GTM AI Index
Index › GTM data and infrastructure › September 2026 Edition

Data management platforms

Asked as “data management platform for audiences”, and as “DMP”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 57 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Segment
Contested
18% of first choices, contested.
ShowinginAll 73 categories →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessSegment16%ContestedStanding →Mid-marketSegment18%ContestedThis pageEnterpriseSalesforce Data Cloud20%ContestedStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Segment18%6%34accepted challenger
02Hightouch11%4%23accepted challenger
03Tealium7%12%17accepted challenger
04BigQuery4%0%12accepted challenger
05Demandbase4%10%10accepted challenger
06BlueConic2%0%13accepted challenger
07Snowflake2%26%19criticized challenger
08Salesforce Data Cloud2%30%20criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11Adobe Real-Time CDP0%53%15criticized challenger
10Databricks0%19%16accepted challenger
09Fivetran0%0%11accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
Segment vs HightouchSegment vs TealiumHightouch vs Tealium

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative30%
Key
01Segment18%
02Hightouch11%
03Tealium7%
04BigQuery4%
05Demandbase4%
06BlueConic2%
07Snowflake2%
08Salesforce Data Cloud2%
09Fivetran0%
10Databricks0%
11Adobe Real-Time CDP0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Salesforce Audience Studio
88%
7 of 8 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“you should avoid **traditional, legacy Data Management Platforms (DMPs)** like Adobe Audience Manager or Salesforce Audience Studio” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt
Adobe Real-Time CDP
53%
8 of 15 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Avoid enterprise giants like Adobe Real-Time CDP or Salesforce Data Cloud. They are too expensive” Gemini 3.5 Flash, paraphrase prompt
Snowflake
26%
5 of 19 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid Snowflake** for sensitive data storage until security issues are resolved” Mistral Small, negative prompt
Adobe Audience Manager
78%
7 of 9 labels negative · 4 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“you should avoid **traditional, legacy Data Management Platforms (DMPs)** like Adobe Audience Manager or Salesforce Audience Studio” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: four of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

19 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 4 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 199 links across 103 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page. The other 8 models searched through a gateway that returned no source list on this edition.

cdp.com
8 answers · 13 citations · 2 models
improvado.io
vendor site · Improvado8 answers · 12 citations · 2 models
domo.com
vendor site · Domo7 answers · 7 citations · 2 models
decentriq.com
vendor site · Decentriq5 answers · 7 citations · 2 models
matillion.com
vendor site · Matillion5 answers · 7 citations · 2 models
pipeline.zoominfo.com
vendor site · ZoomInfo4 answers · 5 citations · 2 models
affroom.com
4 answers · 4 citations · 1 model
blog.hubspot.com
vendor site · HubSpot4 answers · 4 citations · 1 model
datalakeclub.com
4 answers · 4 citations · 2 models
gartner.com
vendor site · Gartner3 answers · 5 citations · 3 models
demandbase.com
vendor site · Demandbase3 answers · 3 citations · 2 models
fortegrp.com
3 answers · 3 citations · 2 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

domo.com/learn/article/best-data-management-platforms
7 answers · 2 models
decentriq.com/article/best-data-management-platforms
5 answers · 2 models
matillion.com/learn/blog/data-management-platforms
5 answers · 2 models
affroom.com/blog/best-data-management-platforms
4 answers · 1 model
blog.hubspot.com/service/data-management-platform
4 answers · 1 model
cdp.com/basics/cdp-vendors
4 answers · 2 models
cdp.com/glossary/data-management-platform-dmp-vendors
4 answers · 2 models
datalakeclub.com/best-data-management-platforms-for-mid-market-companies
3 answers · 2 models
fortegrp.com/insights/top-19-data-management-tools-platforms-in-the-usa
3 answers · 2 models
gartner.com/reviews/market/data-management-platforms
3 answers · 3 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best data management platform for audiences for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which DMP would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top data management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best data management platform for audiences for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a data management platform for audiences. What should we look at?”Negative“Which data management platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Salesforce Data Cloud
Four alternatives6sense, BlueConic, Hightouch, Segment
against: Adobe Real-Time CDP, Tealiumno first choiceChangedno first choiceCoffee
Two alternativesSegment, Treasure Data
no first choiceagainst: Databricks, Informatica
GPT-5.4 miniHightouch
Three alternativesActionIQ, BlueConic, Tealium
Adobe Real-Time CDP B2B EditionChangedagainst: Adobe Audience Managerno first choice
Fourteen alternativesAirbyte, Alation, BigQuery, Collibra, Databricks Lakehouse, Fivetran, Informatica MDM, Microsoft Purview, Reltio, SAP Master Data Governance, Salesforce Data Cloud, Segment, Snowflake, mParticle
against: Informatica PowerCenter / Cloud Data IntegrationRudderStack
One alternativeHightouch
against: Adobe Real-Time CDP, Salesforce Audience Studio, Segment, Snowplow, Treasure Data, mParticleno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashAdRoll ABM, BlueConic, Hightouch, HubSpot Marketing Hub
One alternativeSegment
against: 6sense, Adobe Real-Time CDP, Demandbase, Salesforce Data Cloud6sense, DemandbaseChanged
Three alternativesBlueConic, Hightouch, HubSpot Breeze Intelligence
against: Adobe Real-Time CDP, Oracle BlueKai, Salesforce Audience Studio/Krux, Salesforce Data CloudDatabricks, Snowflake
Four alternativesInformatica, Microsoft Fabric, Salesforce Data Cloud, Segment
Hightouch, RudderStack
Five alternativesApache Unomi, Census, HubSpot, Klaviyo, Piwik PRO
against: Adobe Audience Manager, Salesforce Audience Studio, SegmentCensus, Hightouch
Four alternativesGrowthLoop, LayerFive, Segment, Zeotap
against: Adobe Real-Time CDP, Salesforce Data Cloud, mParticleagainst: Adobe Audience Manager, Oracle Advertising Suite, Salesforce Audience Studio
Perplexity SonarDemandbase
Three alternativesHightouch, Segment, Tealium
Lotame, PermutiveChanged
One alternativeDemandbase
against: Adobe Audience Manager, Oracle BlueKai, Salesforce Audience StudioBigQuery, Databricks, Snowflake
Seven alternativesCollibra, Denodo Platform, Fivetran, Informatica IDMC, Matillion, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Purview
MotherDuck
Two alternativesLotame, Permutive
against: Adobe Audience Managerno first choiceagainst: AWS-native stacks, Azure-native stacks, Cassandra, Databricks, Google Cloud-native stacks, Informatica IDMC, ScyllaDB, Snowflake
Grok 4.1 FastSegment
Three alternativesBlueConic, Hightouch, Tealium
against: Salesforce Data CloudSegmentHeld
Two alternativesHightouch, Tealium Customer Data Hub
against: Salesforce Data CloudDatabricks, Snowflake
Nine alternativesAlation, Amazon Redshift, Atlan, BigQuery, Collibra, Fivetran, Informatica IDMC, Microsoft Fabric / Purview, dbt
RudderStack
Three alternativesJitsu, PostHog, Segment
against: Adobe Real-Time CDP, Hightouch, Salesforce Audience Studiono first choiceagainst: AWS, Alation, DataGrail, LastPass, Microsoft, Snowflake, Talend Open Studio
Mistral SmallAdRoll ABM
Nine alternatives6sense Revenue AI, Clay, Factors.ai, HubSpot Breeze Intelligence, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Data Cloud, Segment, Terminus, ZoomInfo MarketingOS
ZoomInfoChanged
Two alternativesAdobe Real-Time CDP, Lotame Spherical
against: Audience ManagerInformatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud
Eleven alternativesAWS Data Management Suite, Collibra, Databricks Lakehouse, IBM Cloud Pak for Data, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Purview, Oracle Enterprise Data Management, SAP Master Data Governance, Segment, Snowflake Data Cloud, Talend
BigQuery, ClicData
Six alternativesAirbyte, Google Analytics 4, Hightouch, OnAudience, PostgreSQL, Snowflake
no first choiceagainst: BigID, Okta, OneTrust, Snowflake, Varonis
DeepSeek V4 FlashHightouch
Two alternativesBlueConic, Segment
against: Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Real-Time CDP, Oracle BlueKai, Salesforce Data Cloud, TealiumHubSpot, Segment, TealiumChanged
Ten alternatives6sense, AdRoll ABM, Apollo.io, BlueConic, Bombora, Clay, Demandbase, Hightouch, RB2B, ZoomInfo
against: Oracle BlueKai, Salesforce Audience Studiono first choice
Sixteen alternativesAtlan, Azure Purview, Collibra, Databricks, Estuary, Fivetran, Informatica IDMC, Informatica MDM, Matillion, Microsoft Purview, Pimcore, Reltio, SAP Data Intelligence, SAP MDG, Snowflake, Talend
against: IBM InfoSphere MDM, Oracle Enterprise Data ManagementRudderStack
Six alternativesActiveCampaign, Customer.io, Jitsu, Klaviyo, PostHog, Segment
against: Adobe Audience Manager, Lotame, Oracle BlueKai, PermutiveHightouch
Four alternativesBlueConic, Census, Segment, Tealium
against: Alation, Collibra, Elasticsearch, Informatica, MinIO, MongoDB, Redis, SAP Master Data Governance, Semarchy, Snowflake
Llama 4 MaverickMCH Strategic Data
Two alternativesImprovado, ZoomInfo
no first choiceChangedno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashSegment
Three alternativesBlueConic, Customer.io, Hightouch
SegmentHeld
Three alternativesBlueConic, Hightouch, Tealium
BigQuery, Snowflake
Six alternativesAmazon Redshift, Azure Synapse, Databricks, Fivetran, Microsoft Fabric, dbt
ClicData, Segment
Five alternativesFivetran, Klaviyo, Snowflake, Versium REACH, dbt
against: Informatica IDMCSegment, Tealium, mParticle
Five alternativesFivetran, LiveRamp, RudderStack, Snowflake SaaS Marketplace, Snowplow
against: ClickHouse, Databricks, Druid, Older Oracle DB, PostgreSQL, SingleStore, Teradata
Kimi K2Apollo.io, Segment
Four alternatives6sense, BlueConic, Demandbase, HubSpot Breeze Intelligence
SegmentChanged
Three alternativesHightouch, Salesforce Data Cloud, Tealium
no first choiceGoogle BigQuery + Ads Data Hub
Four alternativesApache Atlas, Salesforce Data Cloud, Snowflake, dbt
Segment, Tealium
Five alternativesActionIQ, Census, Hightouch, LiveRamp, Lotame
against: Adobe Real-Time CDPagainst: National Public Data, Progress MOVEit, Salesforce Audience Studio, Snowflake
GLM 4.7 FlashXZoomInfo Marketing
Three alternativesAdRoll ABM, Demandbase, Lotame Spherical Platform
Tealium Customer Data HubChanged
Two alternativesLiveRamp, Salesforce Data Cloud
against: Lotame Sphericalno first choiceClicData, Customer.io
Three alternativesHightouch, RudderStack, Segment
no first choiceagainst: DataGPT, Krux / Salesforce Audience Studio, Okta Support System, Oracle BlueKai, Datalogix, ID Graph, ServiceNow, Trello, ai-surge.cloud
MiniMax M2.5Lotame
Two alternativesApollo.io, Salesforce Data Cloud
StackAdapt, TealiumChanged
Three alternativesDemandbase, Hightouch, Lotame Spherical
no first choiceAtroCore, BigQuery, Pimcore, Snowflake
Two alternativesFivetran, dbt
no first choiceagainst: AT&T, Amazon, Google/Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 04:13yes1311 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-14 23:49yes45 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 03:48yes1928 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 03:04yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 00:44yes08 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-14 23:19yes09 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 01:36yes016 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 04:24yes02 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 02:06yes041 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-14 23:04yes038 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 00:12yes033 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 04:23yes015 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-14 23:45no04 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 03:10yes35 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 02:51yes1225 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 04:45yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 04:15yes011 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 00:46yes08 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-14 23:17yes014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 01:08yes02 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 02:52yes044 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 03:30yes039 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-14 23:55yes062 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-14 23:09yes024 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-14 22:57yes1312 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 00:40no012 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 03:45yes1528 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-14 23:03yes1911 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 02:18yes022 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 03:37yes011 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 02:54yes017 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 00:53yes02 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-14 23:05no030 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 04:41yes057 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-14 23:26yes031 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 02:28yes019 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-14 22:54yes1310 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-14 22:57no02 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 01:48yes1529 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 04:29yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 04:49yes06 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 03:53yes010 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 03:50yes022 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 01:28yes02 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 04:25yes029 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 04:50yes024 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 03:32yes0122 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 04:55yes019 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 02:27yes1712 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-14 23:55no010 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 02:41yes1128 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 03:55yes207 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 02:10yes07 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 00:51no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 05:00yes022 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 00:45yes02 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 00:37no057 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 00:29yes051 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 01:12yes057 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 01:19yes013 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 03:44yes178 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 02:38no05 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 05:05yes1319 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 04:39yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-15 04:56yes09 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-14 23:41yes013 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 00:00yes031 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-14 23:56yes02 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 04:21yes056 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-14 23:45yes045 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 01:00yes0129 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 03:51yes020 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
Adobe read as Adobe Real-Time CDP
Oracle read as Oracle BlueKai
Oracle (BlueKai) read as Oracle BlueKai
Salesforce read as Salesforce Audience Studio
Unresolved, counted raw
AT&T
AWS-native stacks
Ad Tech Gekko
Ads Data Hub
Alation Data Intelligence Platform
Audience Manager
Azure-native stacks
Chartbeat
Comscore
Cyera
DataGPT
Delta Lake
Druid
Elasticsearch
Google BigQuery + Ads Data Hub
Google Cloud Customer Data Platform
Google Cloud-native stacks
Informatica PowerCenter / Cloud Data Integration
Krux / Salesforce Audience Studio
LastPass
LayerFive
LinkedIn Matched Audiences / Predictive Audiences
Lotame Spherical Platform
Meta (Facebook/Instagram)
Microsoft
Microsoft (Azure/Exchange)
Microsoft ecosystem options
MinIO
Okta Support System
Older Oracle DB
Omeda
OpenSearch
Oracle Advertising Suite (BlueKai, Datalogix, AddThis)
Oracle BlueKai, Datalogix, ID Graph
Progress MOVEit
Redis
Salesforce Audience Studio/Krux
ScyllaDB
Sentra
Snowflake SaaS Marketplace
Valkey
Varonis
Versium REACH
Wiz
Zaius/Klaviyo
ai-surge.cloud
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in gtm data and infrastructure

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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