I watched a pro game just the other day where one of the players noticed that their protoss opponent had a late timing on their second pylon in their main base - as in, it should have been there, but wasn't. That protoss player has a well-known penchant for early game stargate harassment, so the other player read this situation and reacted by delaying their first expansion and instead producing early-game air defenses.
As another example, take unit composition. If a terran player is running a bio-based army (marine, marauder, medivac), what sort of units should zerg produce? Infestors are usually a good choice in this matchup. On the other hand, mass infestors will be much worse against a primarily mech-based terran army; instead you might see many vipers on the field (which, vice versa, wouldn't be great against a bio army).
Pro players are essentially always scouting what their opponent's doing because the macro decisions can make or break the game. The general sentiment I've seen that is good macro skills will push you far up into SC2 leagues, and it's not until diamond/masters that micro starts to really matter.