Customer Data Platform industry sees continued expansion, record funding

The CDP Institute has released it’s CDP Industry Report for July 2019 (registration required), and its findings indicate that while there are no signs that the industry will slow down, mergers, acquisitions and enterprise providers entering the space may drive a shift that impacts the industry as a whole.

According to the CDP Institute, the first half of 2019 brought plenty of growth to the Customer Data Platform (CDP) industry, adding 19 new vendors, bringing the total CDP vendor count to 96, employing over 9,000 workers and raking in $2.4 billion in funding.

Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce also all announced their own plans for CDPs earlier this year, all of which are expected to be released before the end of 2019.

Two notable CDP acquisitions also occurred during this period, with Informatica’s purchase of identity resolution provider Allsight and Dun & Bradstreet’s acquisition of Lattice Engines.

Why we should care

As the martech industry continues to grow, marketers can anticipate that CDPs will continue to expand their capabilities to serve their customers’ needs in order to maintain growth. We can also expect that more enterprise martech providers are going to jump in with their own CDP solutions in an attempt at keeping existing customers within their own product ecosystems.

With some of the largest enterprise players in martech entering the field, the CDP game may need to change in order for smaller organizations to remain competitive. Some CDPs may be positioning themselves for strategic acquisitions by larger vendors looking to add CDP capabilities to their existing suite of solutions.

More on the news

• The industry added 19 new vendors, 2,300 employees and $680 million in cumulative funding, for six-month growth of 25%, 34% and 39% respectively.
• Twelve-month growth in employment was 71%. Results confirm the previous estimate of $1 billion industry revenue in 2019.
• Nearly all industry growth came from campaign CDPs, which accounted for 15 of the 19 new vendors and 2,222 of 2,338 net new employees.
• Three large companies (Manthan, Flytxt, and Exponea) accounted for more than half of the increase. Twelve-month figures show employment growth of 30%, 68% and 99% among access, analytics and campaign vendors.