Ten Charts That Will Change Your Perspective on Marketing Technology

• 83% of B2B marketers are going to focus more and invest in data analytics in 2020 according to a recent survey by Dun & Bradstreet.
• Spending on AI-based marketing technology (martech) solutions is projected to reach $52.2B by 2021, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 46.2% from 2016 to 2021, according to the International Data Corporation.
• One in five marketing organizations is increasing its spending on marketing technology in 2020.
• U.S. B2B digital ad spend increased about $1B each year since 2017 and is forecast to hit $6.08B in 2019, up 18.7%, according to eMarketer.
• There are now 7,040 solutions available across the marketing technology landscape today, according to Scott Brinker’s excellent analysis of the industry he’s done since 2011.

22% of marketing organizations are planning to increase their spending in 2020, according to a survey by BDO, WARC, and the University of Bristol.  Their results reflect the strong demand for marketing technology (martech) solutions globally. BDO found that marketing automation budgets increased 25% last year, and the martech industry in North America and the UK is $65.9B, with the global market estimated to be $121B.

Scott Brinker, leading authority on martech, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and Editor at chiefmartec.com, commented in the BDO survey that “the martech industry continues to paradoxically consolidate and diversify. While the total number of martech apps in the world continues to grow, leading marketing platforms — such as Adobe, HubSpot, Oracle, and Salesforce — are increasingly orienting around ecosystems of these apps. The platform provides coherence in marketing data and workflow, while the app ecosystem provides a long tail of specialized capabilities and vertical market solutions. Consolidated platforms with diversified ecosystems have the potential to give the market the best of both worlds and help marketers harness the tremendous energy of the SaaS app explosion.”  

The following ten charts provide insights into marketing technologies’ rapid growth and many contributions to businesses using them today:

• The worldwide marketing automation technology market is predicted to grow from $15.6B in 2019 to $25.1B in 2023, attaining a 9.9% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in five years, according to Forrester. The forecast also shows that by 2022, investment in database and analytics technologies will grow at 10.9% CAGR, while ad tech will grow at 9.6% CAGR and automation at 9.3%. The Forrester study also revealed that 55% of CMOs would increase spending on marketing technology over the next year, with 20% planning 10% or more spending increase. Source: Statista based on Forrester forecast.

• The majority of B2B marketers are going to focus more and invest in data analytics in 2020, making this the leading investment priority next year. 83% of all 83% of B2B marketers are going to focus more and invest in data analytics in 2020, with the pie chart below showing the distribution of responses to the BDO survey. Campaign measurement and analytics tools and CRM have the highest adoption levels and advanced expertise across all B2B marketers surveyed by BDO. Source: BDO, WARC, and the University of Bristol, Martech 2020 and beyond (PDF, 12 pp., opt-in required).

• Marketing and IT are reaching new levels of collaboration when it comes to deciding which marketing technologies to evaluate, purchase, implement, and support. Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020 finds IT is now a leading supporter of marketing and their technology initiatives. What’s fascinating about the findings is how collaboratively IT and marketing are working on evaluating, selecting and purchasing new marketing technology (68% combined). Please see Scott Brinker’s blog post for additional details at Martech collaboration between marketing and IT and the real impediments to martech success blog post, November 21, 2019.

• Marketers rely on multiple techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of their content marketing strategies, with web analytics dashboards being the most common. 82% of marketing teams primarily rely on analytics to determine how effective content marketing strategies are at lead generation. Combining social media content tools, e-mail focused marketing technology, content management, and CRM systems to nurture leads and qualify them is common across over 50% of marketing teams today. Source: Statista.

• 80% of marketers are using or planning to use AI for creating and delivering personalized content, offers, and customer experiences. Top-performing companies are more than twice as likely to be using AI for marketing (28% vs. 12%), according to Adobe’s latest Digital Intelligence Briefing. Auto-generating content for personalization (79%), product and content recommendations (78%), and audience identification (76%) are predicted to be the top use cases for AI in marketing.

• Personalizing customer journeys and driving next-best offers in real-time are the most popular uses of AI today, according to Salesforces’ State of the Marketing Study. 23% are automating customer interactions over social channels and messaging apps today. There are ten dominant use cases marketers are concentrating on today, ranging from personalized channel experiences to programmatic advertising and media buying to predictive customer journeys and real-time next best offers.  Source: Salesforce’s State of Marketing Study, 5^th edition

• Targeting decisions, predictive analytics for customer insights, and content personalization are the three most popular uses of AI in marketing by economic sector.  B2C Services dominate all other economic sectors in their use of AI with six strategies and activities leading all sectors. 72% of B2C Services marketers are using AI for targeting decisions. B2C Product Companies lead on the use of AI for customer segmentation and autonomous objects and systems. Source: The CMO Survey, Highlights and Insights Report by Deloitte, Duke Fuqua School of Business, and the American Marketing Association, 2019. (PDF, 71 pp., no opt-in).

• 47% of marketers are currently using AI as an integral part of their audience, targeting strategies for online advertising, and 45% are for audience segmentation. 80% are now using or planning to use AI for audience segmentation. EConsultancy’s study found marketers are enthusiastic about AI’s potential to increase marketing effectiveness and track progress. 88% of marketers interviewed say AI will enable them to be more effective in getting to their goals. Source: Dream vs. Reality: The State of Consumer First and Omnichannel Marketing. EConsultancy (36 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in).

• Mobile marketing analytics, ad verification, social analytics, and multichannel marketing hubs are proving their value in enterprises today and being integrating into marketing technology strategies. Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising reflects how pervasively marketers are adopting analytics to improve personalization, multitouch attribution, and improving customer experiences. This year’s Hype Cycle features 28 technologies. Source: 6 Technologies on the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising, 2019.

• Machine learning algorithms were able to optimize marketing campaigns by taking into account just four factors instead of the 13, with human adjustments adding 15% greater campaign performance. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published a fascinating study that looked at how the combination of AI, machine learning and human intervention and judgment improves marketing campaign performance. Machine learning algorithms excel at iterative learning, while human input is needed to keep campaigns focused on the right audiences and messages in the context of customer journeys. Source: The Dividends of Digital Marketing Maturity, Boston Consulting Group, February 18, 2019.