Google goes head-to-head with SearchGPT, planning to add an AI Mode tab to existing search tabs like All, News and Images. AI Mode will send users to a Gemini-like interface where they can interact and ask follow-up questions. Some reports suggest voice interaction may also be available, but Google’s not talking.
The Customer Data Platform industry is shifting to new users, industries, and regions for a second wave of growth, according to the latest member survey from the Customer Data Platform Institute. Great progress has been made towards customer data unification in recent years, with more than half of survey respondents (57%) reporting for the first time that they have a unified customer database and 68% reporting a deployed CDP.
Forget those rumors of stack consolidation: Ascend2 reports that 63% of marketing decision-makers plan to spend more than 20% of their 2025 budget on martech, more than double the share in 2024. Over 50% rate social media as the top area for investment in 2025, with CRM running next at 43%. Sadly, CDPs rank last at 20%.
With CDP vendors increasing their workforces by 3.4% in six months, compared with an average of 0.2% each six months over the prior two years, the sector seems to be growing again, according to our own semi-annual industry update. There is much talk of composable CDPs but they still employ no more than 5% of the sector workforce. What is a clear trend is the acquisition of independent CDPs by vendors interested in adding a CDP to a larger system (usually an activation system).