Martech 2026: Tools That Will Survive and Those Doomed to Die

In 2011, a marketer had only about 150 marketing tech tools to consider. Today, there are over 15,000, a dizzying “martech stack” that has grown almost 100 times in just over a decade. Marketers joke that they now have more tools than they have people to use them. Yet as 2026 approaches, a great shakeout looms. Budgets are tightening, privacy regulations are biting, and a wave of artificial intelligence is transforming how campaigns run.

The result is simple. Some marketing tools will prove indispensable, while others will fade into oblivion. As one industry insider put it, “The MarTech revolution, once a buzzword, is proving to be the new normal” but not every tool will make it.

Bloated Stacks Face the Budget Axe

After years of exuberant growth, marketers are reassessing their arsenal. Global marketing technology spend is estimated to be comfortably above the 600 billion dollar mark, after having grown strongly through the early 2020s. But by 2024 and 2025, the momentum began to stall.

Gartner’s surveys show that the average marketing budget has hovered around the mid single digits as a share of company revenue, roughly 7 to 8 percent in 2025, instead of bouncing back to pre pandemic highs. Under pressure to do more with less, CMOs are scrutinizing ROI like never before. Martech’s share of the marketing budget has fallen from roughly one third of spend in 2020 to closer to one fifth in many companies today, as leaders grow skeptical of underused tools and overlapping platforms.

At the same time, almost 6 in 10 CMOs say their budgets are insufficient to execute their strategy. Many are trimming fat. A sizable share plan to cut agency costs, and a similar proportion are reducing marketing staff. In that environment, martech investments must justify themselves or get cut.

There is data to prove the waste. Across industries, the average organization now deploys about 70 to 80 different marketing tools, yet marketers report using barely one third of their stack’s capabilities. In 2020, teams said they were using more than half of their tools effectively. That has dropped sharply. The message is clear: companies will no longer tolerate martech that does not earn its keep. Tools that streamline work and drive revenue will survive, while those collecting dust are on the chopping block.

The Indispensibles: CRM, Data and AI

Amid the clutter, certain pillars of the marketing stack remain essential going into 2026. Chief among these is the customer database, the CRM and its newer cousin, the customer data platform. These systems form the beating heart of modern marketing, giving companies a unified view of their audience.

Real world results underscore their importance. In Latin America, Coca Cola unified its ecommerce, CRM and analytics data using an enterprise CDP and journey orchestration tools. The company reported a double digit lift in revenue from targeted campaigns in some markets, with uplift figures as high as 30 to 40 percent in certain journeys, and conversion rates above 80 percent for carefully re targeted shoppers. “We’re able to capture every consumer touchpoint and build a true consumer profile,” one digital leader at the company explained, describing how a data rich platform now informs every message.

Streaming platforms show a similar story. Netflix has said that roughly 80 percent of viewing on its service is driven by its recommendation engine. Analysts estimate that this reduces churn to such an extent that it saves the company close to 1 billion dollars a year. Hospitality brands report comparable gains. Marriott, for instance, has spoken publicly about using unified profiles and analytics to drive higher revenue per guest through more relevant offers.

The bottom line is this. Companies that integrate their CRM, CDP, analytics and AI into a seamless system are reaping outsized gains. Marketing at leaders like these has become a continuous one to one conversation with each customer, powered by data. As Amit Sanyal, an Indian martech leader at Comviva, has put it in interviews, “It’s no longer sustainable to manage 20 different tools when one integrated platform can do the job.” Brands want a single source of truth about customers, not a jumble of siloed apps.

Driving this unified approach is the rise of AI powered marketing. Once just experimental, AI is now a must have in the toolkit. By late 2024, surveys of senior marketers showed that roughly three out of four marketing leaders planned to invest in generative AI, and more than half were already seeing tangible results. Early adopters report a 4 to 6 percent improvement in business outcomes, and broader implementation is expected to drive 6 to 8 percent revenue lifts in many categories.

“Advancements in AI, automation, and data driven personalization will power the next wave of growth,” says Medhavi Singh, country head for India at Criteo. AI is no longer just a shiny toy. It is becoming the engine of marketing success. From content creation to campaign optimization, AI tools are boosting productivity. Almost half of CMOs say generative AI has improved time efficiency, and about 40 percent report cost efficiencies, essentially allowing teams to do more with less. Indian companies are on board too. Industry studies show that around one fifth of Indian marketers already consider generative AI integral to their strategy.

Crucially, AI is supercharging personalization, and consumers are noticing the gap between what they want and what they get. “In today’s omnichannel landscape, brands must prioritise personalised, contextual, and actionable communication,” argues Siddharth Gopalkrishnan, COO of Netcore Cloud. He points to a striking finding from Netcore’s surveys. Roughly 80 percent of consumers say they desire personalization, yet about 70 percent feel they are not receiving it. AI can help bridge this divide.

Take Starbucks. CEO Laxman Narasimhan has spoken about how the coffee giant is adding AI into its mobile app to auto suggest products, for example a dairy free cold brew on a hot day or a warm drink on a rainy morning, essentially turning the app into a real time personalization lab. That approach is driving higher spend per customer. With AI analyzing customer data at scale, even mid sized brands can deliver Amazon or Netflix level personalization.

“Earlier, this level of personalization was limited to tech giants. Today it is accessible to a broader range of businesses through affordable, plug and play SaaS platforms,” says Ankur Gattani, chief growth officer at WebEngage. The lesson for 2026 is clear. AI driven personalization is a competitive necessity, not a luxury.

At the same time, savvy marketers caution against overreliance on AI. “AI is powerful, but marketers need to strike a balance,” warns Saurabh Khattar, India country manager at Integral Ad Science. Human insight is still critical. “Relying solely on AI can result in campaigns that lack nuance or fail to adapt to sudden shifts in consumer behaviour,” he notes. In other words, AI can crunch data and even generate content, but it takes human creativity and intuition to truly engage hearts and minds. The winning martech stacks of 2026 will blend the efficiency of AI with the empathy and ingenuity of human marketers.

Privacy Pressure and The Rise of Trust Tech

As marketing becomes more data driven, it runs into a formidable counter force, privacy regulations. Around the world, governments are enacting laws to rein in data collection and give consumers more control. As of 2025, roughly 7 in 10 countries worldwide have data privacy laws, with close to another 10 percent drafting legislation. From Europe’s GDPR to California’s CCPA and CPRA and India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection Act, the message is clear. Get consent or get out.

This has huge implications for martech. Tools that once freely tracked users across the web are now constrained by consent requirements and browser changes. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox have blocked third party cookies for years, and even though Google has slowed its plan to phase them out in Chrome, the writing is on the wall. Many brands are still scrambling. Audits of major websites in the US and EU suggest that a large majority are still not fully compliant with both GDPR and California rules, exposing themselves to fines and user backlash.

Marketers know they must adapt. “In 2025, stricter privacy regulations like GDPR and DPDP will remain in force, pushing CDPs to evolve and adapt,” notes one Financial Express analysis of the Indian market. Brands need to manage consent and first party data carefully. CDP platforms, focused on a company’s own customer data, have become even more pivotal as third party data dries up. “While CDPs are primarily focused on managing first party data, broader implications arise from regulations impacting second and third party data,” adds WebEngage’s Gattani. As laws evolve, CDPs are well positioned to ensure compliance while still delivering value from first party strategies.

We are already seeing the slow death of the third party cookie, even if the obituary keeps getting pushed out. The trend is toward a privacy first marketing playbook, with more contextual ads, more reliance on data consumers willingly share, and new tech like data clean rooms and identity solutions that allow ad targeting without exposing personal data. One emerging approach is telco based identity systems that authenticate users through carriers in a privacy safe way. Some of these solutions claim to match or even beat cookie based targeting performance.

The upshot is that privacy compliance tech is now a vital part of the martech stack. Consent management platforms, data protection software and encryption tools, these “trust tech” components will stay and grow by 2026. Without them, even the smartest AI or most sophisticated CRM cannot be used to its full potential. As consumers become more privacy aware and regulators sharpen their teeth, with fines in the hundreds of millions for breaches, compliance is no longer optional. Trust is the new currency, and martech stacks must include robust ways to earn and keep it.

Consolidation, Composability and the 2026 Toolkit

Facing economic and regulatory headwinds, companies are taking a hard look at which tools to keep. There is a clear split in strategy. Some opt for consolidation, trimming down to a few major platforms, while others embrace composability, assembling a custom stack of smaller specialist tools.

On one hand, integrated suites from giants like Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and HubSpot are attractive because they promise seamless data flow under one roof. “Marketers are looking for platforms that unify data and provide actionable insights across multiple channels. It’s no longer sustainable to manage 20 different tools,” says Amit Sanyal. This has fuelled a spree of acquisitions as big players race to offer end to end capabilities. Adobe’s multibillion dollar acquisitions in analytics, commerce and marketing automation are one example. The appeal is clear. Fewer contracts to manage, unified customer profiles and one support call when things break. For resource strapped teams, an all in one solution can be simpler and even cheaper than a patchwork of point solutions.

Yet the opposite movement is also strong. Many marketers are wary of putting all their eggs in one vendor’s basket and getting locked in. Thanks to better APIs and middleware, even non tech companies can mix and match tools more easily now. “The concept of composability is gaining traction as businesses seek flexibility and customization,” says Gattani. Instead of a monolithic suite, companies are “assembling best of breed tools from different providers through open APIs” to create a highly tailored ecosystem.

For instance, a firm might use a specialized CDP from one vendor, plug in a preferred email automation tool from another, and add a cutting edge AI personalization engine from a startup, all connected via data integrations. This composable approach ensures the marketing stack fits an organization’s unique needs and can swap out modules as technology evolves. By 2026, expect more mid sized brands to follow this path, helped by integration platforms that make connecting disparate apps easier. The future may belong to “marketing technologists” who can architect fluid stacks much like LEGO blocks rather than buying a single premade structure.

Whether consolidated or composable, one trend is undeniable. Marketers are streamlining their stacks. Redundant and underperforming tools are being purged. Annual martech landscape reports show that more than a thousand marketing solutions disappeared from the market in 2025 alone, either shut down or absorbed in acquisitions. Interestingly, nearly two thirds of those that vanished were products from the 2010s, older generation tools that could not keep up, while only about one third were newer, post ChatGPT entrants from the recent AI boom. It is the legacy systems, slow to innovate, that are truly dying off. Meanwhile, new AI native tools are mushrooming, with thousands of new solutions added to the landscape every year. Many of these will flame out or be gobbled up by bigger fish. Martech Darwinism is in full swing.

What will stay, evolve or die by 2026

Taking all these currents into account, the martech stack of 2026 is shaping up as both leaner and smarter. Certain components will unquestionably stay essential.

Customer relationship management systems will remain the central hub for customer information, although they will be supercharged with AI for predictive insights. Every revenue team still needs a single customer view, which CRM provides. Expect CRM leaders like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot to remain ubiquitous, with even more AI driven features baked in.

Customer data platforms will cement their role as the backbone for first party data. In a world of fewer cookies, owning your data is gold. CDPs that can ingest data from all channels and power real time personalization will thrive. Some CDP like capabilities will merge into CRM or marketing clouds, but whatever the label, the function of unifying data for marketing will not die. “CDPs help integrate vast amounts of data into a unified view, allowing brands to deliver hyper targeted messages that feel personal,” says Medhavi Singh. That capability is only growing in importance.

Marketing automation platforms that cover email, messaging and lead nurturing will stay, but they will evolve. Traditional email campaign tools are morphing into multichannel journey orchestration suites. By 2026, campaigns will be less about static drip sequences and more about AI triggered, one to one interactions across email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications and more. Companies like Adobe, Oracle, Netcore and others are injecting AI to optimize send times, content and channel mix. Rather than dying, marketing automation is adapting. However, pure play tools that only do one channel without intelligence might struggle.

Analytics and attribution tools will remain indispensable, though they must adjust to a privacy first world. Google’s Universal Analytics has already been replaced by GA4, which is more event based and less reliant on cookies. By 2026, more companies will rely on server side analytics, data clean rooms for ad attribution and marketing mix modeling to measure impact without personal data. Marketers will always need measurement. That need is not dying even if the old methods are. The top action CMOs cite for improving productivity is better use of data and analytics, a clear sign that analytics tech will stay crucial.

AI and machine learning capabilities will be embedded everywhere. Standalone AI tools for copywriting, image generation or predictive scoring may merge into broader platforms or become features, but AI itself will simply be part of the fabric of all martech. By 2026, saying a marketing tool has AI will be like saying it is cloud based. It will be assumed. What will die are the hype cycles. AI will mature from buzzword to background utility, much like electricity powering all appliances. Many conferences already talk about moving from “campaigns to continuous systems” fueled by AI driven decisions. That direction of travel will continue.

On the other side, what seems headed for the graveyard by 2026?

Third party cookie tracking and traditional data management platforms are effectively dead walking. Built to aggregate third party cookie data for ad targeting, DMPs have either reinvented themselves or withered. With browsers and laws choking off third party data, no serious marketer will be relying on these tools to build audience profiles by 2026. Investments will flow to consent based first party data and privacy preserving identity solutions. The cookie fuelled adtech of the 2010s is on its way out.

One size fits all martech solutions that do not integrate or adapt are also at risk. If a tool cannot share data via APIs or lacks interoperability, it is in trouble. Marketers have little patience for walled gardens that do not play well with others. The future stack is all about connectivity. Even mega vendors are under pressure to open up. Indian analysts like Shiv Gupta have been blunt that martech vendors who fail to align with marketers’ real needs and workflows are rapidly falling behind. Flexibility is key. Rigid systems are on the way out.

Overhyped gimmicks with no clear ROI will also struggle. Marketers have been burned by shiny object syndrome too often, chasing every new tool that promises magic. By 2026, there is a palpable fatigue with hype. Tools like certain VR and AR marketing apps or metaverse platforms may see pullback if they have not proven value. Even some social media management tools could get pruned if the networks they manage lose marketing relevance. Anything not delivering measurable impact in engagement or revenue could face sunset.

Finally, manual workflow tools that have not automated will be replaced. Marketing teams are increasingly lean, so tools that still require heavy manual effort for data wrangling or report building will give way to ones that automate those tasks. If an analytics platform still needs an analyst to export and pivot data for insights, it may be ditched for one that auto generates dashboards and recommendations. “Simplify to scale” is becoming a mantra. Complexity without payoff will be eliminated.

The Bigger Context

Beyond individual tools, macro factors will keep shaping the martech stack. Economic cycles matter. If a recession hits, expect another round of budget cuts and even more focus on efficiency and retention marketing, since it is cheaper to keep a customer than acquire a new one. In a growth boom, marketers might experiment more freely with new tech.

Regulatory changes will continue. By 2026, the European Union’s AI Act will likely be in force, defining how AI can be used in marketing, and India’s DPDP Act will be fully implemented, with stricter rules on consent and data localisation. Those who prepare now with strong data governance will have the upper hand.

Consumer behaviour is another wildcard. Younger audiences value privacy and authenticity, yet they also expect seamless digital experiences. This could mean more personalization is needed to engage them, but delivered in a way that feels transparent and privacy respecting. Martech tools that can manage that balance, personal without being creepy, will flourish.

Populist tech trends also influence budgets. In recent years, marketing spend shifted to influencer marketing, short video platforms and experiential stunts. By 2026, some of these trends will be integrated into the martech stack through platforms to manage influencer relationships or measure creator ROI. At the same time, the ongoing decline of old measurement channels, like traditional cookie based tracking, will push stacks further toward first party engagement: loyalty platforms, community technology and customer experience suites.

As Siddharth Gopalkrishnan emphasises, brands must optimise outreach across channels to create cohesive experiences. The winners will be those who harness data across every touchpoint, in store, online, mobile and social, to stay relevant at each moment.

A New Chapter for Martech

In an era where every marketing dollar is scrutinised, the martech stack is undergoing a survival of the fittest moment. What will stay are the tools that demonstrably drive value: data rich customer systems, AI that boosts efficiency and personalization, analytics that guide decisions and compliance tech that safeguards trust. These will continue to evolve but remain foundational.

What will die are the solutions that cannot justify their existence, whether due to poor ROI, inability to integrate or falling out of step with privacy norms and consumer expectations. Indian surveys show that more than 60 percent of brands are now allocating over 16 percent of their budgets to martech, up sharply from the previous year. Clearly, businesses still believe in the promise of martech, but they are spending smarter, not just more. They are focusing on a “fewer, better tools” philosophy.

“Instead of relying solely on traditional advertising, even smaller, younger brands are now embracing data driven campaigns to market more effectively,” says Ankur Gattani, highlighting how martech has become mainstream across industries.

The martech stack of 2026 will likely be invisible to consumers. What they will notice is more relevant offers, consistent experiences and brands that seem to just understand them. Behind the scenes, marketers will have refined stacks powering these moments. As we head into this new landscape, one thing is certain. Those who adapt and focus on tech that truly empowers marketing will thrive, and those clinging to bloated or outdated stacks will be left behind. Or, to put it simply, martech is not going away, but the pretenders in the stack are.