As a B2C marketer, do you know how you should spend your technology budget? Where should you invest and from which technologies should you divest? These questions can keep marketers up at night as they think about ways to provide contextually relevant experiences to their consumers. However, nearly two dozen Forrester colleagues and I just completed two reports for you: The Forrester Tech Tide™: Martech For B2C Marketers, Q2 2018 and The Forrester Tech Tide™: Adtech For B2C Marketers, Q2 2018.

The world of martech and adtech is constantly changing (and converging), and technologies that were popular and relevant only a few years ago can quickly become yesterday’s news. Consumers today expect seamless, personalized experiences in their communications with brands. Rapid technological advancement has allowed the adtech and martech industries to evolve, and there are a number of up and coming marketing and advertising technologies that marketers should be experimenting with, like content intelligence, mobile engagement automation, and creative advertising technology. As these technologies rise in popularity, they are carving out industry space for themselves and filling places that some older technologies are leaving open as they lose relevance.

In our research we found that channel-agnostic martech and adtech categories should garner the most attention as they allow marketers to provide seamless customer experiences regardless of the channels they are delivered in. They enable marketers to use consumer information efficiently to personalize experiences. Furthermore, channel-siloed technologies are on the decline as marketers look to provide a singular brand experience across all communication points. So, while technology categories like social media management still provide business value, they will need to innovate and to remain valuable as they continue to mature.

In these reports we dive into 20 martech and 11 adtech categories to analyze maturity, business value, and life cycle while also providing sample use cases and sample vendors for these technologies. Read the reports to learn which technologies you should be focusing your investments on!

Many thanks to the 18 analysts, researchers, and research associates as well as the editors, graphics, and production folks for their work on these tremendous reports, and special thanks to Matt Flug for co-writing this blog.