Think the martech landscape is big? Here’s the size of the software industry overall

In excess of the 11 several years that I’ve been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 alternatives to ~10,000, I’ve found numerous people today respond to it as an anomaly. “What is it about marketing and advertising that spawns so a lot of software applications? Certainly no other career has to deal with these sprawl!”

To which software package critique web site G2 responds in this report, “Hold my beer.”

Whilst there are unquestionably dynamics specific to advertising and marketing that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the fact is that martech is basically a aspect of a substantially more substantial program revolution. Marc Andreessen referred to as it “software consuming the environment.” I connect with it The Fantastic App Explosion. Computer software is almost everywhere (and, increasingly, every thing is computer software).

But specifically how many commercially packaged computer software apps are there in The Great Application Explosion?

Let’s just take video games and purchaser-oriented applications off the desk. We know there are hundreds of thousands of these types of apps for cell gadgets on the Apple App Retail store and Google Perform Retail store. It is honest to say that is a distinctive kettle of fish than B2B software package, these types of as martech.

Very well, at least now. Frankly, customer and business enterprise computer software applications are driven by considerably of the exact same underlying technologies. And you see increasing cross-pollination between individuals domains. The consumerization of IT continues to be a big motion underway. I personally see similarities concerning creators on buyer platforms and “makers” inside of organizations leveraging no-code resources. And if you believe the buzz of the metaverse — which will just one day increase from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of business enterprise and client experiences will blur even more.

But for now, let us adhere to a narrow interpretation of how lots of business program applications are there in the world?

The remedy: at the very least 103,528.

That is the amount of software program products profiled on G2’s website as of last 7 days. It’s not a theoretical guesstimate. It is an empirical count — like the martech landscape, but spanning all small business application groups.

I emphasized the phrase “at least” in entrance of that range for two good reasons:

First, G2 acknowledges that they have not uncovered all of the business software program apps out there however. My impression is that particularly in marketplaces outdoors of North The usa, there is a ton however to explore. Assume of China and Japan, for instance.

Next, new software program startups hold being launched. (You may possibly be mumbling beneath your breath, “Let’s see what the existing overall economy does to that merry-go-round.” Place a pin in that caveat for a moment – I’ll come back again to it.)

In other phrases, that 103,528 amount is a reduce bound of the B2B program products universe. The true range is absolutely bigger, and likely a lot increased. 150,000? 200,000? More?

G2’s databases is absolutely continue to expanding, incorporating on regular 945 software program goods per month.

What about consolidation, you say? These numbers from G2 are inclusive of the truth that they’ve dealt with about 760 merger and acquisition cases because January of this 12 months. So, of course, consolidation is going on. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and enlargement in program marketplaces retains legitimate. It is not just martech.

Speaking of martech, the people at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech products and solutions and 1,488 adtech products in their database. Put together — which is how I have usually imagined of them — which is 10,853 madtech apps in full. Much more than what Frans and I arrived up with in our 2022 martech landscape release in May well.

Our system is to share details among us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it’s awesome to also have an impartial corroboration that, of course, today’s martech landscape definitely is on the magnitude of ~10,000 merchandise.

Is 2023 the Yr of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let’s get again to that question about the overall economy I dodged before.

No sugarcoating it. This next year or two is likely to exert a ton of strain on the present-day martech landscape. Funding will be more durable to arrive by, and at significantly additional modest valuations. Promoting departments are heading to have tighter budgets and grow to be substantially harder prospects when it will come to taking into consideration and negotiating martech purchases. This is the very first time in more than a ten years of exponential martech development that the market is struggling with a genuinely formidable economic natural environment.

Unquestionably, this will result in numerous additional acquisitions of lesser martech fish by greater martech fish, as very well as the private fairness crowd betting on the other aspect of this cycle. But far more painfully, there will be an rising range of early-phase martech ventures that basically call it quits soon after failing to possibly safe their up coming funding round, uncover a prepared acquisitor, or rebalance their operations to profitability.

My best guess? Up to 20% of the recent martech landscape could churn right before 2024.

But it’s only the churn level of current martech vendors that I have a darkish prediction about. As far as collective market earnings goes, I think martech is heading to continue on to grow for the foreseeable long term. Probably not as rapidly as it has been for the following couple of decades. But in the huge image, nonetheless very quick. For just one very simple explanation: the digital transformation of advertising is considerably from around, and it continues to be one particular of the biggest levers each and every business on the world has for successful and retaining customers.

Specially in the complicated moments in advance, excellent martech will be essential to survival good results.

Overlook valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these past few decades. Profits is the floor truth of sizing an industry. And I’m 99.9% selected martech earnings will expand 12 months-above-12 months for the rest of this 10 years.

And to repeat the mantra of this post: it’s not just martech. The whole software program market has great advancement in advance of it. The inspiring chart previously mentioned from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is equally an accurate glance-back again at software program profits progress more than the earlier five a long time, but also a reasonably conservative extrapolation of average compound yearly expansion of program income for the upcoming two a long time.

Two items pop out promptly from that chart:

Initial, holy cats, the sizing of what the software program field is very likely to mature to by 2050 dwarfs wherever we are these days. “Software consuming the world” is program getting over extra and more of each and every side of the economic system. Globally GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it is envisioned to be ~$165 trillion. It’s actually not that nuts to believe of software earning up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of overall GDP.

Second, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Terrific Recession in 2008 hardly sign up as little dents in the upward slope of this mountain. That is not to trivialize the issues so numerous faced in people a long time. But putting all those hurdles in point of view of the long video game, the over-all trajectory of the program field has not been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic business enterprise cycles. I feel that’s likely to keep on being correct for this era and most likely the future.

All of which prospects me to conclude that The Terrific Application Explosion will continue by way of these up coming pair of years. And on the subsequent wave of recovery and expansion, the progress in new application applications might incredibly effectively hit light-weight speed ludicrous velocity.