Customer Data Platforms See Growth, Lack New Players

The Gist

• Organic growth returns. Employment among existing CDP vendors rose 3.4% — the strongest performance since 2022.
• Composable CDPs are growing, but still niche. While composable vendors posted nearly 13% growth, they remain under 5% of the market in size and employment.
• Acquisitions reshape the CDP landscape. With six major acquisitions, including Informatica and Lytics, CDP capabilities are increasingly housed within broader engagement platforms.

The Customer Data Platform (CDP) industry is gaining fresh momentum in 2025 — but not in the way many expected. According to the July 2025 CDP Industry Update from CDP Institute, the market posted its strongest organic growth since 2022, with a 3.4% increase in employment across existing firms compared to 0.2% per period the last two years.

But this growth wasn’t driven by upstart innovation or a wave of venture funding. Instead, it reflects a reshuffling of the CDP deck — as established marketing platforms integrate CDP functionality and composable approaches gain traction (organic growth rate of 12.9%) with digitally mature teams. Don't get too excited about composable CDPs; their employment contribution to the CDP World remains under 5%.

And the other major trend? Acquisitions. The period saw six CDP acquisitions, matching the total for the previous two years. Lytics, mParticle, Relay42, Informatica.

Among the scooped-up providers in the first half of 2025.

"These all became part of companies offering activation systems and are expected to shift their focus to providing data to those products’ own functions," CDP Institute founder David Raab reported in his research. "Firms where CDP is not the primary business now account for 35% of companies and estimated 46% of employment, up from 25% and 35% in 2021."

What CX Leaders Need to Know About the CDP Landscape

CDPs are no longer point solutions sitting on the edge of the martech stack. They’re becoming embedded engines of customer data within delivery and activation platforms — powering everything from personalized messaging to customer journey orchestration.

This aligns closely with our findings. According to the CMSWire 2025 CDP Market Guide, the next generation of CDPs is defined less by standalone functionality and more by how seamlessly they plug into broader experience ecosystems. CDP buyers now prefer tools that also handle activation, orchestration and decisioning, according to CMSWire’s survey of CX and martech professionals.

"Just collecting, housing and managing data is no longer enough to truly differentiate a brand in the market," CMSWire researchers report. "While the majority of users are still using their CDPs mainly as a data consolidation tool, we are seeing more companies starting to leverage the analytical and activation capabilities of their CDP implementations."

Related Article: What Is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

CDP Companies Making Their Debut in H1 2025

Source: July 2025 Customer Data Platform Industry Update, Customer Data Platform Institute

*Includes non-CDP employees.

Key Shifts Shaping the CDP Landscape

What's moving the CDP market? Here are some of the key findings from the latest CDP Institute report:

• Delivery, campaign CDPs still dominate the growth story. The CDP Institute found that delivery- and campaign-focused CDPs now make up 71% of all vendors — with most of the industry’s job growth concentrated in this category. "Delivery CDPs have taken a steadily growing share of employment and funding over time, largely at the expense of analytics and campaign CDPs," Raab notes. "This is largely the result of delivery vendors adding CDPs to existing products. It can also be read as indicating a buyer preference for embedded CDPs." CMSWire reports smaller, newer players in the market tend to be data and analytics driven but acknowledges campaign and delivery CDPs sit at the top.
• Acquisitions reshape the field. Major players like mParticle, Lytics and Relay42 were acquired by platforms with strong campaign or commerce capabilities. Salesforce’s $8B acquisition of Informatica demonstrates the shift toward data control as a strategic moat for CX.
• Composable CDPs grow fast, but remain niche. While tools like RudderStack and Hightouch grew nearly 13% in headcount — far faster than traditional CDPs — they still represent less than 5% of the market by size, according to the CDP Institute. Composable CDPs are gaining favor among data-first, engineering-led organizations that want modular control, but the other side of that is the desire to go with pre-integrated offerings.
• Funding is drying up, especially for standalone CDPs. The only notable rounds this period came from established players: Klaviyo raised $373M, and Chord picked up a $5.5M seed round. The CMSWire guide flags the same trend — VCs are backing platforms with activation reach, not infrastructure-only vendors. CMSWire reports the CDP industry continues to grow, even as outside funding has largely dried up. In 2024, market valuation of the CDP industry reached $2.95 million. It is expected to reach $10.12 billion by 2029, exceeding projections yet again.
• Mature companies are adding CDP features — not building new ones. Of the five new vendors added in this period, most were founded years ago and are layering in CDP functionality to expand their existing platforms.

The Role of Zero-Copy Data in CDP Strategy

What Is Zero-Copy — and Why Does It Matter?

The term “zero-copy” in customer data platforms has become a new litmus test for evaluating architectural maturity. At its core, zero-copy refers to the ability of a CDP to access and activate customer data without duplicating it into a new system. Instead of moving data between platforms, zero-copy CDPs use metadata references and federated access to interact with data stored in cloud data warehouses (CDWs) like Snowflake, BigQuery or Databricks.

This approach offers significant advantages for IT and data teams: reduced latency, fewer data silos, improved governance and lower storage costs. As mParticle explains, zero-copy has evolved beyond a literal deployment model into a broader enterprise data strategy focused on data quality and governance. While no CDP is truly “copy-free,” the goal is to minimize unnecessary data duplication and preserve a central source of truth.

How Vendors Are Approaching it Differently

Warehouse-native and composable CDPs like Hightouch, Rudderstack and mParticle have championed zero-copy as a differentiator. Their models overlay directly onto cloud data lakes, allowing activation and segmentation directly from warehouse environments. These platforms are designed to serve engineering-led organizations that want to retain control of data pipelines and metadata management within the CDW.

Other CDPs, including Salesforce, are adopting what they call zero-copy federation through external data lake objects (DLOs) and bring-your-own-lake (BYOL) capabilities. However, analysis from Real Story Group finds that in Salesforce’s case, once data is processed or transformed within the Data Cloud, it’s still ultimately persisted within their system — meaning that while raw access may be federated, the system still makes copies under the hood for performance and analytics.

What CX and marketing leaders need to know

Despite vendor claims, most CDPs today — including those billing themselves as zero-copy — still copy some data for latency or transformation reasons. The distinction, therefore, isn’t binary. It’s about architectural intent and how your CDP supports your broader data strategy.

• For IT teams: Zero-copy capabilities simplify data governance by centralizing control within your CDW, reducing the need for data movement and reconciliation.
• For CX leaders: The business case depends on whether the zero-copy approach maintains the performance needed for real-time personalization and activation. Many composable CDPs trade flexibility for speed.
• For decision-makers: Don’t default to a vendor’s zero-copy claims. Test real-time performance, data fidelity and integration scope — especially if considering Data Cloud vendors like Salesforce.

Ultimately, as mParticle notes, “zero-copy” should be seen not as a destination, but as a strategic mindset — one that prioritizes minimizing unnecessary movement, enforcing data quality and aligning activation with centralized governance efforts.

Campaign vs. Delivery CDPs: Hottest Types of CDPs on the Market

This table summarizes the distinctions between Campaign CDPs and Delivery CDPs as defined in the CDP Institute's July 2025 Industry Update.

What This Means for Customer Experience Strategy

For CX leaders, the message is clear: CDP capabilities are no longer something you “buy” — they’re something you already have, or soon will, inside your engagement stack. Whether it’s real-time personalization, first-party data unification, or journey orchestration, the modern CDP’s value lies in its interoperability, speed and ability to drive outcomes.

"It has become mission critical for businesses of all sizes to be able to intelligently capture customer information, behavior patterns, understand their needs, keep data secure and manage the data and patterns to deliver personalized relevant experiences across the right channels," CMSWire President and Publisher Brice Dunwoodie notes in the CMSWire CDP Market Guide.

In our 2025 CDP Market Guide, we emphasized three major imperatives:

1. Consolidate around first-party data: With third-party cookies fading, the CDP’s role in capturing and activating first-party signals is more critical than ever.
2. Orchestrate across the entire customer journey: CDPs must serve as the connective layer across touchpoints — not just email or web.
3. Bridge IT and marketing: Composable solutions tempt tech teams, but CX success depends on solutions that enable business users without constant engineering support.

The CDP Institute’s July update finds customer data platforms are increasingly essential for CX and marketing leaders because they unify, analyze and activate customer data across channels—enabling more personalized, orchestrated, and outcome-driven experiences.  

Vendors Featured in the 2025 CMSWire CDP Market Guide

Examining key capabilities of some of the players in the customer data platform space.

What CX Leaders Should Do Next With CDPs

So what are the big takeaways for marketing and customer experience leaders? Based on our research and other CDP research in 2025, there are a few things to consider:

• Map your current stack. If you’re already using a platform like Salesforce, Adobe, Twilio Segment, or Klaviyo, your CDP may already be “hiding in plain sight.” Ask: is it activated? Is it trusted?
• Evaluate vendors on business impact, not architecture. Whether composable or packaged, CDPs should be judged by their ability to fuel insights, personalization and customer satisfaction — not by technical novelty alone.
• Prioritize interoperability and future-proofing. As AI models consume more customer data and regulations shift, your CDP strategy must ensure clean, accessible, and compliant data flow across all touchpoints.

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CDPs aren’t going away. They’re just going deeper — becoming the invisible intelligence behind great customer experiences. For CX leaders, success lies not in buying the newest CDP, but in making sure the one you have drives real customer value.

"Looking ahead to the future, CDPs are projected to become even more important to a company’s martech stack," CMSWire researchers note. "As the debate continues over the eventual sunsetting of third-party data collection (cookies), companies are investing more and more into zero-party and first-party data collection and intelligence. Further, with brick-and-mortar shopping continuing to dominate the retail space with mobile shopping increasing, businesses will need something to unify their customer data if they hope to make it actionable."

Core Questions About the 2025 CDP Landscape

Editor's note: Key questions surrounding how customer data platforms are evolving — and what that means for CX and marketing leaders navigating today's fragmented tech stacks.