Between May 29 and July 29, 2019, SaaS Advisor hosted the first Martech Challenges focused on Social Listening software. This initiative aimed to provide an in-depth comparison (features versus features) of the leading Listening solutions, offering brands valuable insights.
First, we audited the market and interviewed over 100 stakeholders, including software vendors, advertisers, agencies, and research institutes. Below, we present a comprehensive overview of the Social Listening market as of late 2019, along with numerous key statistics.
Martech: An Ever-Increasing Expense
According to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2019, technology now accounts for 29% of total marketing budgets. This is currently the largest marketing investment line (and the only one on the rise), surpassing talent (24%), paid media (23%), and agencies (23%).
…But the Market Remains Increasingly Complex!
As we observe daily in our missions at SaaS Advisor, the explosion in the number of SaaS tools for digital transformation makes the market time-consuming and nearly opaque for Marketing, Communication, and Digital departments responsible for selecting the right tools. For instance, according to chiefmartec.com, which publishes the renowned Marketing Technology Landscape, the number of recognized SaaS solutions has surged from 150 in 2011 to over 7,000 today, representing a staggering growth rate of +4,700% in 8 years!
Social Listening in Martech
First, let’s define Social Listening. It involves monitoring (collecting and analyzing) all the traces (messages, posts, comments, reviews, videos, photos, etc.) that users leave on the web (news sites, blogs, forums) or social media regarding a brand, product, organization, executive, or news event.
Social Listening represents just one sub-category among the six major Martech categories.
artech.
The chart categorizes Martech into 6 main families (Advertising / Content / Social / Commerce / Data & Management), and nearly sixty sub-families.
The Social Listening Market
The market is composed of various players, including:
- Economic Intelligence Providers: Like KB Crawl,
- Traditional Monitoring Tools: Such as Kantar or LexisNexis,
- Solution Suites Offering Listening Modules: Like Sprinklr or Salesforce,
- Freemium Tools: Such as Mention or Alerti,
- Pure-Players: Like Brandwatch, Synthesio, Digimind, Talkwalker, Linkfluence, Youscan…
In 2012, several analysts, including Forrester, predicted the market would reach $10 billion by 2020. SaaS Advisor interviewed over 50 industry players and estimates the market size for 2018 at $2 billion, with only $600 million attributed to technologies. Thus, we are far from the predictions.
2018: A Year of Disruptions for Social Listening
From a data perspective, 2018 saw significant changes with the introduction of GDPR, requiring vendors to be "data compliant." Additionally, vendors rely on data from social networks and are subject to varying degrees of access policies and closed APIs. Last year, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal drastically reduced the volume of collectable messages on Facebook and Instagram. Twitter also implemented a new pricing policy, limiting the future of smaller solutions.
Moreover, 2018 marked the beginning of market consolidations. Notable mergers include Brandwatch & Crimson Hexagon, Meltwater & Sysomos, Cision & Falcon.io, Linkfluence & Scoop.it, as well as Synthesio acquired by Ipsos and Talkwalker by the American fund Marlin Equity Partners. For more details on these updates and the history of Social Listening, please refer to our article: 2018-2019, The Consolidation of the Social Listening Market.
Despite these initial consolidations, the market remains highly fragmented. The top 10 players hold 50% of the market, with the leader having only 15%. Further mergers are anticipated in the coming years.
In the context of the Martech Challenges, we sought to understand user perspectives and usage, whether from brands or agencies. We interviewed over a hundred professionals (primarily in the French market) using Social Listening tools for our benchmark: CMO & CDO Social Listening Uses 2019.
Here are some key findings:
Before presenting the results of our challenge, it was essential for us to lay the groundwork through an audit and to precisely assess the current state of the market.
Want to Learn More About Martech Challenges?
Interested in evaluating your Listening tool?
Continue Reading
Discover more about the results of our challenge on our blog
