Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce and Marketo alone feature in the leadership group in the latest Gartner Marketing Hub Magic Quadrant research. The result is consistent with the widely held view in the sector that the runaway marketing tech industry is set to consolidate around a few key platform leaders.

And for many it can’t come soon enough. New entrants seem to emerge every day and the marketing tech and ad tech worlds look set for conflation.

But IBM has lost its marketing hub mojo despite last year’s acquisition of Silverpop. And Teradata, which announced last month it is selling its marketing group is relegated to the bottom of the fourth box – so still in the ball game, but more in the car park than in the corporate box.

Sitecore which has a strong position in the Microsoft ecosystem nevertheless sits at the back of a cluster of far more niche providers in one of the lesser quadrants and only just escaped a spot on the only wooden benches in the bottom left hand corner. Still at least they scored a ticket to the dance, unlike SAS for instance, which missed the cut altogether.

The report says, “Marketers need integration and coordination among systems to manage and optimize individual dialogues in real time, across channels, devices and contexts, on a continuous basis. Vendors from advertising, marketing automation and analytics disciplines are converging on this opportunity.”

The researchers profiles 21 companies – quite an extensive list for the Magic Quadrant research with most of those tested occupying more niche areas.

Of the leaders the analysts note;

• Adobe: Perhaps best-known for its creative tools, but it’s a pioneer in establishing the integrated “marketing cloud” category with analytics and experience management at its core. Many marketers have adopted Adobe as their standard for digital marketing applications, incorporating other providers only in areas where Adobe lacks offerings, such as e-commerce
• Oracle:  Consider Oracle if you are a sophisticated enterprise marketer with an appetite for data integration and enrichment. Its key differentiators are its data handling and audience building capabilities, and its wide suite of execution tools. Oracle Marketing Cloud’s native applications include campaign management and email, social publishing and advertising, data onboarding and management, mobile marketing, and content marketing.
• Salesforce: Best-known as a marketing automation, campaign management and social marketing provider. Its Active Audiences hub feature connects CRM profile data available to marketing channels such as email and site personalization with social advertising on Twitter and Facebook (including Facebook Audience Network).
• Marketo: While Marketo was originally designed around the needs of the B2B marketer, the company has invested in B2C capabilities and reports substantial growth in this sector. Consider Marketo if you are a midsize-to-large B2B or B2C enterprise in the consumer products, high tech, financial services, healthcare or education industry with a moderate to high level of digital marketing expertise.

According to Gartner, “The digital marketing hub category is still new, although its adoption by marketers is growing rapidly. Gartner surveyed a panel of 96 users referenced by the vendors in this report; 82 per cent of them described themselves as possessing a marketing hub consistent with Gartner’s definition. Of these, 70 per cent reported having gone live within the last three years.”

This article originally appeared on B&T’s sister business site www.which-50.com