Top Insights from the 2024 IDC MarketScape for B2C CDPs

When it comes to evaluating technology vendors, IDC MarketScape is a trusted resource for technology buyers. It breaks down the strengths and challenges of each vendor, making tech investment decisions less daunting and more strategic.

In this post, we’ll highlight the key takeaways from the latest IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms focused on B2C Users 2024–2025. We’ll cover trends shaping customer data platforms and dive into the research methodology behind the report.

Key Takeaways

• IDC MarketScape simplifies vendor selection: It’s a tool to help businesses make confident decisions.
• Emerging trends to watch: AI, personalization, and composability are transforming customer engagement.
• Big win for ActionIQ: We’re proud to be named a Leader in this year’s report!

Understanding IDC MarketScape for B2C CDPs

IDC MarketScape offers a detailed analysis of B2C Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), focusing on everything from data governance to real-time capabilities. It’s designed to help businesses validate their choices and align technology investments with their strategic goals.

By answering key questions like how well a vendor handles security or integrates with existing systems, IDC MarketScape ensures you’re making decisions with clarity and confidence.

What is IDC MarketScape?

IDC MarketScape is a trusted resource for organizations looking to understand the competitive landscape of technology vendors. It uses a visually intuitive chart to show where vendors stand based on two dimensions: their strategic capabilities and current execution. This format helps decision-makers quickly identify which vendors align with their organizational goals, whether they’re focused on innovation, scalability, or customer support.

What sets the IDC MarketScape apart is its rigorous evaluation process. Unlike tools that rely solely on numbers or subjective opinions, the IDC MarketScape combines both qualitative and quantitative analysis. It looks at everything from market performance and customer satisfaction to forward-looking innovations.

For organizations navigating the crowded CDP market, the IDC MarketScape is more than just a report—it’s a roadmap for making informed choices that align with business priorities.

Why the IDC MarketScape Matters

Investing in the wrong technology can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities. The IDC MarketScape mitigates this risk by providing a balanced view of each vendor’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities. It also helps decision-makers understand how other buyers in this market are making decisions. IDC is the most quantitative of the analyst firms and their accuracy on predictions is second to none.

The IDC MarketScape is more than just a chart. It’s a strategic tool designed to minimize the risks of tech investments. By offering a balanced view of vendors’ strengths and challenges, it empowers organizations to confidently choose partners who can help them achieve their goals.

Insights from IDC MarketScape help reduce risks in investment decisions through comprehensive evaluations of vendor offerings. The evaluations provide a clear picture of each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling companies to make decisions that are both strategic and well-informed. This precise evaluation process ultimately supports businesses in achieving better outcomes and higher customer satisfaction.

How IDC MarketScape Evaluates Vendors

The evaluation process behind the IDC MarketScape is one of its most valuable features. By combining both qualitative and quantitative research, the tool provides a 360-degree view of each vendor’s market position.

On the qualitative side, IDC assesses factors like innovation, customer support, and product vision. Vendors are evaluated on their ability to address current market needs while also planning for the future. On the quantitative side, the report considers measurable metrics such as revenue growth, adoption rates, and market share.

This dual approach allows the IDC MarketScape to offer an unbiased and nuanced perspective. It’s not just about who’s performing well today—it’s about who’s positioned to lead tomorrow.

How Businesses Leverage IDC MarketScape

The IDC MarketScape isn’t just for research—it’s a practical tool that organizations across industries use to make impactful decisions.

For example, a company looking to enhance its customer engagement strategy might turn to the IDC MarketScape to identify vendors specializing in AI-driven personalization. Similarly, a healthcare organization focused on compliance could use the report to evaluate vendors with strong data governance capabilities.

These success stories highlight the versatility of the IDC MarketScape. By offering actionable insights, the report helps businesses reduce risks, streamline operations, and drive better outcomes.

Top Insights from the 2024 IDC MarketScape for B2C CDPs

Choosing the right technology partner has never been more critical. As businesses face growing demands for personalized customer experiences, real-time engagement, and robust data security, selecting the right customer data platform (CDP) can make all the difference. Enter the IDC MarketScape, a trusted resource that evaluates the competitive positioning of technology vendors across industries.

In this post, we’ll break down the highlights of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) focused on B2C Users, 2024–2025 report. You’ll discover emerging trends, learn how IDC evaluates vendors, and see why the IDC MarketScape has become a go-to guide for making smarter, more strategic decisions in the CDP market.

Key Trends in the 2024 CDP Market

The 2024 IDC MarketScape report highlights several trends that are shaping the future of customer data platforms. These trends reflect the evolving needs of businesses and the growing expectations of consumers:

• AI-Driven Personalization: As customer journeys become more complex, businesses are turning to AI to deliver highly personalized experiences at scale.
• Real-Time Data Processing: In the age of instant gratification, the ability to process and act on data in real-time is no longer optional—it’s essential.
• Privacy and Compliance: With global regulations becoming more stringent, data privacy and compliance have emerged as top priorities for CDP vendors.
• Composability: Modular, flexible platforms are gaining traction, allowing businesses to integrate CDPs seamlessly into their existing tech stacks.

These trends underscore the importance of choosing a CDP that not only meets current demands but is also future-ready.

ActionIQ: A Leader in IDC MarketScape

In the 2024 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on B2C, ActionIQ was recognized as a Leader in the B2C CDP category, and the highest performing CDP on the capabilities axis. This distinction reflects the platform’s strengths in several key areas, including hybrid-composable architecture, data management and artificial intelligence.

One of ActionIQ’s standout features is its ability to allow enterprise brands to flexibly grow and scale with hybrid-composable architecture. This capability is increasingly critical as businesses look to grow in dynamic environments. Additionally, ActionIQ’s AI capabilities were featured as a strength, delivering descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive capabilities to support B2C use cases, all designed to boost the customer lifecycle, including churn management, product recommendations and other generative AI capabilities to help brands quickly build audiences — with more AI capabilities on the way after ActionIQ joins Uniphore.

Case Studies: CDP in Practice for B2C Brands

Case Study #1: How Saks Uses ActionIQ’s Complete Composable CDP

For leading luxury brand Saks, data is incredibly powerful. It empowers team members across the organization to make decisions that are always smarter and better, through both success and failure. But in order to unlock that data-driven strategy, you need a CDP to democratize and activate that data-driven decisioning and action — from the analytics team all the way to the marketers and beyond.

Saks’s data is all in Snowflake, where it’s managed by Nivy Swaminathan, Vice President of Advanced Analytics and Personalization and her team. They build data science models, predicting outcomes at a user level, and all of that rich data gets written back into their Snowflake data system. ActionIQ mirrors that work to allow marketers access and activation of all of those insights-driven audiences. With ActionIQ, Saks activates audiences in 10 channels (and growing) through integrations, with first-party data as a signal to activate on different platforms.

This user friendly approach proved to be successful for Saks, providing them with improved access to their marketing.

Case Study #2: E.l.f. Beauty Cultivates Brand Loyalists

By partnering with ActionIQ, e.l.f. scales their customer data to drive results.
With ActionIQ, e.l.f. infuses customer journeys with their aggregated first-party data. With more creative ways to gather data from customers, through quizzes and surveys, e.l.f. is able to learn all of these different elements about their shoppers that will connect them to specific products within their product catalog — take skincare, for example. There are all kinds of different customer needs and priorities about their skin. Iis it sensitive, is it oily, are you buying it for your family? There are all kinds of pieces of information that demonstrate where a shopper is in their journey that e.l.f. uses to create audiences based on all of those personalized attributes.

Conclusion

The 2024 IDC B2C CDP MarketScape is more than just a report—it’s a strategic tool for businesses navigating the ever-changing world of customer data platforms. By combining rigorous analysis with practical insights, it empowers organizations to make informed decisions that drive meaningful results.

From emerging trends like AI and real-time processing to the growing importance of data privacy, the IDC B2C CDP MarketScape highlights the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. With this trusted resource at your side, you’ll be well-equipped to choose the right technology partner and build a future-ready customer data strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is IDC MarketScape?

IDC MarketScape is a trusted resource for organizations looking to understand the competitive landscape of technology vendors. It uses a visually intuitive chart to show where vendors stand based on two dimensions: their strategic capabilities and current execution.

How does IDC MarketScape assess vendors?

IDC MarketScape assesses vendors by mixing both qualitative and quantitative metrics, giving a well-rounded view of their strategies and capabilities. This thorough approach helps reveal how well vendors stack up against each other.

Why is IDC MarketScape important for businesses?

IDC MarketScape is crucial for businesses because it guides them in making smart tech investment decisions, ultimately lowering risks and boosting their competitive edge.

What are the benefits of using IDC MarketScape reports?

Using IDC MarketScape reports gives you solid vendor insights and comprehensive profiles, helping you make informed decisions. It’s a smart move for both immediate and future strategic planning!

How can businesses access IDC MarketScape reports?

You can easily get IDC MarketScape reports by subscribing, purchasing them directly, or checking out corporate access plans. Just pick the option that works best for your business!