Before you get too excited about the growth of martech, check out this Ketchum survey finding that consumers have grown less enchanted with technology. For example, 72% of consumers said in 2019 that tech has had a positive impact on work, compared with 64% in 2021. Large majorities were in favor of tighter regulation and breaking up the biggest tech companies. One exception: concern about privacy actually fell from 66% to 55%.
Global martech spending in 2021 is around $344.8 billion, according to this estimate from Martech Alliance. The figure isn’t a surprise but it’s still impressive. There’s lots more in the report, including a cameo appearance by CDP as the fourth-most commonly planned martech investment in the next 12 months (28% of respondents).
If you don’t like Ketchum’s results, feel free to quote this survey from American Marketing Association-New York, which found the exact opposite: favorable attitudes rose for things like personalized ads (from 35% in 2019 to 54% in 2021) and smart speakers (from 44% to 74%). They did agree that privacy concerns have dropped a bit. One red flag: just 24% of marketers felt they needed consent to share data with other companies, compared with 47% of consumers.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.