The Customer Data Platform industry continued to grow in the first half of 2020, but at a slower pace as cautious buyers absorbed pandemic-related budget cuts and assessed new entries from enterprise software vendors. The CDP Institute’s semi-annual Industry Update found a record number of new vendors entered the industry but that growth in employment and funding was the lowest in two years.
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The CDP Institute estimates industry revenue for the 2020 at $1.3 billion, a respectable 30% increase of $1 billion in 2020. Enterprise software vendors listed for the first time include Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAS. These firms were added because they now offer products that meet the CDP Institute’s RealCDPTM standard. Estimated 2020 sales for these vendors are modest but are expected to grow rapidly in future years.
In all, a record twenty-two vendors were added to the report. More than half were U.S.-based and the majority offered campaign management and message delivery in addition to the core CDP function of building and sharing unified customer profiles. Most of these were large, established companies that were adding CDP to existing products. A minority were small, new companies that with products designed as CDPs from the start. These were more likely to be based outside the U.S., with particular growth in Europe.
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The period also saw a sharp slowdown in investment activity, with only one major acquisition (Evergage purchased by Salesforce) and one large funding round ($45 million for mParticle). There were no significant acquisitions made by CDP vendors and no CDP vendors left the industry. The preceding six month period saw six major funding events, three acquisitions of CDP vendors, four acquisitions by CDP vendors, and four CDP vendors ceasing to exist.
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