Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2012)

Marketing is in a whirlwind of technological innovation. It’s thrilling, inspiring, and a little dizzying.

Last year, I made the first version of a marketing technology landscape infographic to try to glimpse the “big picture” of this broad field. I’m pleased to now share with you the all-new 2012 version of this supergraphic above (click to open a large version that’s actually readable).

Its purpose is to illustrate how incredibly diverse and vibrant the marketing technology ecosystem is. It includes over 350 different companies, from small start-ups to Fortune 500 giants, across 45 different categories, from agile management to video marketing.

Admittedly, it’s incomplete — merely a representative sampling of all the varied technologies in marketers’ lives today. Under constraints of time and space, there are many companies and categories that weren’t included and that no doubt deserve to be. (If one of those missing companies is yours, I apologize. Please tell us about your venture in the comments.)

Categories are by no means definitive. We could debate for hours what is or isn’t “marketing automation” (as I have, much to the chagrin of the people sitting next to me). The labels in our industry are in flux, as are many of the companies themselves, which are constantly adding new features, acquiring new products, and pivoting to new positions.

Some categories are unfairly broad — such as analytics and social media marketing — simply because further subcategorization seemed tedious. As a result, for instance, you could implement analytics solutions from Chartbeat, Clicktale, ClearSaleing, and Compete with almost no overlap in functionality.

Many companies could make a case for being in multiple categories, but in the interest of diversity, there are few duplicate entries. The exceptions are mostly the Big Guys — Adobe, IBM, Oracle — whose large portfolios of marketing technology acquisitions defy any simple designation. Where acquisitions have retained their own brand (e.g., Radian6 or Heroku under Salesforce.com, Wildfire under Google, etc.), I’ve tended to leave them in “as is.”

Three notes: First, my own company, ion interactive, is included in the graphic in the landing pages circle (which is part of the testing and optimization sphere, which is part of the broader web site constellation). Second, the inspiration for this came from the wonderful LUMAscapes produced by LUMA Partners. Where I go broad, they go deep, with several amazing and thorough diagrams of subindustries within marketing.

Finally, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. Some logos are bigger than others. There is no meaning or ulterior motive to this — at least no conscious one — other than trying to squeeze logos of various dimensions into crowded or very crowded categories in a hopefully semi-aesthetically-pleasing fashion.

If you’re new to this blog and want to know more about how to make sense of this “technologification” of marketing, I humbly suggest these pieces:

And, of course, the classic: Rise of the Marketing Technologist. Enjoy and let me know what you think!