Today’s column is written by Joseph Enever, senior director analyst at Gartner.
Customer data platforms (CDPs) are facing an identity crisis: just like marketers. Although marketers have spent lavishly on martech to support personalization, brands face a regulatory and technology landscape that forces them to reevaluate their investments. In 2020, we predicted that by 2025 80% of marketers who have invested in personalization will abandon their efforts due to lack of ROI, the perils of customer data management or both.
Can CDPs save the day by helping marketers confront gathering and governing data with rigor, or must they wean their ad tech and mar tech off silent but efficient data harvesting tactics? Of the four vendor types in the CDP market, 2020’s two major (to date) CDP acquisitions validate separate CDP types: Data Integration CDPs and Smart Hub CDPs (the other two are the marketing cloud CDPs, and CDP toolkits).