Martech vendors keep rebranding themselves—but the categories no longer reveal what their products actually do

Martech examined 24 content and experience platform vendors over six years and found that category labels have become marketing noise rather than product descriptors. One vendor cycled through six identities in six years—from Jamstack to agentic DXP—while only four of 23 vendors studied kept consistent category terminology. Testing by Wynter CEO Peep Laja found that 99% of B2B software homepages claim AI, 86% claim to save time, and category leaders share 57% average messaging overlap; when 100 B2B marketing leaders were asked to match anonymized CRM value propositions to brands, they scored 1.86 out of 5. A review of Gartner's Digital Experience Platforms Magic Quadrant revealed that while 13 of 17 vendors are shipping real AI capability, only 11 of 17 had homepage labels matching their actual product—three overstated AI development and three understated it, with some vendors rushing to adopt "agentic" terminology within weeks of analyst reports despite minimal product changes.