What the 2026 Gartner CDP Report Really Means (and What We Learned from 2025)

Over the past week, the MarTech and CDP community has buzzed about Gartner’s latest direction on Customer Data Platforms as part of its evolving Magic Quadrant coverage. While Gartner’s official 2026 CDP Magic Quadrant report isn’t fully published online yet, discussions about how the category is being evaluated in 2026 , with emphasis on agentic AI, composable architectures and enterprise-scale readiness.

Let's take stock of where CDP technology stands, how it’s shifting, and what that means for vendors and buyers, with a balanced look at Adobe and Salesforce alongside the wider vendor landscape.

Why Gartner’s CDP Magic Quadrant Still Matters

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant methodology evaluates technologies on two axes - "ability to execute" and "completeness of vision". It then positions vendors into four quadrants: Leaders, Visionaries, Challengers, and Niche Players. For CDPs, this means assessing capabilities like:

• real-time profile unification and identity resolution,
• cross-functional data activation and analytics,
• AI-driven insights and automation,
• privacy-centric governance and compliance,
• extensibility into service, commerce and analytics systems.

This annual evaluation informs C-suite and tech decision-makers on long-term strategic fit as well as current execution strength.

A Look Back to 2025

The 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms (most recent published CDP Quadrant) evaluated 12 vendors and remains a key reference point.

👉 Here’s a link to the official 2025 report overview: 🔗 https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/6296015

Key themes from 2025 included:

• Salesforce emerged as a Leader, scoring highly for both execution and vision.
• Tealium was also recognised as a Leader for strong real-time and privacy features.
• Vendors such as Adobe and others were positioned in Visionary or Challenger segments, reflecting strengths in specific areas but differing enterprise-wide scope in the evaluation.

The 2025 report underscored that CDPs had outgrown being just marketing technology, becoming foundational for broader enterprise use cases - from customer service activation to AI-powered decisioning.

Early Signals in 2026

While Gartner hasn’t published the full 2026 CDP Magic Quadrant publicly yet, there are early insights from Gartner’s event programming and analyst commentary indicating a few evolutionary shifts:

📌 Enterprise-wide data architectures matter more - CDPs are increasingly judged on how well they integrate into broader data ecosystems beyond martech.

📌 AI integration and automation is front and centre - with Gartner’s narrative around agentic AI and machine-driven insights being key differentiators for forward-looking CDP platforms.

📌 Composable and extensible platforms stand out - vendors making clear choices on how their CDP integrates, extends, and activates across CRM, service, commerce, and analytics will likely be advantaged.

We’ll have more definitive ranking details once the full 2026 report is released, but these themes align with broader market shifts we’re already seeing.

How Adobe’s CDP Fits Into This Market

Adobe’s Real-Time CDP, part of AEP, has long been lauded for deep integrations with marketing, journey orchestration and analytics workflows. In the 2025 Magic Quadrant, Adobe sat in a Visionary position, reflecting strength in experience-centric capabilities while signalling room for expanded enterprise-wide execution.

Strengths often attributed to Adobe’s offering include:

• rich cross-channel personalisation and journey orchestration,
• tight coupling with Experience Cloud tools for analytics and engagement,
• strong support for identity resolution and data governance.

For organisations prioritising experience quality, deep personalisation and integration with content and analytics, Adobe remains a compelling option - especially where seamless customer journeys across channels are a priority.

That said, Visionary placement in 2025 often reflected that Adobe’s CDP prioritises marketing and experience use cases distinctly, and buyers evaluating broader enterprise activation (e.g. service or operational workflows) should weigh integration and deployment strategy carefully.

Salesforce’s Position and Claims

In the 2025 Gartner CDP Magic Quadrant, Salesforce Data Cloud was recognised as a Leader, scoring highest in Ability to Execute and furthest in Completeness of Vision among the 12 evaluated CDP vendors.

Salesforce’s strengths include:

• deep integration with its broader Customer 360 ecosystem,
• ability to scale real-time profile unification and activate that data across sales, service, marketing and automation,
• an architecture designed for enterprise-grade governance, compliance and AI readiness.

This positioning of highest execution and vision, underscores Salesforce’s strategic focus on embedding customer data as a core enterprise asset, rather than solely a MarTech tool.

For buyers focused on unified data across the entire business unit portfolio and linked to CRM, automation, analytics and operational workflows, Salesforce’s approach remains one of the strongest in the market.

Our Conclusion

As we enter 2026, Gartner’s CDP Magic Quadrant continues to be a critical strategic viewpoint; but it’s most useful when paired with deep evaluation of your organisation’s specific use cases, data architecture, and long-term objectives.

Adobe shines where experience integration and marketing orchestration are paramount. Salesforce stands out where enterprise-wide data unification and cross-domain activation are strategic priorities. Across the market, emerging focuses on AI integration, composability, and real-time activation are likely to shape the 2026 quadrant once published.

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