Martech: Trends, Best Practices, and Examples

February 6, 2026    

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How are marketers currently approaching marketing technology (martech)?

 

The marketing technology world is always changing and evolving as vendors, services, and solutions expand to meet needs for advertisers, creators, and consumers alike. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is on the minds of marketers, many teams are trying to figure out what technology investments to make and how to remain ethical, privacy-compliant, and transparent when adopting AI into their processes.

Martech industry luminary Scott Brinker discussed the risks AI poses at a recent ANA event, stating, "One risk comes up in composability. When you ask AI to do things in that realm, how do you know you have the right to do those things — that you're staying compliant? We need to create some kind of guardrails, for instance, controlling who has access to what data. That's a risk, but it's a risk that I believe software is going to solve."

Brinker stressed, however, that the "bigger risk, in my opinion, is that companies can get left behind — like people who waited ten years to get on board with Google and only then tried to get a piece of the search engine juju. A third risk posed by AI is the impact it could have on labor markets. That's a real concern, but the real scary stuff there is quite some time away still. A lot of AI is focused on very particular tasks, while humans can remain focused on the larger strategy and the orchestration of the entire organization."

Other commentators focus on AI's applications rather than its risks. Jeff Hirsch, CEO at QuantumPath, believes that "agentic AI can be used to automatically set up a campaign [and] leverage different features across multiple DSPs, rebalance budget across platforms, resize creatives, and measure campaigns across different partners." Hirsch discussed the role of agentic AI in a piece for ANA, noting that "AI agents can be trained on ad-tech platforms to understand them inside and out. They can act autonomously to do the manual work. And they can gather data from across the supply chain and act on the insights."

With such applications available, martech teams can "decide what capabilities they are looking for and select agentic solutions that are ready to go out of the gate," as explained by Hirsch.

So, how can marketers stay focused and harness martech effectively and strategically? Martin Kihn, SVP of strategy at Salesforce, shared five recommendations during an ANA event, summarized in an the event recap:

  • Evolve martech stacks from siloed systems to unified, real-time platforms. Implement CDPs and AI-driven applications for personalized, scalable experiences.
  • Coordinate brand and demand campaigns for higher ROI.
  • Prepare teams for a hybrid human-AI future with autonomous agents.
  • Use data and dynamic creative to engage consumers.
  • Foster a culture of continuous innovation and cross-functional collaboration.

Marketers need to traverse the complicated landscape of tech stacks to better understand consumers, and particularly, understand what martech investments companies will need to make in order to survive and thrive.

Below are helpful best practices and trends. Don't forget to check out ANA's Marketing Technology hub as well as this guide on B2B and Martech.

Best Practices and Trends

  • The CMO's Playbook for Marketing Technology. ANA, March 2025.
    This playbook is designed to guide CMOs through the complexity of today's martech landscape, offering strategies and insights to build a high-performing marketing technology operation. By mastering these tools and practices, CMOs will not only drive marketing excellence but also position their organizations for long-term success in an increasingly connected world.

    NOTE: This report is available as an ANA Amplify session; by clicking here, you can request a member-exclusive opportunity to dive deeper into this report with expert-led, tailored insights for your organization.

  • The State of Martech Implementation. ANA, June 2025.
    Martech is essential, but implementation remains a significant risk. Nearly one in three organizations say their most recent martech deployment failed outright or produced neutral results. To understand why some teams deliver fast ROI while others flounder, GNW Consulting and Demand Metric surveyed over 200 industry leaders.

    This report breaks down what separates successful martech rollouts from those that stall, offering a blueprint for maximizing ROI, avoiding common pitfalls, and turning implementation into a strategic advantage.

  • How AI Agents Will Work with Today's AdTech Stack. ANA, January 2026.
    Programmatic 1.0 technology favors the platform approach. Across the walled gardens, DSPs and SSPs, buyers must log into multiple UIs, upload thousands of line items, and then optimize within these separate systems. There's no visibility or communication platform to platform, which means buyers must do the complex work of triangulating across the supply chain on their own.

    Agentic AI presents an opportunity to improve upon these limitations. But rather than trade one platform for another, Agentic AI will behave differently. The DSP and SSP infrastructure won't be ripped-and-replaced. Rather, everyone in the ecosystem will add agentic capabilities in various places, in some cases offering net-new capabilities and in some cases upgrading and replacing some programmatic technology. Buyers have an opportunity to adopt AI agents to work on their behalf in this evolving market.

  • Best Practices in Martech Procurement. ANA, January 2026.
    At the ANA Measurement Powered Growth: Turning Insights into Impact event, Riippa shared sourcing strategies for AI hardware and software including model training infrastructure, compute capacity, and strategic partnerships with emerging AI vendors.

  • Salesforce's Kihn Talks Martech and AI for Improved Customer Experience. ANA, December 2025.
    Building a profitable customer experience requires transforming from loosely coupled systems to a real-time platform and connected teams. Salesforce's Martin Kihn demonstrated how leading marketers use technologies like CDPs and modern applications to evolve their martech stack for a hybrid human-AI future. Successful marketing and demand-gen engines improve from the bottom up: from data to applications to advanced AI and agents.

  • MarTech Committee Panelists Discuss Strategic Vendor Selection. ANA, November 2025.
    During an October 2025 ANA MarTech Committee meeting, a group of technology specialists discussed strategic vendor selection and procurement.

  • Strategy First: Building MarTech Ecosystems to Scale. ANA, October 2025.
    At the ANA's (Association of National Advertisers) virtual members-only conference, Stack Masters: Scaling MarTech Success, hosted by the NFL, leaders from diverse industries explored how organizations can build and scale effective martech ecosystems amid growing demands for personalization, privacy compliance, and operational efficiency. Speakers shared how aligning strategy, talent, and technology can drive innovation and deliver measurable outcomes.

  • MarTech Leaders From JellyFish, SAS, Snowflake Lead Cross-Channel Measurement Roundtable. ANA, August 2025.
    Participants shared candid insights about their measurement challenges, with interactive polling revealing that 66 percent lack unified taxonomies and 83 percent aren't using synthetic data, while industry practitioners offered solutions based on their real-world experiences.

  • Celebrate the Trailblazers: Meet the Winners of the 2025 ANA MarTech Awards. ANA, April 2025.
    The marketing technology world just got more exciting. On March 27, 2025, at the ANA AI and Technology for Marketers Conference in Austin, Texas, the ANA unveiled its inaugural Marketing Technology Innovator of the Year Awards, honoring standout individuals and teams that are transforming the industry.

  • Navigating the MarTech Maze: How Industry Leaders Stay Ahead. ANA, March 2025.
    Marketing technology (martech) offers endless possibilities — and equally abundant challenges. How do leading organizations maintain their competitive edge as budgets tighten and customer expectations soar? A recent session at the ANA AEF Future of Marketing Leadership Conference at Columbia Business School featuring marketing technology leaders from the NFL, Verizon, and Barclays revealed that success isn't just about implementing the latest AI tools — it's about building the right foundation, breaking down organizational barriers, and developing talent strategies that work.

  • How Today's Martech Leaders Are Tackling the Biggest Challenges and Driving Innovation in the Modern Marketing Environment. ANA, February 2025.
    During a session at the ANA's 2025 Future of Marketing Leadership Conference, a panel of marketing technology (martech) experts responded to a series of questions to share their perspectives on an array of issues facing the martech community.
  • Marketing Technology Procurement and Implementation Resources. ANA.
    Martech has been identified as an essential component of helping marketers manage business transformation, so the ANA has made martech a critical priority and has established it as a strategic capability to help marketers master the stack. martech spending has doubled in the past two years to approximately $121.5 billion globally in 2019, with the number of martech vendors growing to 8,000.

    As growth continues, so too does the complexity of the related issues that arise from the implementation and integration of what are often disparate solutions. ANA has built a solution by retaining the Venable LLP, our data and technology law firm, to create a suite of legal documents to streamline procurement decisioning and the marketing technology procurement process and drive toward a more efficient evaluation and negotiation. These documents will help marketers secure substantially better value out of their martech investment, drive growth, and eliminate waste.

  • Learn the A to Z of Martech. ANA.
    Consult the Training Takeaways at this link to get up to speed on all things martech. They cover it all, from making your business case to selecting vendors to establishing governance — all drawn from the ANA's Martech Foundations Certificate Program.

Examples

  • Northwell Health's Blueprint for Martech Independence. ANA, October 2025.
    Paul Lambson, assistant VP of consumer technology at Northwell Health, detailed how the organization transformed its martech ecosystem by bringing control in-house; integrating Epic, Google Cloud, and Salesforce; and aligning technology with enterprise strategy to boost agility, compliance, and personalized consumer engagement across the nation's largest healthcare network.

  • Leveraging MarTech, the NFL Drives Fan Growth and Engagement. ANA, June 2025.
    The NFL's marketing technology team has redefined how fans engage with sports, setting a new benchmark for innovation in the martech landscape. In 2024, the team onboarded and connected 30-plus clubs into a league-wide martech stack, enabling clubs with new capabilities like orchestrated messaging, real-time fan communications, and personalized fan experiences at scale. By leveraging tools like RT-CDP and multi-channel journey orchestration tools (for seven-plus channels), the team not only streamlined the lifecycle management of key fan journeys (e.g., for the NFL subscription-management platform) but also made possible a fusion of digital and in-person experiences and use cases.

  • Personalization, MarTech Transformation, and Customer Data Strategy at Deloitte. ANA, June 2025.
    In 2025, the ANA conferred its Silver MarTech Award for Client-Side Marketer Innovator of the Year on Trinadha Kandi, martech transformation leader at Deloitte Digital. Kandi has been instrumental in driving martech transformations for a variety of high-profile clients, providing strategic and technology leadership to modernize their marketing ecosystems. His work spans across industries, including finance, telecommunications, and retail, where he has successfully implemented innovative solutions to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.

  • MarTech in Action: Kellanova's Use of Precision Targeting and Analytics Dashboards. ANA, June 2025.
    In 2025, the ANA conferred its Gold MarTech Award for Client-Side Marketer Innovator of the Year on Louise Cotterill, senior director insights and intelligence at Kellanova, maker of food products that include cereals like Special K and Frosties, as well as Cheez-It crackers and Pop-Tarts. Cotterill prides herself on being a marketer first and technologist second. While many focus on chasing the newest tools, she approaches martech to solve real business problems — where success is measured not in implementation, but in outcomes. Her leadership philosophy keeps business growth as the north star, leading to exceptional in-market results, wide adoption across global teams, and scalable solutions that drive long-term value.

  • How Mattel Capitalizes on MarTech. ANA, June 2025.
    In 2025, the ANA conferred its Silver MarTech Award for Client-Side Marketer Innovator of the Year on Deepak Madhavan, director of enterprise architecture at Mattel. Madhavan has been the force behind one of the most significant martech transformations in the toy and entertainment industry. He leads technology architecture and innovation for digital, D2C, and B2B portfolios, ensuring that Mattel stays at the forefront of digital transformation and redefines play in the digital era. Under his leadership, Mattel has successfully made the transition from a fragmented, legacy-driven marketing infrastructure to a future-ready, composable, AI-powered ecosystem that seamlessly integrates marketing, commerce, and data platforms. His innovations have not only enhanced operational efficiency but have also unlocked new revenue streams, elevated consumer engagement, and positioned Mattel as a digital leader.

Webinars and Podcasts

  • New Year, New Data Playbook: Aligning Marketing and IT for 2026. ANA, January 2026.
    For years, a data tug-of-war has defined the relationship between marketing and IT. Marketing pulls for speed, demanding faster access to data for a growing list of tools. IT pulls for control, locking data down to ensure security and governance. The result? A stalemate that leads to endless friction, missed opportunities, and a blame game that helps no one. Now, the demands of AI and privacy have turned this old struggle into an urgent business risk. The status quo is no longer an option. It's time for both sides to drop the rope. The real enemy isn't the other department; it's an outdated architectural model that creates this conflict. This session provides a new playbook for winning together: a unified data foundation that gives marketers the self-service freedom to drive business outcomes, while giving IT the absolute security and governance they require.

  • Spotting Red Flags in MarTech with Danilo Tauro. ANA, November 2025.
    Danilo Tauro has built a career on his ability to connect people and processes to emerging technologies that drive growth and future-proof business strategies. A veteran who has worked with leading organizations like P&G, Amazon, and Uber, he now serves as a senior advisor at McKinsey & Co. and managing partner of the brand-new VC firm, CartographAI. With years of experience evaluating emerging martech tools, Danilo shares his best tips and insights for how marketers can spot both red and green flags when it comes to assessing tech solutions. Along with host Mike Berberich, Danilo covers how marketers can go beyond the vendor demo and see what is useful about a tech tool or platform and how it suits their specific needs, his top five questions to ask tech vendors when evaluating new tools, and how marketers can be a better partner for tech solution providers.

  • How to Tame Your MarTech Stack with Scott Brinker. ANA, July 2025.
    Ad Age once referred to Scott Brinker as the "Godfather of MarTech." That reputation is well earned, as Scott has built an entire career on being one of the foremost experts on marketing and technology in the entire industry. On this episode of On Scope, Scott — who serves as VP of platform ecosystem at Hubspot and is the editor of chiefmartec — shared his thoughts on how marketers can get a handle on technology gone wild. Along with host Mike Berberich, Scott covered what he feels are the biggest current challenges with MarTech, how marketers should approach assessing the full stack and selling the investment in necessary tools to a skeptical CFO, and what the acceleration of AI means for marketing technology going forward.

Training

  • Martech Foundations Certificate Program. ANA.
    The Martech Foundations Certificate Program is a self-paced online learning path featuring nine comprehensive courses. Tailored for marketing professionals aiming to elevate their expertise, this curriculum combines theoretical insights with practical applications, which are essential for mastering martech in today's data-driven ecosystem. Developed in partnership with marketing technology and data experts at Transparent Partners, courses range from Assessing Your martech Landscape to Crafting a martech Business Case to Understanding the Role of Governance in martech. Elevate your marketing technology capabilities with this comprehensive training designed to instill confidence and precision.

Tools

Committees

  • MarTech Committee. ANA.
    The MarTech Committee is focused on collectively improving and celebrating the products, people, processes, and partnerships that enable members to operationalize their marketing efforts at scale. This committee works with leading cross-functional experts to share, learn, and discuss the challenges and opportunities related to partner selection and integration, talent management, organizational excellence in working across departments, measuring ROI, and much more for members to secure better value out of their investment, drive growth, reduce waste, and eliminate redundancies.

The Marketing Knowledge Center actively connects ANA members to the resources they need to be successful. You can visit the ANA website to engage with the MKC in two ways.

  • Explore content to access best practices, case studies, and marketing tools. Our proprietary content includes Event Recaps, which share actionable insights from conference and committee presentations.
  • Connect with our ASK Research Service in real time for customized answers to your specific marketing challenges.
Source

"MarTech: Trends and Best Practices." ANA, 2026.

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