Your Martech Stack Is Probably Half the Size It Should Be

Why consolidation and privacy changes are forcing hard choices about marketing tools

Companies spend 30% of marketing budgets on technology but only use 33% of what they buy

The average marketer uses 3 tools weekly. That number has been surprisingly stable despite the martech landscape exploding from 150 products in 2011 to over 14,000 in 2024. Marketing technology now represents 24-30% of total marketing budgets, up from 12% just five years ago. Yet utilization remains low—only 33% of the martech stack gets regular use according to digital marketing leaders.

This isn’t a story about tool sprawl, though that’s part of it. It’s about a fundamental mismatch between how marketing organizations buy software and how they actually work.

The integration problem that never got solved

When asked what matters most in selecting martech tools, 29% of marketers say integration capability. Not features. Not price. The ability to connect with other systems. That’s telling.

It’s also why 51% of marketers report that integration challenges have prevented them from adopting new technologies. Not because the integrations don’t exist—API connections between major platforms are table stakes now—but because making those integrations actually function requires technical resources most marketing teams don’t have.

Consider the typical setup: a marketing automation platform connects to a CRM, which feeds into an analytics tool, which pushes data to an advertising platform, which reports back to a dashboard. That’s five tools with four integration points. When one integration breaks—and they do, regularly—attribution falls apart, campaigns don’t fire correctly, and data quality degrades.

The companies that have solved this aren’t necessarily those with fewer tools. They’re the ones who’ve made integration a core capability rather than an afterthought. That usually means dedicated marketing operations roles, partnership with IT, and treating data flow as critical infrastructure rather than nice-to-have automation.

What consolidation actually looks like

Against expectations, 40% of organizations now have lean stacks of 1-3 tools. Another 38% use 3-6 tools. Only 12% manage stacks of 10+ tools. That’s consolidation happening in real-time, driven by economic pressure and operational reality.

But consolidation doesn’t mean simplification. The tools that survive are getting more complex. Customer Data Platforms, for instance, have 58% planned adoption rates in 2024. CDPs centralize customer data and enable unified profiles, but implementing them effectively requires integrating with everything else in the stack. You’re not reducing complexity—you’re shifting it from managing multiple tools to configuring one powerful system.

Marketing automation platforms show similar dynamics. Planned adoption is at 64%, making them the top martech investment. But “marketing automation” now encompasses email, SMS, push notifications, web personalization, and increasingly, AI-driven content generation. These aren’t simpler tools—they’re comprehensive platforms that replace multiple point solutions.

The winning strategy isn’t “fewer tools.” It’s “fewer vendors with deeper functionality.” That distinction matters because it changes procurement, implementation, and team structure.

The privacy changes that rewrote the playbook

Google announced in July 2024 that they wouldn’t phase out third-party cookies in Chrome after all. That sounds like a reprieve, but it’s actually more complicated for marketers.

Third-party cookies are still dead in Safari and Firefox. They’ve been blocked for years. Chrome represents about 60% of browser market share, so Google’s decision matters, but it’s not like everyone gets to return to 2019’s tracking methods.

Instead, what’s emerging is a fragmented environment. Some browsers block cookies. Some require user consent. Some allow them by default. For marketers, this is worse than a clean break would have been. You need strategies for both cookie-based and cookieless environments simultaneously.

The practical impact: first-party data collection is now essential, not optional. Companies that can’t collect and activate their own customer data are at a structural disadvantage. That drives adoption of CDPs, data warehouses, and server-side tracking infrastructure—all adding complexity and cost to martech stacks.

According to recent surveys, 53% of CMOs prioritize data security and ethics in 2024. That’s not just compliance theater. It’s recognition that privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, upcoming state laws) create real operational constraints that affect tool selection and campaign execution.

What AI is actually changing

75% of businesses report AI adoption in their martech stack. That sounds impressive until you dig into what it means. Mostly, it’s AI features embedded in existing tools—predictive send time in email platforms, automated bid optimization in ad tools, suggested segments in analytics products.

True AI transformation—where AI fundamentally changes what marketing teams do—is much rarer. Maybe 15-20% of companies have deployed AI in ways that actually alter job functions or campaign strategies. The rest are using AI features the same way they’d use any automation: to do existing tasks faster.

The companies getting value from AI in their martech aren’t necessarily those with the most sophisticated tools. They’re the ones who’ve solved their data problems first. When customer data is clean, integrated, and accessible, AI can generate insights and recommendations. When data is messy and siloed, AI just produces garbage faster.

This creates an interesting dynamic. AI capabilities are being commoditized rapidly—most major platforms now include similar AI features. But the ability to use those capabilities effectively depends on data infrastructure that’s highly variable across companies. The competitive advantage isn’t in the AI tools. It’s in the data foundation that makes AI useful.

The martech landscape that makes no sense

There are 14,000+ martech products, but only 260 solutions generate 80% of industry mentions. The vast majority of tools have tiny user bases and uncertain futures. For marketing leaders, this creates a real risk: invest in a niche tool that solves a specific problem really well, but might not exist in 18 months.

That pushes buyers toward established platforms, which in turn gives those platforms pricing power and allows them to be slower with innovation. It’s the classic consolidation dynamic—the large players grow larger because they’re safer bets, even when smaller vendors have better products.

The counter-trend is composable architectures. Instead of buying a monolithic platform, marketing teams assemble best-of-breed components that integrate through APIs and data warehouses. This requires more technical sophistication but offers more flexibility.

According to recent analysis, the modern martech stack is increasingly composable: “Automations, apps, workflows, customer experiences, AI agents, and other kinds of digital solutions can be created by combining data and services from multiple products and data sources to serve bespoke use cases.”

That’s the theory. In practice, building composable stacks requires engineering resources most marketing teams don’t have. The companies succeeding with this approach either have strong marketing operations teams or close partnerships with IT. For everyone else, integrated platforms remain the practical choice even if they’re suboptimal.

What actually matters in 2025

Three trends converge over the next 18 months:

Martech spending continues growing (projected 12.7% growth to $27 billion in the U.S.) while adoption remains flat or declining. This means companies are spending more on tools they’re not fully using. That’s not sustainable.

Data privacy regulations expand and become more enforced. The fragmented cookie environment gets more fragmented as states pass their own laws with different requirements. Compliance costs increase, pushing companies toward tools that bundle privacy management.

AI capabilities become table stakes in major platforms but remain differentially useful based on data quality. The gap widens between companies with strong data infrastructure and those without it.

For marketing leaders, the strategic question isn’t “what tools should we buy.” It’s “what capabilities do we actually need, and what’s the minimum viable stack to deliver them?”

In most cases, that stack is smaller than current implementations but requires deeper integration, better data management, and more technical support. The trade-off isn’t fewer tools versus more tools. It’s operational complexity versus vendor proliferation.

The forecast few want to hear

By 2027, the majority of marketing organizations will operate one of two models:

Integrated platform approach - 3-5 major vendors (think Adobe, Salesforce, HubSpot) providing most functionality through comprehensive suites. Deep integration within each vendor’s ecosystem, light integration between vendors. Lower operational complexity, higher vendor dependency.

Composable architecture approach - 8-12 specialized tools integrated through a central data platform (CDP or data warehouse). Higher operational complexity, lower vendor lock-in. Requires significant marketing operations and data engineering capability.

Very few companies will successfully operate hybrid models. The operational overhead is too high and the value too unclear.

For most mid-market companies, the integrated platform approach will win by default—not because it’s better, but because they can’t staff the alternative. For enterprises with sophisticated marketing operations teams, composable architectures offer more flexibility and better economics.

The companies struggling most will be those who’ve accumulated tools organically without strategic intent. They’ll have 15+ tools with unclear ownership, inconsistent usage, overlapping capabilities, and insufficient integration. That’s probably 40-50% of current marketing organizations.

Over the next three years, those companies either consolidate intentionally (choosing one of the two models above) or get forced into consolidation by budget cuts and underutilization. The “we’ll figure out our stack strategy later” approach is running out of runway.

The question isn’t whether your martech stack will change. It’s whether you’re driving that change strategically or just reacting to vendor consolidation and budget pressure.