In this special report, we profile six brands that have transformed some of the industry’s most common marketing challenges into martech success stories.

• Pitney Bowes pulled together reams of marketing data from over 100 business units scattered across the globe to create a cohesive and actionable data story
• Thomas Cook leveraged behavioral information to execute campaigns in real-time to up-sell and cross-sell to existing customers
• Purina Animal Nutrition gave sales a better view into marketing activities, creating segmented campaigns to assist retailers and dealer networks
• Meliá Hotels International tracked social data to optimize its influencer marketing program across a diverse portfolio of properties
• National Instruments used event automation to improve attendee engagement before, during and after live events.
• Johnson & Johnson underwent a total digital transformation to improve customer experiences and ecommerce ROI

Marketers are currently spending an average of 16% of their marketing budgets on technology, according to an analysis of the so-called “martech” market released this morning by London-based WARC. That percentage, which has presumably grown in recent years as a result of an increasing reliance on data-based and programmatic technology, coincidentally is close to the historical norm -- 15% -- that marketers have paid ad agencies for buying media.

WARC’s report, which is based on a survey conducted by accounting firm Moore Stephens of more than 500 North American and UK brand marketers, estimates the martech marketplace currently stands at about $34.3 billion in annual spending from marketers.

Interestingly, half the respondents said they are dissatisfied and don’t currently have the technology tools they need to do their jobs.

"It’s not only a growing variety of digital marketing channels seeing more widespread adoption. Marketing technology and tools are also in abundance, with upwards of two-thirds of marketing leaders surveyed by Salesforce Research professing the use of anything from analytics to social listening tools and automation platforms."

Marketing technologies are essential to B2B marketers, with B2B firms having adopted 16 technologies on average, and lead generation being the top use for martech. See more from this study.

An ominous term, “dark martech” is the use of homegrown tools or even simple spreadsheets to manage marketing functions. In research by TBR, a technology analyst firm, more than half of the 250 surveyed use homegrown tools. In a post on the Chief Martec blog, TBR analyst, Seth Ulinski, attributes this to resistance to change, lack of support from the top and the recognition that we are still in the early adoption stages of marketing technology.

The top three areas where these homegrown solutions are most used include:

• Marketing operations (68%)
• Core marketing functions (63%)
• Marketing experience content (55%)