The merger of DemandScience and Terminus, announced on Tuesday, is the latest act of consolidation in the B2B media and lead generation landscape and emphasizes, once again, the importance of data to identifying and engaging B2B buyers.
DemandScience, which was founded in 2012, is a data aggregator that helps B2B companies identify and engage with potential buyers. It then targets those prospects with ads, events, email marketing, content syndication, BANT campaigns and more.
Terminus is an account-based marketing (ABM) platform that helps B2B vendors and agencies reach prospects at target accounts with ads served across a wide range of platforms, including LinkedIn, connected TV and audio ads. Its Terminus Data Studio feature functions like a CDP for Terminus users.
Dig deeper: Why B2B CMOs are frustrated with ABM platforms
A large B2B marketing pie, with a lot of players
Since neither company owns any media properties, both rely heavily on data, using data points like buyer intent, website engagement, relationship scores, job titles and lookalike audiences to identify prospects for their customers.
Now that the companies are combining their capabilities, they will initially focus on account-based experiences (ABX). In a release announcing the merger, the companies unveiled ABX by DemandScience, a global platform for marketers and sellers that powers concurrent ABM and syndication activation and delivers unified reporting across channels.
By some estimates, as much as $8 billion was spent on B2B marketing and lead generation in 2023, with that total predicted to surpass $21 billion by 2032. A number of players are vying for a piece of that pie, from traditional media companies to data aggregators. DemandScience competes with lead gen suppliers like Infuse Media and pharosIQ, media companies like Informa and data vendors like ZoomInfo.
In the ABM space, Terminus competes with 6sense, DemandBase and Bombora, among others.
Consolidation in this space is not uncommon. In early 2024, B2B media company Informa purchased TechTarget, a deal that focused on first-party data as the market braced for the potential loss of third-party cookies in Google’s Chrome browser. In October 2024, Third Door Media, the publisher of this website, was acquired by SaaS marketing platform Semrush.
Why we care: B2B marketing is an interesting place right now. Among SaaS providers, in particular, marketing is about elevating attribution to a science and measuring performance marketing efforts from initial touch to closed won.
Pushback against this approach is coming from marketers who believe brand building is essential to growing a business, and that without creating a message that resonates with buyers before they enter the buying cycle, growth becomes exponentially more difficult.
This schism will likely continue to play out in 2025, with some B2B revenue leaders predicting more B2C marketing tactics and leaders to be hired in the B2B sector over time.
Against this backdrop are lead gen providers like DemandScience that rely heavily on performance marketing budgets. They compete with everyone from LinkedIn to data providers like Lusha and ZoomInfo. It’s a crowded space and more consolidation is undoubtedly ahead.
The post DemandScience and Terminus merge, keeping data at the center of B2B marketing appeared first on MarTech.
