Mainstream
Advertising
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based arrangement in which affiliates earn a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant.
Directory
Technologies
Plain-English explanations of the technologies behind the stack, with the latest developments.
Growing
AI
AI Agents
AI agents are software that uses AI models to plan and carry out tasks toward a goal, often by calling other software tools, with less step-by-step prompting than…
Emerging
Advertising
AI Assistant Advertising
AI assistant advertising places paid messages inside or alongside the answers that AI assistants give.
Growing
Advertising
AI-Powered Paid Search
AI-powered paid search uses machine learning to choose which searches to show ads for, generate ad assets and pick landing pages, with less manual keyword control.
Emerging
SEO & Search
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer engine optimization (AEO), also called generative engine optimization (GEO), is the practice of making sure AI assistants and AI search features describe a brand accurately and include…
Growing
Advertising
Connected TV (CTV) advertising
Connected TV advertising is the buying and selling of ads on internet-connected televisions and streaming devices, including smart TVs, set-top boxes and game consoles.
Mainstream
Data
Consent Management
Consent management covers the tools and records used to ask people for permission to use cookies and personal data, and to respect their choices.
Mainstream
Analytics
Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of users or visitors who complete a desired action, such as a purchase or signup.
Mainstream
CRM
CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) software stores and organizes records of customers and prospects, their interactions and their deals.
Mainstream
CDP
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
A customer data platform collects customer data from many sources, unifies it into profiles, and makes those profiles available to other marketing and analytics systems.
Growing
Data
Data Clean Rooms
A data clean room is a secure environment where two or more organizations can combine and analyze data for agreed purposes, such as measuring advertising, without exposing the…
Growing
Data
Data Lakehouse
A data lakehouse is a data architecture that combines the low-cost storage of a data lake with the management and query features of a data warehouse.
Mainstream
Commerce
Digital Commerce Platforms
A digital commerce platform is software for running an online store: product catalogs, carts and checkout, orders and payments, and the integrations around them.
Mainstream
Analytics
Experimentation and A/B Testing
Experimentation in marketing means running controlled tests, most often an A/B test that randomly shows two versions of a page, email or ad to different people and compares…
Mainstream
AI
Generative AI
Generative AI refers to AI models that produce new text, images, code or other content in response to a prompt.
Growing
CMS
Headless CMS
A headless content management system stores content as structured data and delivers it through an API to any website, app or channel, rather than tying it to one…
Mainstream
Commerce
Headless commerce
Headless commerce is an e-commerce architecture in which the customer-facing front end is decoupled from the back-end commerce functions, with the two communicating through APIs.
Mainstream
CDP
Identity Resolution
Identity resolution is the work of deciding which records in different data sets refer to the same person or household, so that a customer can be recognized across…
Mainstream
Advertising
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product placement from people with expert knowledge or social influence in their field.
Mainstream
AI
Interactive voice response (IVR)
Interactive voice response is an automated telephone system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls, using keypad tones or speech recognition.
Mainstream
Data
Location Intelligence
Location intelligence uses data about places and the visits people make to them to target advertising and to measure whether advertising led to a visit.
Mainstream
Analytics
Marketing Analytics and Measurement
Marketing analytics and measurement tools collect data on how people find, use and buy from a brand, and attribute results to channels and campaigns.
Mainstream
Analytics
Marketing Attribution
Marketing attribution, also called multi-touch attribution, is the identification of the user actions that contribute to a desired outcome, such as a purchase, and the assignment of a…
Mainstream
Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation software runs repeatable marketing work such as email programs, lead nurturing, scoring and campaign workflows.