If you predicted that tech stacks would shrink in 2024, it was probably a good bet. After all, the trend line had been headed in that direction. The average number of apps in companies’ stacks shrank in both 2022 and 2023, albeit by only a modest amount, less than 10% on average. But economic times were tight last year, and CFOs were on the warpath to cut SaaS waste. And, of course, there’s the ongoing …
Welcome to 2025! It’ll be the Year of AI Agents in martech, in word and deed. Here’s what I think that means… From the moment there was more than one software product in a company’s tech stack, there’s been jockeying to determine who was boss. If the tech stack were an orchestra, which product would be the conductor? Whichever one directed the flow of data among apps and determined which function in which app was …
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 …
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 …
Buying martech: what you love, what you hate, and who you trust (or not) Continue Reading »
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 …
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: …
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 …
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), …
Yesterday we celebrated the 10th annual Stackie Awards as part of #MartechDay. Every year for the past decade, we’ve invited marketers to send in a single slide that illustrates their marketing tech stack and how they conceptualize it. From these entries, we select five “winners” whose visualizations we thought were particularly noteworthy in some way. I put “winners” in quotes because, as we always acknowledge, the real determination of a winning stack is if it …
Happy #MartechDay to you! On the first Tuesday of May, we celebrate the martech industry and all the talented marketing technologists and marketing ops professionals who work in it. Cheers to you for all you do in pioneering this wild and woolly field. It’s also the day when Frans Riemersma and I release our annual update to the marketing technology landscape. You can download a hi-res JPG image or a hi-res clickable PDF of it. …
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our latest articles directly to your inbox!
