Customer Data Platform Industry Grew 76% in the Past Year: CDP Institute Report 

    PHILADELPHIA, PA, July 09, 2018 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Customer Data Platform industry employment grew by 76% over the past year, according to the June 2018 Industry Update released today by the CDP Institute. The full report is available here.

The report lists companies identified as CDP vendors by the CDP Institute, along with funding, employee counts, product type, and year founded for each vendor. The number of CDPs included in the study grew from 39 in June 2017 to 62 in June 2018. Combined employment among listed firms increased from 3,170 to 5,584, a 76% increase.

Other key findings include:

- three-quarters of the vendors added in the past year provide customer engagement functions such as personalization and campaign management. These vendors now account for 49% of total employment, compared with just 28% one year ago. Like all CDPs, these vendors also assemble a unified view of customer data from multiple company systems.  

- European companies outgrew the industry as a whole in the past six months, with a 33% increase in vendors and 42% rise in employment. Comparable industry-wide figures were 22% and 31%. The European market is also more concentrated among engagement vendors, who account for 66% of European vendor employment compared with 45% in the U.S. and 25% in Asia/Pacific.  

- many firms now entering the CDP market are mature businesses repositioning themselves as CDPs. Nearly half (45%) of firms added to the report were founded more than ten years ago. These firms averaged 135 employees compared with just 43 employees per firm for companies that were less than ten years old.

- the industry attracted $114 million in new funding in the first half of 2018, an increase of 26% over the $90 million added during same period in 2017. Total investment is now $1,470 million. 

"Marketers continue to recognize the advantages that Customer Data Platforms provide in meeting their need for unified, sharable customer data," said CDP Institute CEO David Raab. "We expect further growth as the number and variety of CDP solutions expands in response to business needs." 

About the Customer Data Platform Institute

The Customer Data Platform Institute educates marketers and marketing technologists about customer data management.   Activities include publishing of educational materials, news about industry developments, creation of best practice guides and benchmarks, a directory of industry vendors, and consulting on related issues.

The Institute is focused on Customer Data Platforms, defined as "a marketer-controlled system that maintains a unified, persistent customer database which is accessible to external systems." It is managed by Raab Associates Inc., a consultancy specializing in marketing technology and analysis. Raab Associates named the Customer Data Platform category in 2013. 

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