Tag Archives: Customer Data Platform Institute

Report: Strong 1H 2022 for the Customer Data Platform Industry, slowdown in funding and acquisitions

MILFORD, CT, United States, 25-Jul-2022 — /EPR INTERNET NEWS/ — The Customer Data Platform (CDP) industry had a strong first half in 2022 with 10% employment growth among existing vendors and eleven new companies added, according to the CDP Institute’s latest Industry Update report. Total employment grew by 2,494, the largest increase on record. However, a slowdown in funding and acquisitions may indicate investors are becoming more cautious about the industry.

The semi-annual report found that growth was strongest among the industry’s largest vendors, with the top 25% expanding employment by 13%. Remaining vendors grew an average of 4%. New entrants were also concentrated among large firms, with five of the eleven having more than 1,000 employees. These are established firms that have added CDP capabilities to existing campaign and delivery products.

The addition of new vendors with campaign and delivery capabilities reflects the continued preponderance of this group. Campaign and delivery CDPs now account for 68% of vendors (up 1% vs the previous report), 75% of employees (up 3%) and 75% of funding (up 8%).

Investment fell compared to previous periods, which may represent a market adjustment following strong acceleration early in the pandemic. The number of events over $50 million in particular dropped from five in the second half of 2021 to just one in the first half of 2022. Apart from the one large event, there were six other fundings that totaled $38 million. The only acquisition this period was BlueConic selling a majority stake to Vista Equity Partners.

“This report shows an intriguing divergence between strong user demand for CDPs, as evidenced by employment growth and new entrants, and emerging caution among investors,” commented report author David Raab. “Fortunately, major industry vendors have assembled ample financial reserves during previous periods, so we expect the funding slowdown will not limit their ability to finance future growth.”

About the Report
The CDP Industry Update Report provides detailed information on CDP vendors, employment, and funding broken by CDP type, location, founding year, and more. It includes five years of historical data collected at six-month intervals. The report can be downloaded for free at https://www.cdpinstitute.org/resources/industry-update-july-2022/.

About the Customer Data Platform Institute
The Customer Data Platform Institute is a vendor-neutral organization that educates marketers and technologists about customer data management. The Institute publishes industry news and educational materials, provides vendor comparison reports, builds directories of industry vendors and service firms, and offers Webinars, workshops, and consulting on related issues.

Customer Data Platforms are defined as “packaged software that maintains a unified, persistent customer database which is accessible to external systems.” They are the only types of packaged software specifically designed to create and share a complete view of each customer.
For more information, visit www.cdpinstitute.org.

SOURCE: EuropaWire

Customer Data Platform Industry Update January 2021

MILFORD, CT, United States, 4-Feb-2021 — /EPR INTERNET NEWS/ — Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are increasingly embedded inside of larger systems, according to the CDP Institute’s latest Industry Update report. The semi-annual report found that ten of the 13 vendors entering the industry in the second half of 2020 provide campaign management or message delivery services in addition to the core CDP function of creating unified customer profiles. Such firms now account for 70% of the 133 CDP vendors identified in the report and 71% of industry employment.

Despite this trend, there is also strong demand for CDPs that provide only data management and analytics. Such firms actually grew the fastest of all CDPs types during the report period.

The report estimates CDP Industry revenue for 2020 at $1.3 billion and projects 2021 revenues will reach at least $1.55 billion. These figures measure revenues for all CDP product sales worldwide, including CDP components within other systems such as message delivery or ecommerce. It does not include related services or in-house customer data system development.

CDP employment grew by 25% in 2020, to just over 10,000, and the number of CDP vendors grew by 35% to 133. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in deferred purchases by some potential buyers but accelerated purchases from buyers eager to improve their digital marketing capabilities.

The period saw several CDP acquisitions, most notably Twilio’s $3.2 billion purchase of Segment. In this and other deals, the buyer was a software company that planned to use the CDP as part of an integrated product stack. This contrasts with previous CDP purchases, which were often by firms outside of the software industry, such as Mastercard, who wanted to offer CDP capabilities to supplement other services.

About the Report

The CDP Industry Update Report provides detailed information on CDP vendors, employment, and funding broken by CDP type, location, founding year, and more. It includes four years of historical data collected at six month intervals. The report can downloaded for free at https://lp.cdpinstitute.venntive.com/DL2238-CDPI-Industry-Update-January-2021

SOURCE: EuropaWire

CDP Industry in Europe 2020 report: number of vendors grew by 73%; employment by 80% in 2019

SWARTHMORE, PA, U.S.A., 9-Mar-2020 — /EPR INTERNET NEWS/ — Europe’s base of home-grown Customer Data Platform vendors grew rapidly in 2019, according to the CDP Industry in Europe 2020 report from the Customer Data Platform Institute. The number of vendors grew by 73% and employment grew by 80% during the year. Estimated revenue for Europe-based firms reached €260 million.

Europe-based Customer Data Platform Industry growth

The high growth came despite a near-total lack of outside funding for new CDP ventures. Only one Europe-based CDP announcing funding during 2019, for €10 million, compared with €450 million for eleven non-European vendors. One result is that European industry growth came primarily from established firms adding a CDP product, rather than new CDP start-ups. Another is that most European vendors are substantially smaller than their external counterparts and are more likely to serve a single national market.

The European industry remains highly fragmented, no single vendor exceeding 10% market share and the top five vendors combined accounting for one-third of total employment. A dozen European countries have at least one native CDP although the United Kingdom, France, and The Netherlands are home to half of all European CDP vendors and 60% of employment.

The report also lists non-European vendors with a presence in the European market. The CDP Institute estimates these firms earned €100 million in Europe in 2019 and will reach €135 in 2020. It expects that 2020 revenue for Europe-based CDP vendors will reach at least €350 million. Revenue may grow even more quickly as global software firms including Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP start selling their own CDP products in Europe.

The new study also includes market-by-market analyses from local vendors. Their consensus is that buyers now have a clearer understanding of the value provided by CDPs. But vendors say that buyers are still cautious, with longer purchase cycles in Europe than other markets and relatively few completed implementations. They expect that sales to accelerate in 2020 as CDPs become increasingly familiar and global software vendors further educate the market.

A free copy of the complete CDP Industry in Europe 2020 report is available here. The CDP Institute’s latest global CDP Industry Update is available here.

SOURCE: EuropaWire

The CDP Institute expects Customer Data Platform Industry revenue to be at least $1.3 billion in 2020

SWARTHMORE, PA, U.S.A., 11-Feb-2020 — /EuropaWire/ — Established Customer Data Platform vendors prepared for industry consolidation even as new firms entered industry during the second half of 2019, according to the CDP Institute’s semi-annual Industry Update. The industry added fourteen vendors and $236 million in new capital during the period while employment was up 64% over the previous year.

The CDP Institute estimates industry revenue for the 2019 at $1 billion and expects at least $1.3 billion in 2020. Growth will be driven by expansion outside the U.S. and entry of enterprise marketing vendors. Adobe, Microsoft, and Oracle all released RealCDPTM-compliant products during the period and Salesforce is expected to release one in mid-2020. RealCDP is the CDP Institute’s standard for capabilities required to provide expected CDP functions.

The dominant theme of the period was change. The period saw three acquisitions of CDP vendors by larger firms, four acquisitions of other firms by CDP vendors, seven major funding events, and the exits of nine firms through asset sales or repositioning. The trend continued in early 2020 with Salesforce’s February 3 acquisition of CDP Evergage. These developments show vendors positioning themselves to succeed in a crowded marketplace where no company has yet established a dominant position. The transactions were notably concentrated in the second tier of CDP vendors: eleven of the fourteen non-exit events involved firms ranking between 13th and 30th in the 101-company industry.

Significant CDP Industry Events, June 2019 – January 2020

Vendor Categories

The CDP Institute assigns CDP vendors to four categories based on the functions provided by their systems. Categories are:

  • These systems gather customer data from source systems, link data to customer identities, and store the results in a persistent database available to external systems. This is the minimum set of functions required to meet the definition of a CDP.
  • Analytics. These systems provide data assembly plus analytical applications. The applications always include customer segmentation and sometimes extend to machine learning, predictive modeling, revenue attribution, and journey mapping. These systems often automate the distribution of segment lists to marketing automation or advanced analytics products.
  • Campaigns. These systems provide data assembly, analytics, and customer treatments. These treatments may be personalized messages, real time interactions, product or content recommendations, outbound marketing campaigns, customer journey orchestration, or other contacts.  What distinguishes them from segmentation is they also specify the message to be delivered.
  • These systems provide data assembly, analytics, customer treatments, and message delivery. Delivery is typically through email, Web site, CRM, or several of these. Products in this category often started as delivery systems and added CDP functions later.

A free copy of the complete report is available at https://lp.cdpinstitute.venntive.com/DL2129-CDPI-Industry-Update-January-2020

CDP Industry Update July 2019: Fifteen of the nineteen new CDP vendors are from outside the U.S.

SWARTHMORE, PA, U.S.A., 8-Aug-2019 — /EuropaWire/ — The Customer Data Platform Industry continued its rapid growth in the first half of 2019, according to the CDP Institute’s semi-annual Industry Update. The industry added nineteen vendors and raised $317 million in new capital during the period while employment was up 71% over the previous year.

Major shifts in the market included expansion in Europe, EMEA, and APAC. Fifteen of the nineteen new CDP vendors are from outside the U.S. The Institute also confirmed its projection for the CDP industry to reach the $1 billion revenue in 2019.

Other milestones the report were:

  • More Funding. Cumulative funding for the industry grew by $680 million, reflecting funding during the period plus previous funding for vendors just entering the industry.
  • Strategic acquisitions. The period saw two CDP acquisitions: data integration specialist Allsight by Informatica and B2B CDP Lattice Engines by Dun & Bradstreet. Neither buyer is primarily a marketing system vendor, illustrating the value that companies in related sectors now see in CDP functions.
  • Operational CDPs. The period also saw addition of three vendors with a primarily operational focus: two customer success systems (Gainsight and Totango) and one in healthcare (Healthgrades). These firms represent the leading edge of a new class of CDP vendors that is expected to grow rapidly.
  • Marketing Cloud entrants. Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle all announced future CDP products that are expected to be available before the end of 2019. These attracted new attention and are expected to substantially expand CDP awareness and adoption.

Vendor Categories

The CDP Institute report groups CDP vendors into three categories based on the functions provided by their systems. Categories are:

  • Access. These systems gather customer data from source systems, link data to customer identities, and store the results in a persistent database available to external systems. This is the minimum set of functions required to meet the definition of a CDP.
  • Analytics. These systems provide data assembly plus analytical applications. The applications always include customer segmentation and sometimes extend to machine learning, predictive modeling, revenue attribution, and journey mapping. These systems often automate the distribution of segment lists to marketing automation or advanced analytics products.
  • Campaigns. These systems provide data assembly, analytics, and customer treatments. These treatments may be personalized messages, real time interactions, product or content recommendations, outbound marketing campaigns, customer journey orchestration, or other contacts. What distinguishes them from segmentation is they also specify the message to be delivered.

SOURCE: EuropaWire

CDP Institute Global Member Survey 2019: CDP users have higher satisfaction than non-users among both business and consumer marketers

SWARTHMORE, PA, 30-May-2019 — /EPR INTERNET NEWS/ — Business marketers are catching up with consumer marketers in Customer Data Platform deployments, according to a global member survey released today by the Customer Data Platform Institute.

The survey found that 41% of companies selling to consumers are in the process of deploying a CDP, compared with just 19% of companies selling to business. But 34% of the B2B companies plan to start deployment within the next twelve months, compared to only 19% of consumer brands.

Other survey finding suggest the change is coming just in time:

  • Business marketers are more likely than consumer marketers to rely on CRM or marketing automation systems to unify their customer data (22% vs 8%).
  • Business marketers using CRM or marketing automation in this way have below-average satisfaction with their martech investments.
  • CDP users have higher satisfaction than non-users among both business and consumer marketers.

Other survey findings include:

  • consumer marketers have more fragmented data than B2B marketers, with 62% reporting many disconnected systems compared with 48% of B2B marketers.
  • inability to assemble unified customer data is the most-cited obstacle to using customer data well, listed by 63% of respondents compared with incapable delivery systems (54%) or inaccessible source data (47%).
  • a unified customer view is the most important CDP benefit, listed by 86% of respondents. Many fewer cited applications such as predictive modeling (59%), message selection (49%) or cross-channel orchestration (49%).
  • companies with a specialized martech manager or staff are more satisfied with their marketing technology results than firms where marketing technology is run by a central IT department or left to individual groups within marketing.

A free copy of the complete report is available at https://lp.cdpinstitute.venntive.com/DL2066-CDPI-Industry-Survey-2019

SOURCE: EuropaWire

RealCDP aims at reducing the confusion plaguing the Customer Data Platform industry

SAN JOSE, CA, USA, 4-Apr-2019 — /EuropaWire/ — The Customer Data Platform Institute today launched RealCDP, a program to reduce the confusion plaguing the Customer Data Platform industry.  RealCDP has two components:

  • RealCDP certification, a five point checklist of core capabilities needed to build a unified, sharable customer database.
  • CDPFinder templates and vendor information to help buyers find the right CDP for their needs

“The CDP industry faces two challenges,” said CDP Institute Founder David Raab. “First, many firms offering a CDP or CDP alternative fail to build the complete, shareable customer database that is the heart of the CDP concept.  Second, legitimate CDPs vary hugely in the additional features they provide, leaving buyers confused by the range of options.  These two programs address each challenge separately and, taken together, we hope they will make it easier for buyers to find the products they truly need – and avoid alternatives that will leave them disappointed.”

SOURCE: EuropaWire