Data and resources present the most significant challenges to marketing and marketing operations professionals trying to manage and grow their martech stacks, according to our 2025 State of Your Stack report.
As previously reported, 2025 saw a rise in homegrown martech applications, which were on the verge of extinction in the 2024 MarTech Replacement Survey. The 2025 report also found that martech stacks grew in terms of the number of applications and capabilities.
The report said data integration is the biggest stack management challenge, cited by 65.7% of respondents. Mid-sized companies specifically identified data integration issues as their top concern.
Budget constraints are also a significant challenge, noted as the top barrier to adopting new martech tools by 51.5% of respondents — particularly for smaller companies.
When asked about the future of their martech stacks, respondents said data silos are a significant concern, cited by 24.7% of respondents.
Data silos and data integrations are linked, as both prevent a unified view of customer data. The rise of “composable” architectures with unified data layers like cloud data warehouses is seen as a potential solution to this issue.
Other notable challenges cited in the report include:
- Lack of skilled resources was a significant challenge, cited by 45% of respondents.
- The pace of change in the martech landscape (32.5%)2.
- Tool complexity (31.4%).
- Vendor management was the top martech challenge for large companies.
Cost of ownership is also a significant concern for the future of martech stacks, reported by 19.5% of respondents.
While data integration is a major management challenge, it ranks lower as a barrier to adopting new tools than budget and time/talent constraints. Despite the rapid changes brought about by AI, the report found that fear of change is not widely considered a major barrier to martech adoption.
The 2025 State of Your Stack Survey report is now available in four formats, no registration required. You can download a PDF of the report, listen to an AI-generated podcast of the findings, flip through a carousel of the report or watch the day one keynote session about the report with Scott Brinker of chiefmartec.com and Mike Pastore, editorial director at MarTech.
The 2025 State of Your Stack survey was conducted from November 2024 to February 2025. There were 169 completed responses. Invitations to take the survey were sent by email and via social media to members of the MarTech, chiefmartec.com and MarketingOps.com communities.
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