The CDP Industry Is Strong Post-pandemic: CDPI Update Reveals Record Growth

The CDP Institute—which researches the customer data platform (CDP) industry—has published its second State of the CDP Industry report of the year, which shows record growth in the first half of 2021. It’s one more major piece of evidence indicating that the interest in data-driven marketing is growing, perhaps in part due to the need for better understanding of customer behavior during the pandemic and beyond.

In its latest report, the #CDP Institute finds that the #CustomerDataPlatform industry grew at a record pace during the first half of 2021. https://t.co/AhJUGESjAn #martech

— CDP Institute (@CDPInstitute) July 28, 2021

The report estimates that industry revenue grew to 1.6 billion, up from 1.3 billion in 2020. This aligns with other CDP industry data. For example, in a recent survey from Advertiser Perceptions, 67% of marketers and IT leaders said their companies were either currently using CDPs or planned to use them in the next 6 months.

Highlights from CDP Industry Update July 2021

The July 2021 industry update report can be downloaded from the CDP Institute website. A free CDP Institute membership is required to download the PDF report. Highlights of the July 2021 CDP Industry statistics include:

• Estimated industry revenue of $1.6 billion for 2021, up from $1.3 billion in 2020.
• Record-setting industry growth in the first half of 2021, with the addition of 1,200 employees, $550 million in funding, and 20 new vendors in the current reporting period.
• M&A activity helped fuel industry growth. There were a record eight CDP acquisitions and mergers during the period. According to CDP Institute, “Most buyers were customer engagement software vendors seeking a CDP to connect siloed components of multi-channel suites.”
• Campaign and delivery CDPs account for 67% of the CDP market, while data CDPs account for 13%; analytics CDPs made up 20% of the market.
• Vendors in the Asia Pacficic region showed strong growth, increasing their share of the market from 13% to 17% over the past year.

The CDP Industry Update Report is produced twice per year and provides detailed information on the CDP industry: vendors, employment, and funding broken out by CDP type, location, founding year, and more.

The CDP Industry Rebounds from the Pandemic

The CDP Institute found that the growth in employees and funding was strongest among existing vendors—which is consistent with Treasure Data’s experience. (We’ve continued hiring throughout the pandemic, in part because so many of our customers are accelerating their push toward digital transformation, and we’re supporting that growth with our products and services.) This table summarizes some of the recent CDP growth:

In the “CDP Employment: Organic Growth Rate” chart (above), CDP Institute found consistent double-digit growth percentages prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic (year 2020), the employment growth rate dropped to zero.

Employment growth bounced off the bottom starting in December 2020 and has continued to rise, reaching 6% growth in June 2021. CDP Institute notes that this growth is due to “a resumption of activities paused during the initial stages of the Covid pandemic.”

Profiling CDP Industry Statistics by Region

CDP vendors based in the U.S. are the largest and most-funded, accounting for 45% of companies, 58% of employees, and 64% of funding. The United States has 64 CDP vendors with 6,548 employees and $2.2 billion in funding, according to CDP Institute.

Record-level Funding for the CDP Industry

The July 2021 update reflected the highest in-period funding ever recorded for the CDP industry. According to the report, “Industry funding rose by $556 million during the period, including $317 million raised during this period and $240 million raised previously by companies added in this report.”

Specific funding details noted in the report:

• Nine companies received new funding, including a combination of analytics, campaign, and delivery vendors.
• Nearly all the funds went to U.S. companies and most went to firms founded in 2011 or later.
• The four largest rounds all went to companies with over 100 employees, which places them in the top 25% of the industry by employee size. These firms accounted for almost 80% of total funding during the period.

CDP Industry M&A Activity

While no CDP vendors made acquisitions during the reporting period, a number of CDP vendors were acquired:

According to the report, “Acquisitions were made primarily by customer engagement software companies that wanted a CDP to combine data from multiple delivery systems they already had in place, to add new delivery channels, and to orchestrate customer treatments across those channels.”

Not all CDP vendors are equally stable, so in addition to the M&A, Quaero went out of business, while Manthan and RichRelevance, two companies that merged in 2020, were renamed as Algonomy.

Why Is CDP Growth So High? Customer Data Powers both Revenue and Digital Transformation

CDP Institute’s Industry Update report is required reading. Clearly, our the CDP market continues to grow and evolve as organizations look to first-party data to better understand their customers. And as using first-party data in marketing becomes even more important—due to the deprecation of third-party cookies and the waning use of IDFAs—you can expect even more growth in CDP use for data-driven marketing and digital transformation.