Customer Data Platform Industry Doubled in 2017: CDP Institute Report
Customer Data Platform Industry Doubled in 2017: CDP Institute Report
SWARTHMORE, PA, January 3, 2018 – The number of Customer Data Platform (CDP) vendors more than doubled in 2017, according to the CDP Industry Update released today by the CDP Institute.
The report lists companies identified as CDP vendors by the CDP Institute, along with funding, employee counts, product type, and year founded for each vendor. The number of CDPs included in the study grew from 24 in January 2017 to 52 in January 2017. Combined employment at those firms increased from 1,991 to 4,388, a 120% increase.
Other key findings in the report include:
- the industry attracted $270 million in new funding during 2017, raising total investment to $1.2 billion.
- most vendors added since the original report provide customer engagement functions, such as personalization and campaign management, in addition to the core CDP function of assembling a unified view of customer data from multiple company systems.
- companies from outside the United States are growing their share of the industry, rising from 20% to 29% of industry employment over the past year.
- firms that provide data assembly and analytics functions, but not customer engagement, still account for the majority of industry employment, growth, and funding.
“Continued growth and evolution of the CDP industry shows that marketers recognize the need for unified customer data and are finding new options for meeting those needs,” said CDP Institute CEO David Raab. “We look forward to further expansion in 2018 as more marketers benefit from CDP systems.”
The full report can be downloaded here.
About the Customer Data Platform Institute
The Customer Data Platform Institute educates marketers and marketing technologists about customer data management. Activities include publishing of educational materials, news about industry developments, creation of best practice guides and benchmarks, a directory of industry vendors, and consulting on related issues.
The Institute is focused on Customer Data Platforms, defined as “a marketer-controlled system that maintains a unified, persistent customer database which is accessible to external systems.” It is managed by Raab Associates Inc., a consultancy specializing in marketing technology and analysis. Raab Associates named the Customer Data Platform category in 2013. For more information visit www.cdpinstitute.org.