discussion focused on what AI can do for marketing teams: how to apply it, where it saves time, and which parts of the workflow it is starting to take over.

Less of that discussion covered what the AI is actually working with. If an automated bidding system is optimizing your campaigns, it is doing so against the conversion data your platforms received. When a portion of that data doesn’t reach your tools, the system is making decisions on an incomplete picture and it has no way of knowing that because the output looks legitimate either way.

AI is handling more of the day-to-day campaign work, which means incomplete tracking no longer just distorts your reports, but it also changes the decisions that are being made.

What we observed about what people respond to

During RTB Day, Niek Schlepers spoke on stage about the difference between client-side and server-side Google Tag Manager, and about how our Enhanced Tracking Script works. Instead of describing the problem, he displayed the Enhanced Tracking Script alongside a standard GTM script and showed the audience the standard script being blocked by an ad blocker in real time. The room reacted differently than it would have to a theoretical explanation. Questions continued during the session and well after it ended.

We noticed a similar pattern elsewhere. People sat through the broader sessions, then moved on. The more technical ones had people waiting to talk to the speaker.

At the DDMA Summit, our dedicated space kept us visible throughout the event and gave us valuable time with existing partners and customers in the Dutch analytics community. Speaking gave us a different kind of visibility, with the opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and something tangible, and that difference stood out across the week.

Why this matters outside of events

The same dynamic applies to how teams assess their own tracking. Reports continue to fill up with data, campaigns are running as normal and the numbers look totally plausible, so there is nothing that would prompt a closer look. People accept the idea that they are losing data. Seeing it happen is what makes them look at their own setup.

The reason for this is that the loss leaves no trace in your reporting. Browser restrictions, ad blockers and consent requirements each remove a share of the events heading to your platforms. Your analytics can only report on the data that it receives and blocked events never reach it. What you see instead is a slightly lower number, which is easy to attribute to a quiet week or a market losing its significance.

This is a solvable problem, but it starts with seeing how large the gap is in your own setup.

Conclusion

Three events in one week, in a month already packed with events, pointed to the same conclusion. The conversation about AI in marketing is running ahead of the conversation about the data underneath it, and the quickest way to change that is to show people what their own measurement is missing.

If you are curious how your own tracking holds up, run our free tracking checker on your site. You can also create a free TAGGRS account and see what changes once the data is coming through.