Dear CEO, Nine Martech Learnings to Go From Frankenstacks to Revenue Engines

The Martech market has reached a tipping point. On the surface, it looks like business as usual — 9% annual growth, thousands of tools, and no shortage of innovation. 

But underneath, 2025 tells a very different story. GenAI is fundamentally reshaping the stack, composable architectures are shifting their center of gravity, and building in-house tools silently booms (welcome Hypertail,  the rise of internal, low-code, brand-specific Martech solutions). The Martech landscape isn’t just expanding — it’s reorganizing. Fundamentally, this time.

C-Suite leaders must move from passive budget oversight to proactive stack shaping. Treat Martech as a strategic product portfolio that needs roadmaps, owners, and business cases. Martech is no longer just another tool the business needs, it’s something the entire business builds, uses, and depends on.

In this article, we break down the signals behind the most recent numbers and insights from our State of Martech 2025 report. We’ll lay out what CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs need to know and do to ensure their Martech stack is not just growing, but growing in the right direction. Direction in Martech investments is more needed than ever. The winners in 2025 won’t be those who spent the most, but those who spent with purpose.

1. Boom, Bust & Balance: What 15,384 Tools Tell You

On the surface, Martech keeps growing — 15,384 tools in 2025, up 9%. But underneath, three forces are reshaping the landscape: 2,489 tools added, 1,211 removed, and one category — Product Management — quietly doubled in stack presence.

The vendor boom is not all GenAI hype. In fact, 56% of removed tools were 5+ years old, and 52% had G2 ratings above 4.5. These weren’t bad tools. They simply became irrelevant or ran out of funding.

Learning 1: High ratings ≠ high returns. Beloved tools still fail when market fit fails or fades.

Internally, stacks are also shifting. Our data shows Product Management tools grew from 23% to 42% stack presence over the past decade — the largest leap of any category. They support backlog prioritization, onboarding, and lifecycle tracking, enabling internal Martech, i.e., Hypertailers, to scale.

Learning 2: High maturity ≠ high returns across all stack layers, e.g. the role of MAPs as center platforms of stacks changed in B2B stacks as its share dropped from 30.7% to 26%.

This raises a strategic call: when should you buy, and when should you build? Modular architectures and low-code tools now let brands tailor their Martech internally.

Learning 3: Know when to build. It must be part of your Martech strategy.

The bottom line is that stacks aren’t just expanding — they’re reorganizing. Leading companies edit ruthlessly, reinvest strategically, and treat Martech like a product portfolio, not a tool collection. Martech stacks are including more custom-built. Your center of gravity should reflect where your business creates real value, not just where your licenses sit.

2. AI Is Here and It Is Everywhere in Your Stack

AI is no longer a future consideration — it’s actively reshaping Martech stacks today. But how AI enters your organization matters. Our research shows two distinct paths.

• Inside-out AI enhances existing platforms, like CRMs that now write, score, and segment for you.
• Outside-in AI introduces entirely new layers — co-pilots, agents, workflows — often requiring stack redesigns and new governance.

Adoption is already widespread.

• 87.5% use AI Assistants (ChatGPT, Claude) for ideation and content.
• 54.2% use embedded Co-Pilots (Salesforce Einstein, Microsoft Copilot).
• 69.8% deploy AI Workflows (Zapier, Make) to automate processes.
• 44.8% are experimenting with AI Agents that act semi-independently.

These tools don’t just accelerate tasks like software, AI tools execute tasks for humans. This has a fundamental impact on the stack architecture..

Learning 4: AI is not just a feature — it’s a structural layer. It affects architecture, not just productivity.

Most organizations begin with Assistants, but value accelerates with embedded and orchestrated AI workflows, co-pilots, and agents. The most advanced systems, Model Context Protocols (MCPs), are still nascent, but promise shared memory and continuity across AI systems.

Learning 5: The value of AI compounds as you integrate deeper into your stack. Treat AI like infrastructure — not an add-on.

Learning 6: Align AI adoption with your stack maturity. Don’t bolt it on — build it in areas where you are mature.

Whether AI enters from the inside or the outside, it demands strategy, architecture, and orchestration.

3. Composability: Stack’s Center of Gravity Shift

Composable Martech Stacks are no longer aspirational — they are here. In both B2B and B2C, the gravitational center of the stack is shifting from one-size-fits-all platforms to modular, orchestrated ecosystems.

In B2B:

• CRM remains the anchor (42%, up from 41.6%), reflecting its growing link to revenue forecasting and sales alignment.
• MAPs are losing ground, dropping from 30.7% to 26%. Is their orchestration role fading?
• Custom-built or “other” platforms jumped from 2% to 10%, a fivefold increase — signaling a shift toward internal control and flexibility.

In B2C:

• CDPs fell sharply from 26.9% to 17.4%, dropping from first to fourth place.
• MAPs surged from 19.4% to 26.1%, becoming the new center.
• CDWs rose from 20.9% to 23.9%, reflecting the push toward AI-ready, analytics-driven stacks.

Learning 7: Composability is not about fragmentation — it’s about control. Modular stacks allow teams to build around their strengths and rewire faster.

Learning 8: The “center” of the stack is not static. It can shift based on data gravity, orchestration needs, AI-readiness, and changing customer needs.

Learning 9: Composable stacks demand cross-functional ownership. CIOs, CMOs, and Product must jointly decide what becomes core and what gets decoupled.

A Unified Strategy for the C-Suite to go From Pain to Performance

Across the 2025 Martech landscape, one theme stands out: stack growth is not the goal — strategic alignment around the customer is. The C-suite must move beyond passive budget control and actively shape stacks into business assets. 

That starts with aligning all stakeholders around three clear playbooks. These playbooks recognize that each department brings a different — sometimes even conflicting — agenda to the table. But these agendas aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re interdependent when viewed as parts of a cohesive Martech strategy:

• Marketing (CMO, CRO) focuses on driving innovation and growth by adding Martech capabilities that support experimentation and unlock future revenue.
  
  
• MarketingOps, Data, and Product teams prioritize streamlining and scaling by rationalizing tools, improving adoption, and reducing operational friction.
  
  
• Finance and Technology leaders (CFO, CIO, CTO) concentrate on controlling costs and consolidating the stack by removing redundancy, simplifying architecture, and funding what performs.

This isn’t just about stack optimization. It’s about transforming your Martech from a fragmented collection of tools into a coherent, revenue-aligned engine — one that reflects your business goals and adapts as fast as your market does.

Martech is never done. But it can be directed. The companies that lead in 2025 will treat Martech like a product portfolio — with owners, outcomes, and a roadmap that aligns Marketing, IT, and Finance around shared growth.

Across these lenses, the key learnings are clear:

1. High ratings ≠ high returns.
2. High maturity ≠ high impact across all layers.
3. Know when to build — and when to buy.
4. AI is structural, not just functional.
5. AI value compounds when deeply integrated.
6. Align AI adoption with stack maturity.
7. Composability = control, not chaos.
8. Stack centers are shifting — follow the value.
9. Composable architecture demands cross-functional governance.

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