The “Martech 5000” – a visual summary of the marketing technology landscape, produced each year by Scott Brinker of the Chief Marketing Technologist blog – has tracked martech’s growth since 2011, when only 150 solutions made the list. By 2015, the number of listed solutions grew to 2,000, and then nearly doubled in 2016, gaining the reputation as “one of the most loved-and-hated slide in marketing”.
2018’s “Martech 5000” boasted a gargantuan 6,829 marketing technology solutions from 6,242 unique marketing technology vendors (the “Martech 5000” name has been maintained due to its “catchyness”). To help appreciate the magnitude of martech’s diversity: the size of the 2018 landscape is equivalent to all of the marketing tech landscapes assembled from 2011 through 2016 added together.
But 2019 has seen something of a slowdown. For the first time in eight years the number of companies encompassed within the marketing technology landscape did not grow by double digits. In fact for the first four months of 2019, there was just a growth of 3%.
The change is partly stemmed from marketers getting savvy. According to the content agency Raconteur, senior marketers want teams who are comfortable with technology and quick to put tools to good use, not necessarily who understood every techie detail. Marketing advice bureau Econsultancy back up this trend - "Modern marketing knowledge, modern marketing skills and modern marketing mindsets are what's currently needed. Not the desire to jump on the bandwagon of martech "Fads".
