Martech Landscape 2023: 11,038 Tools, and Where PIM Sits

On 2 May 2023 the Martech Landscape Supergraphic listed 11,038 products, 11% more than the 9,932 charted in 2022. A larger map is a worse shortlist. PIM is one box on that map, and the buying work is still to name the job before you add another logo.

Chiefmartec published the 2023 edition during its Best of Breed Marketing Summit. Scott Brinker and Frans Riemersma counted a twelfth consecutive year of growth. The write-up on Chiefmartec is the source for the two totals and the 11%. Martechmap.com is the clickable version: analytics, customer experience, social, content, and a long tail of categories that do not belong on the same shopping list.

PIM is a category on the graphic, not a stack you can buy from it

Product information management shows up as one of those categories: a place to hold product data and send it to channels. Chris Jobse, co-founder of PIMvendors, contributed an overview of PIM solutions to the supergraphic. That is a map of vendors. It is not a PIMvendors product. PIMvendors does not sell or implement the software.

The so-what of 11,038 is selection cost. Nobody evaluates a map. You evaluate three or four products against a job you can describe: one record, governed attributes, publishing to the channels you actually have. What product information management is is that job in one page. PIM features and what they cover stops a feature grid that treats "has AI" and "can publish a price" as equal rows.

Consolidation does not shrink the decision

The original note on this graphic pointed at consolidation: vendors folding into wider stacks so one contract covers more of the work. That pressure is real, and it does not retire the selection. A suite that absorbed four logos still has to win on the product record, or you have bought a larger login. Acquisitions and funding in the PIM market tracks who bought whom, which is the fact you want when a category on the supergraphic disappears into a parent company between your longlist and your contract.

How to use the graphic on a Tuesday

Open the category you think you need. Write down the job in one sentence, including the channel that currently rejects your file. Then leave the graphic. How to select a PIM is the sequence after that: requirements, data you actually have, the people who will run it, and the cost of being wrong for three years.

The trade-off in a market this crowded is attention, not access. You can tour dozens of demos and learn the vocabulary of each booth. You can also score four vendors on the same ten scenarios and live with a gap you understood in advance. The second path is how a map of 11,038 becomes a decision. The first path is how it becomes a year.