Data, Findings, Insights: Here’s the Difference and Why It Matters

You’re sitting in a meeting. Someone drops a stat—”We had 1M impressions on our latest coverage report.” Everyone nods. Another person jumps in with, “That’s a great insight.” And now you’re stuck, wondering if what you just heard was data, a finding, or an actual insight.

It was probably just a finding. No, it WAS a finding.

Data, findings, and insights are not interchangeable. They’re part of a hierarchy. Each tells a different story about how far your research has come—and how close you are to making a smart decision.

So, let’s break it down the right way.

Data: Just the Receipts

Data is just the starting point. Think media coverage tracker, click logs, transcripts, or interview notes. On their own, these don’t tell you anything meaningful. They’re unprocessed observations—essentially, the digital equivalent of someone dumping puzzle pieces on a table.

You wouldn’t try to hang that on the wall and call it a picture. Same goes here. Without interpretation, data is just noise.

Example: A list of the 50 pieces of media coverage where your brand was mentioned.

That’s data. It’s valuable, sure—but not usable on its own.

Findings: Patterns Without a Story

Once you start analyzing that raw data and notice patterns, you’ve got findings.

Maybe 30% of the top media coverage came from business media. That’s great, it’s a finding. It tells you what happened—but not why and not what it means in a broader context. Findings lack connection to history, business impact, or user motivation. They’re observations, not explanations.

Example: Of the 50 pieces of coverage, Fortune, Axios, and Reuters are the top outlets, with the rest being local media outlets.

Think of findings as dots on a map. Useful, but they won’t tell you where to go.

Insights: Strategic Direction

This is where things get actionable.

An insight connects the dots. It gives you context, explains the why, and points toward a solution. It bridges user behavior with business objectives. Let’s go back to that media coverage example.

Maybe your brand was mentioned in Fortune, Axios, and Reuters. That’s data. A finding would tell you that your brand appeared most frequently in articles about innovation. But the insight goes deeper: those stories consistently framed your company as a leader in responsible AI development, echoing your core messaging around ethics and transparency. That alignment signals an opportunity to double down on that narrative—through thought leadership, PR strategy, or even product positioning.

Now you have direction.

The opportunity is to reinforce and expand that responsible AI narrative across your communications strategy. That could mean developing a focused media relations plan, creating executive content around ethics in tech, or proactively engaging with journalists who already view your brand as a credible voice.

It’s not just positive coverage—it’s a positioning advantage you can build on, and then you’re on the way to showing the value of earned media.

Here’s the TL;DR:

Why the Distinction Matters

Too often, teams blur these lines. Someone pulls up a dashboard and claims they have “insights.” Except they don’t. They have data. Sometimes findings. But insights require more work—more thinking.

Knowing the difference isn’t about semantics. It’s about credibility. If you can’t tell data from an insight, you can’t know when it’s time to act—or when you still have analysis to do.

So the next time someone drops a metric into Slack and calls it an insight, ask yourself: Is it just a number, or does it tell us what to do next?

Until there’s context, you’re not done yet.

Want to make better decisions? Start by making this distinction part of your team’s vocabulary. Data shows what happened. Findings reveal patterns. Insights explain why it matters and what to do.

The clearer you are about that, the smarter your strategy becomes.