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Event Marketing in the Age of AI, 2025

Laurie Buczek, Wayne Kurtzman — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey reveals that event marketing remains a cornerstone of B2B brand building and lead generation, with nearly half of tech buyers planning to use events for in-person collaboration over the next year. While economic uncertainty has led some CMOs to pause or decrease investment in large-scale events, overall budgets for event marketing are rising — driven by the adoption of AI, diversification of event formats, and a focus on immersive, hyper-personalized experiences. Marketers are moving away from a "one size fits all" approach, leveraging hybrid, virtual, and intimate in-person events to meet evolving audience expectations and maximize ROI.

“AI is revolutionizing event marketing, enabling brands to create unforgettable, personalized experiences that resonate deeply with their audiences," states Laurie Buczek, Group VP, IDC Executive Insights. “Event marketing is no longer just an option — it’s a strategic imperative for building strong brands in today’s competitive landscape.”

Patient/Consumer-Centric Care Trends and Insights, 2025

Jennifer Eaton, Heriberto Roman, Nigel Wallis — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey includes insights and data from IDC’s April 2025 Healthcare Provider Industry Insights Survey.

"Patient/consumer-centric care" is one of the several initiatives explored in the 2025 survey, which examines the strategies, adoption, and impact of patient- and consumer-focused care models across a diverse range of healthcare provider organizations worldwide. The survey sample includes 766 respondents representing hospitals, outpatient/ambulatory care centers, medical testing and diagnostic services, and home and community care services.

This document provides information about the following topics:

Approaches to delivering patient- and consumer-centric care across healthcare settings
Key drivers and challenges in implementing patient-focused care models
Impact of patient-centric initiatives on clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, and patient experience
Strategic priorities and investment plans for enhancing patient/consumer-centric care in healthcare provider organizations

Security, Risk, and Compliance Executives Aspire to Fill Broader Business-Oriented Roles

Frank Dickson — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight explores the shifting aspirations and career trajectories of chief information security officers (CISOs) based on data from IDC's Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey conducted in September 2025. The findings reveal that only 19% of CISOs wish to remain focused on traditional security responsibilities, with many expressing interest in broader business leadership roles such as COO, CMO, or positions centered around trust, risk, and compliance. The analysis highlights how the CISO role, once rooted in technical expertise, is increasingly seen as a stepping stone to more strategic, cross-functional leadership positions. The presentation also contrasts the evolving nature of the CIO role, which is becoming more infrastructure focused as technology spending shifts to business units. IDC concludes that security executives are positioning themselves as key players in business transformation, leveraging their organizational insight and leadership skills to pursue elevated roles within the enterprise.

Zeta Global to Extend Product Lines and Global Reach with Marigold Enterprise Business Acquisition

Gerry Murray, Roger Beharry Lall, Tapan Patel — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Zeta Global has entered into a definitive agreement with Marigold to acquire Marigold's enterprise software business, including Marigold Loyalty, Cheetah Digital, Selligent, Sailthru, Liveclicker, and Grow.

Building Outcome-Based Pricing Models for Financial Applications: Strategies and Best Practices

Tiffany McCormick, Kevin Permenter — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines outcome-based pricing models in financial software, emphasizing alignment of vendor compensation with customer success via micro-KPIs. It outlines strategies for metric selection, technology integration, and flexible pricing to enhance efficiency and customer loyalty.

"Where it makes sense, shift from selling software features to delivering measurable financial outcomes. Outcome-based pricing aligns vendor success with customer value, transforming partnerships in the financial software industry." — Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications, IDC

Shopware Community Day 2025: Advancing Agentic AI, B2B Commerce, and Ecosystem Collaboration

Mark Casidsid — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note discusses the main takeaways from Shopware’s Community Day held in September 2025. It also outlines key strategy and product updates and provides IDC's analysis of Shopware’s ongoing initiatives and announcements from the event.

"Discussions at Shopware’s Community Day underscored the importance of coupling automation through agentic AI with transparency and merchant oversight to address practical adoption barriers. As B2B commerce increasingly incorporates autonomous AI, ensuring clear governance and control mechanisms remains central to industry acceptance and operational reliability. In this regard, there are significant opportunities to collaborate across the ecosystem to drive joint innovation and develop shared standards that support responsible AI adoption." — Mark Casidsid, senior research analyst, AI-enabled business commerce, partner relationship, and ecosystem management, IDC.

Stagwell Prepares for Renewed Growth as It Bets the Farm on The Machine

Douglas Hayward — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note highlights Stagwell's preparation for renewed growth as the company bets on The Machine. Stagwell is still in the early stages of its return to sustained market-beating growth. But it is doing the right things by building a platform-based operating model underpinned by a robust AI-enabled technology, data, and workflow backbone. It has strong assets in the shape of Code and Theory, 72andSunny, Anomaly, Assembly, and Marketing Cloud. If its new "central nervous system" codenamed The Machine delivers what it promises, then Stagwell is back in the race.

CMO Realities: Economics, Changing Landscapes, and the Need for Adaptive Planning

MaryAnn Holder-Browne — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective details the current realities for CMOs. The volatility of today's economy has made static annual marketing plans a liability. Inflation, tariffs, and global trade pressures are rapidly shifting market conditions, and traditional calendars cannot adjust with agility. IDC's Impacts of Economic Uncertainty on Marketing Survey shows that 6 in 10 CMOs have already moved to quarterly scenario-based planning, which signals a decisive shift toward shorter, more responsive planning cycles.

Adaptive planning is no longer optional, and for CMOs who face the dual challenge of heightened competition and internal pressures for growth, this discipline provides the ability to respond quickly without losing strategic direction. Yet adaptive planning is only half of the equation of success in today's economy. With marketing dollars moving sharply toward AI, automation, and martech modernization, CMOs must ensure that automation enhances, rather than erodes, trust in customer interactions and that AI is harnessed with clear guardrails for accuracy, transparency, and accountability. CMOs today have an opportunity to bring these imperatives together — adaptive planning, responsible automation, and AI integration will together supply the power to execute the shifts in programming at scale and with measurable impact. Adaptive planning plus responsible use of automation and AI helps marketing evolve from reactive tactics to resilient performance-driven growth function.

"The path forward for CMOs to be orchestrators of growth means adaptive planning paired with responsible automation and AI use. That's how CMOs will turn disruption into growth," says MaryAnn Holder-Browne, research manager, CMO Advisory at IDC

AI & Agentic AI at Work: Tech Buyer Perspective in EMEA, 2025

Meike Escherich — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey assesses the adoption of AI-enabled work models across EMEA organizations, identifies key adoption trends, and determines barriers to large-scale AI deployment. Our 2025 Future of Work Survey with 690 business leaders in EMEA finds that automation and AI adoption in EMEA is rising fast, though it is hampered by slow enterprise rollout, weak frameworks, and cultural inertia.

"Despite 66% adoption of GenAI assistants, 56% of EMEA AI projects still stall at pilot phase, proving vision outpaces readiness and scalable execution," said Meike Escherich, associate director, IDC’s AI-Enabled Future of Work, EMEA. "Vendors should invest in robust, prebuilt agentic AI solutions that prioritize IT and customer service, and support clients with upskilling and practical pilots to overcome adoption hurdles and drive enterprise-scale impact."

ActiveCampaign's Innovation Keynote Cements Focus on AI-Powered Autonomous Marketing for SMBs

Roger Beharry Lall — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

At its Fall 2025 Innovation Keynote on September 30, ActiveCampaign announced a significant strategic shift, moving beyond traditional marketing automation to a new paradigm it calls "autonomous marketing." The company unveiled a redesigned platform powered by Active Intelligence, a new AI engine designed to transform marketing from a series of manual workflows into a goal-driven, automated process.