Marketing Management

Every December for the past few years, Frans Riemersma and I have published a deeply researched report on what’s actually happening in martech as the New Year approaches. These aren’t the crazy fever-dream “predictions” that you’re used to reading during this eye-rolling, end-of-year prophecy season. It’s a pragmatic assessment of what’s really happening inside marketing tech stacks and the martech industry as a whole. Existing, real-world patterns that can be reasonably extrapolated for the next …

Our big Martech for 2026 report is almost here — be the first to get it for the ground truth of martech AI Continue Reading »

The lights are on but nobody’s home. The engine’s running but no one’s driving. The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead. Pick your preferred idiom for unattended automations run amok. (“The Wi-Fi’s on, but there’s no Internet.”) Over the past weeks, I encountered AI agents and automation at two separate martech companies — as a customer of one and a pseudo-prospect for the other — that leaned toward the “annoyingly efficient” upper-left quadrant of …

Close encounters with zombie martech automations and AI agents — just in time for Halloween Continue Reading »

Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet this past month. I’ve been heads down on research for our State of Martech 2025 report that we’ll be releasing on #MartechDay — May 6 — along with the 2025 marketing technology landscape. And the 2025 Stackie Awards. And a series of zero-fluff interviews with six industry leaders who are sponsoring our event this year. We’ll unveil it all in a big, free virtual event that you’re invited to. Trust …

Everything you could want to know about AI, martech stacks, and the 2025 marketing technology landscape Continue Reading »

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 …

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

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 …

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

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? …

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

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, …

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

The CMO Survey, a bi-yearly study of trends and perspectives from CMOs run by Duke University, Deloitte, and the AMA, has been one of the keystone research projects in the marketing industry for over a decade. It’s very well run, and I eagerly look forward to reading it every time it’s published. I was particularly excited to read the Spring 2024 edition just released, because they’d added a detailed section on marketing technology. What were …

16 years later, the present — not future — of martech is here, but unevenly distributed Continue Reading »

If you only attend one online event this year… well, then it’s clearly not 2021 anymore! 😀 But this one is worth it. I guarantee you will be surprised, if not shocked, by what we share. On Tuesday, May 7, Frans Riemersma and I will host our annual #MartechDay celebration. We’ll release the epic 2024 martech landscape. We’ll publish a deeply researched State of Martech report. We’ll host the 2024 Stackie Awards. And we’ll interview …

This isn’t hyperbole: we have some big counterintuitive revelations coming on #MartechDay 2024 Continue Reading »

“Everyone within Publicis will become a data analyst, an engineer, an intelligence partner, with all the information they need at their fingertips to supercharge client growth.” Publicis Groupe made that bold statement last week in a press release and presentation celebrating their performance from last year “after shifting from a holding company to a platform” and charting their course for their future in the age of AI. Now, if you’ve raised a skeptical eyebrow to …

Every marketer a data analyst and an engineer… delusion or destiny? Continue Reading »