Joe Stanhope

Databricks announced CustomerLake, a new customer data platform offering, at its Data+AI Summit last week. Though widely anticipated, the announcement generated quite a bit of unabashed excitement and clever commentary. The enthusiasm is relatable; it’s not every day the martech industry gets a new entrant. A CDP Announcement That Isn’t Really About CDPs CustomerLake may be a compelling take on the CDP, but it does not fundamentally alter the direction of the CDP market.

Customer data platforms (CDPs) are thriving due to marketers’ insatiable demand for accurate, complete, and timely data, which is only accelerating with firms’ AI adoption. Marketers want CDPs for assembling actionable customer profiles, orchestrating campaign and personalization tactics, and delivering data and audiences to the marketing technology ecosystem. CDPs Are Martech Table Stakes But Have Room To Grow We just published our latest landscape report of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

I’m pleased to announce that The Forrester Tech Tide: B2C Marketing Technology, Q1 2026 just published. Forrester is known for its detailed coverage of marketing technology at the market level and the Tech Tide offers broader context to understand the entire martech ecosystem. The Forrester Tech Tide defines the categories that comprise the martech ecosystem and assesses the relative maturity and business value of each category.