• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 12, 2015

The explosion of tech companies in the marketing space continues to dizzy even the savviest experts. It's confusing because many companies operate across multiple sectors. Similar to some of the LUMAscapes organized by LUMA Partners, Scott Brinker, co-founder at ion, created a landscape graphic to demonstrate the size of the tech marketing.

This year the chart (see full link image) lists 1,876 companies and open-source projects representing 43 categories, just about doubling from 2014. Brinker acknowledges that it's not a comprehensive list, but it is close. He also wanted to prove that the broader marketing technology space dwarfs the more well-known ad tech industry.

Last year's chart represents 947 different companies that provide software for marketers, organized into 43 categories across 6 major classes.

Tech companies, especially software-as-a-solution type marketing software start-ups, continue to blossom at an incredible rate. IDC predicts that companies worldwide will spend about 22.6 billion for marketing software in 2015, rising to $32.3 billion by 2018.

Some of the category names have changed, such as performance and attribution. "I broke out from the social media category a separate category for influencer marketing," he said. "We're now seeing a set of companies specializing in managing relationship with influencers."

Brinker hopes the chart will help communicate the scale and scope of the industry, and the need to build a department within companies that can manage the technology across business units. He believes the explosion in marketing technology is driving the rise of marketing technologists, a new class of hybrid marketing/IT professionals who architecture and operate increasingly sophisticated tech-powered capabilities within the marketing department.

The use of technology will not slow in the coming years, but rather excel. The chart created for 2016 will likely look very  different. This year, Brinker expects to see new marketing technology around the Internet of Things and the digital physical experiences that consumers will have as a result.