The CDP Reboot: The Turning Point
Part 4 of 4: Will CDPs evolve, dissolve, or disappear?
So, here we are. Part 4. If you've made it this far through the CDP Reboot series, you’ve seen the full arc, from promise to stall to disillusionment. And now? Now we look at the turning point.
This isn’t the part where I tell you which platform to buy, or what checkbox to look for on a vendor RFP. If anything, the last three parts should’ve made it clear that’s exactly the wrong mindset.
This is about the future of the category itself. What happens next, and what should happen if we’re honest about the role CDPs were meant to play in the first place.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: if we’re still arguing about what a CDP is in 2025, the debate is already over. The market moved on. It just didn’t leave a forwarding address.
How did we get here (a fast recap)
Maybe you are starting the series here, in that case, let me give you a quick recap on how we got here:
CDPs were born from fragmentation. Too many data sources, not enough cohesion.
They promised a unified customer view. Fast, marketer-owned, flexible.
Vendors rushed in. Definitions diverged. Features blended. Labels blurred.
Buyers got confused. Projects stalled. Trust eroded.
Now, we’re in a place where CDPs still exist.. but often as features in larger platforms, components in composable stacks, or part of “digital experience” suites.
The category didn’t die. It just dissolved into the rest of Martech.
Three futures for the CDP category
Let's see where we are headed without wasting any more of your time. From here, I see three likely paths for the CDP category:
Absorbed –> CDPs lose their standalone status and become native features of cloud data platforms, marketing clouds, or experience orchestration tools. We stop buying “a CDP” and start expecting CDP-like capabilities wherever customer data is stored.
Case in point: Databricks recently announced (April 2025) that it is now hiring a Principal Industry and Solutions Manager, CDP. They’re not building a CDP, they’re folding CDP use cases into a broader AI-native Lakehouse narrative. That’s not a death knell for the category. It’s proof that CDP capabilities are now foundational to broader enterprise architecture, and vendors are embedding them under new names and with new ambitions.
Redefined –> A more focused definition emerges: CDPs aren’t everything; they’re one specific thing (e.g., real-time activation layer, consent-aware profile service, first-party audience manager, or dare I say it, a more contextually focused engine for the next generation of CDPs). Niche players double down, and new leaders emerge with clarity.
Rebranded or Replaced –> The term CDP becomes too muddied to recover. The tech remains, but the label changes, maybe into Customer Data Infrastructure, Decisioning Layer, Contextual Data Infrastructures, or something we haven’t coined yet. Something that sounds new enough to clear the slate.
None of these outcomes are bad. But each requires us to be honest about what the tech can do, and what organizations can realistically support.
What this means for buyers
If you’re evaluating CDPs today, or trying to figure out how to resuscitate an implementation that went flat, here’s the advice I’d offer:
Start by ignoring the label and focusing on what your team actually needs to do. Can you describe the capabilities you’re missing without reaching for buzzwords?
Good, now be honest about your maturity. If your data’s a mess and your teams are misaligned, buying more tech won’t solve it.
Maybe you need a stack.
Maybe you need a simpler piece of it.
Either way, no single platform will make your customer data problems disappear. And no one vendor gets to own the customer experience, not entirely. It’s shared. That’s where the hard work starts.
Oh—and ask this at every vendor meeting: “What won’t this tool do well?” If they can’t answer, they’re not helping you. They’re selling you.
What this means for vendors
CDP vendors have a choice to make:
Do they fight to defend a blurry category?
or
Pivot to become part of something larger and better defined?
There’s nothing wrong with focusing on one piece of the puzzle, identity, consent, profile storage, and activation. But trying to do it all with the same half-baked feature set will not work.
The winners in the next phase will not only have APIs but also opinionated architectures, contextual data layers, clear roles, and pricing that reflects use rather than ambition.
If that sounds more like infrastructure than software, that’s because it is. And that’s okay. Being part of the plumbing means you’re necessary rather than irrelevant.
What this means for consultants and analysts
Let’s be real: we’ve helped create the mess. Overpromising. Oversimplifying. Encouraging RFPs before strategy. Hiding the boring, but essential, parts like governance and integration.
It’s time to shift from frameworks to fluency. From defining categories to helping orgs understanding and preparing for them.
We don’t need a new quadrant. We to share a clearer message and realistic outlook. And humility.
CDPs didn’t fail. We just uutgrew the illusion
The idea behind CDPs still matters. Unified profiles. Smart activation. Control over your own customer data.
But categories don’t succeed just because the tech is useful. They succeed when there’s shared understanding. Governance. Accountability.
Maybe we don’t need a new CDP category. Maybe we just need new expectations.
“CDP? That’s what we used to call it. These days, it’s just the data layer.”
~ a recent client, who’s not wrong
So here’s to the reboot. Not just of the category, but of how we think about data, ownership, and what it takes to turn potential into practice.
New name. New owner. Same problem …and now Databricks is getting in line to claim a slice of the action saying the quiet part out loud: the CDP is no longer a product. It’s a use case.
Let’s solve it better this time.
Series Recap: