The Modern Marketing Data Stack report is Snowflake’s annual analysis of the marketing technology ecosystem, highlighting the most impactful vendors and emerging trends. Think of it as a GPS for navigating the complex MarTech landscape. Out of over 14,000 vendors, the report spotlights 89 key players that are shaping the future of marketing technology.
Why It Matters
A modern marketing stack transforms scattered marketing tools into a streamlined command center, delivering immediate business impact. By connecting all your marketing and operational systems, you can launch and measure campaigns in hours instead of weeks, while ensuring everyone works from the same reliable data. No more reconciling different numbers or waiting for insights trapped in departmental silos.
This unified approach slashes technology costs by reducing the number of tools you need to manage and maintain. More importantly, it gives you a complete view of the customer journey, allowing you to engage buyers at exactly the right moment with relevant messages – something that’s impossible with disconnected systems. The result is faster execution, better customer relationships, and stronger business results.
From Emerging Trend to The New Normal
Unlike other MarTech landscape reports, Snowflake’s analysis is unique because it’s based on actual usage data from their customer base. Rather than theoretical frameworks, the report shows which technologies organizations are actually implementing and finding value from within the Snowflake ecosystem.
This composable architecture has moved quickly from an emerging trend to the new normal; a modern marketing stack must integrate and compliment these three core requirements.
The Three Major Forces Making up the The New Normal
1. Data Gravity
Data Gravity is the idea that as more data is stored in one place, it naturally attracts additional data, tools, and applications, making it easier to access and analyze. While data teams have long practiced and benefited from data centralization, what’s revolutionary is how marketing teams are now leveraging this principle through Snowflake’s data cloud.
- Instead of copying data to different systems, applications now come to where the data lives
- This enables composable CDPs and more sophisticated data-connected applications
2. Privacy
- More than just compliance – it’s now fundamental to marketing operations.
- Increases focus on first-party data as third-party signals become less reliable
- Drives new measurement approaches like marketing mix modeling and data clean rooms
- Enables new revenue streams through commerce media platforms
3. Generative AI
- Democratizes data access through natural language interfaces
- Example: Marketers can now ask questions like “How many customers spent over $1,000 in the last six months?” without needing technical support
- Creates the “data-empowered marketer” who can work directly with data
The Stack Reimagined
Snowflake introduces a new way to visualize the marketing technology stack as concentric circles rather than traditional layers:
Outer Layer: Marketing & Advertising Tools and Platforms
Spanning MarTech, AdTech, and Marketing Analytics these tools provide the business friendly interfaces to analyze and act on data held in the unified data foundation.
- Analytics and data capture
- Enrichment and hygiene
- Identity and onboarding
- Customer data platforms
- Marketing and customer engagement
- Programmatic solutions
- Measurement and optimization
Middle Layer: Data Tools and Platforms
Data Engineers and Developers use the tools in this category to ingest and transform data from all business domains; marketing but also operational systems – ERP, Consent, Supply Chain and others. In many cases the internal data teams already use these tools to deliver financial and operational insights back to the business.
- Integration and modeling
- Consent management
- Business intelligence
Core:
An AI Data Cloud to centralize data across all areas of the business: marketing, product, financial, supply chain.
- Enterprise AI and unified data foundation
How Hakkōda Helps Our Clients Build and Operate a Modern Marketing Stack
Hakkoda provides the expertise needed to build a modern data stack. We help organizations implement this new approach through their “Zero to 360” program, working with various CDP providers and data tools to create unified customer views to power marketing and advertising.
Success stories from clients demonstrate how organizations are practically applying these concepts to achieve better marketing outcomes while maintaining privacy and data governance:
Looking Forward
The report suggests that successful marketing organizations will be those that can effectively:
- Unify their data in a central location
- Leverage AI capabilities
- Maintain strong privacy controls
- Enable marketing teams to be more self-sufficient with data
- Create seamless connections between marketing and enterprise systems
This isn’t just another technology trend – it’s a fundamental reshaping of how marketing technology operates and how organizations can deliver more effective, privacy-conscious marketing programs.
Ready to elevate your campaigns while streamlining and centralizing marketing operations with the power of the modern data stack? Talk to one of our experts today.
