Scott Brinker

Martech for 2025: A brand-new, 108-page report on AI use cases, stack foundations, and market structure

December 3, 2024 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Happy holiday season, ye merry marketing maestros! Here’s a marvelous way to get prepped and psyched for the New Year that’s right around the corner. Frans Riemersma and I just released our latest report, Martech for 2025. It’s 108 pages of our latest research and analysis of what’s actually happening with marketing technology in the maelstrom of AI madness. No heaps of hype. Just hard data and a hopefully helpful framing of the facts. You …

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The state of marketing operations professionals is OK, but it’s going to get much, much better

November 10, 2024 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Last week, Mike Rizzo and team at MarketingOps.com hosted their annual MOps-Apalooza event with 400+ marketing ops people. I was honored to be one of their keynote speakers, and I’ll share the core theme of my talk with you in a moment. But first… They also released their annual State of the Marketing Operations Professionals, an epic 87-page report that surveyed more than 600 marketing ops pros on almost every facet of their careers. It’s …

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The one presentation about martech for 2025 — and the AI madness around it — you won’t want to miss

November 3, 2024 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Sorry that it’s been a while since I last posted. But I have a good excuse. Frans Riemersma and I have been deep in research on what’s happening in martech for the year ahead — a big part of which has been sorting through much fact vs. fiction with generative AI. What’s the deal with existing martech platforms vs. new, AI-native products popping up like wildflowers? Will AI agents actually impact marketing in 2025? How? …

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Companies are replacing more martech, focused on integrations and APIs, and still expanding their stacks

September 26, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I have two surveys for you that I think you’ll love. The first is one that I’m asking you to take: a cut-through-the-BS survey on the real ways in which you’re seeing gen AI used in your organization — or not. This data will contribute to the “Martech for 2025” report and virtual event Frans Riemersma and I will be sharing on December 3. More details to follow. Both of us and thousands of your …

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Martech Replacement Factors: Integrations and APIs are #2

Buying martech: what you love, what you hate, and who you trust (or not)

September 14, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

If you’re reading this blog, it’s a safe bet that you’ve been involved in buying — or selling — martech software. Probably quite a bit of martech software. So I greatly appreciate that a number of you responded to my survey over LinkedIn asking what you loved and hated about that experience and which resources you found helpful and trustworthy (or not!) in that process. Here’s what you, at least the collective “you,” had to …

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Sources for Evaluating Martech Purchases

Will AI in martech make buyer experiences better or worse? It depends…

September 2, 2024 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

How do you know you’re at the peak of a Hype Cycle? When means outweigh ends. Martech professionals and marketing ops leaders are being driven to apply AI in marketing — use it for something, anything! — with the belief that automating and accelerating things with AI, especially with generative AI, must produce beneficial outcomes. It reminds me of the old joke about the overly-optimistic kid excitedly digging through a giant pile of horse manure, …

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Blueprint for a hypothetical martech “holding company” for a world where aggregation beats consolidation

August 25, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

For 13 years of the ever-expanding martech landscape, conventional wisdom has predicted that our industry would consolidate. That conventional wisdom has failed spectacularly. Or more accurately, the conventional wisdom of the software industry from 10, 20, 30 years ago has been disrupted by new dynamics, in a new environment. The barriers to creating software are a fraction of what they once were — and are rapidly shrinking further with AI. The barriers to distributing software …

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The new data layer in martech has taken hold as the foundation upon which marketing AI will be built

July 14, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

In our recent State of Martech 2024 report — which is free and now fully ungated — Frans Riemersma and I analyzed a ton of transformation happening across the martech industry, from the AI-powered explosion of the martech landscape to three counterintuitive truths of “composability” in martech stacks. Two of our most important findings, however, were the prioritization and adoption of foundational capabilities that are necessary for marketing to harness the full power of AI: …

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Data Warehouse Martech Stack Integration

APIs are “very important” to martech buyers today, but they’ll be crucial for the coming wave of AI agents

June 16, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Take a guess at filling in the blank here: _______ is to AI Agents as Data is to AI Models The answer, as you likely surmised from my headline, is APIs. Let’s discuss why… Data is the differentiation in AI models For the past year and a half, the hyper hype cycle of AI madness has agreed on only one clear truth: data will be your most strategic asset in the Age of AI. LLM …

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3 counterintuitive surprises about composable martech stacks in The State of Martech 2024 report

May 13, 2024 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

For years, the conventional wisdom in martech has been: the fewer apps in your stack, the better. It’s obvious, right? By reducing the number of apps, you will save money, have a better user experience, and improve your governance control. The CFO’s default answer to optimizing martech costs? Cut apps. The CIO’s default answer to optimizing martech governance? Cut apps. Seems rational. But what if it wasn’t necessarily true? Last week, on #MartechDay (May 7), …

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