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Addressing the Pipeline Conversion Gap: What CMOs and CROs Must Do to Turn Marketing Demand into Measurable Revenue

Andrea Siviero, Sudhir Rajagopal, Heather Hershey, Roger Beharry Lall — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Web Conference Proceeding examines the structural disconnect between pipeline and revenue, starting with a clear diagnostic: where conversion breaks down across the customer buying journey, and why traditional pipeline metrics fail to reflect true performance. It also presents a cross-functional perspective across demand strategy, revenue operations, and sales alignment. IDC analysts share how high-performing organizations turn demand into measurable revenue by aligning to how customers actually buy, improving handoffs and orchestration, and adopting metrics leadership trusts.

Most organizations are generating more pipeline than ever, yet revenue performance isn’t keeping pace. While the marketing-sourced pipeline has grown, conversion rates, deal velocity, and win rates have stagnated or declined. The challenge isn’t about demand; it’s about what happens next.

This IDC Web Conference Proceeding explores:

Where pipeline-to-revenue breakdowns most commonly occur, and how to diagnose them
How buying behavior has changed, and the implications for conversion, engagement, and journey design
What high-performing organizations do differently to connect demand generation to revenue outcomes
How to improve marketing, sales, and RevOps alignment to reduce friction and accelerate deals
Which metrics truly reflect revenue impact, and how to move beyond volume-based reporting
How to build executive confidence in marketing’s contribution to revenue

Industry Go-to-Market Handbook: Worldwide Oil and Gas, 2026

Gaurav Verma, Claudia Medina, Nigel Wallis — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation contains the IDC Worldwide Oil and Gas Go-To-Market Handbook, 2026, which is designed to support technology vendors in building their industry-focused narratives and go-to-market strategies. It should be used to tailor marketing messaging to industry-specific business priorities, sharpen portfolios, and create sales campaigns that resonate with prospects and customers. It helps tech suppliers to:

Align their company value propositions and messaging with key business priorities, challenges, and investment drivers in the oil and gas industry
Leverage the priorities and emerging business needs of existing customers and prospects to develop competitive messaging and campaign themes
Showcase how their companies’ products and services solve concrete business challenges within this value chain
Understand the significance and investment horizons of key programs and use cases, map them with their company capabilities, and translate into go-to-market action plans

The priorities, programs, and use cases discussed in this Industry Go-to-Market Handbook are selected by senior IDC analysts based on in-depth, ongoing IDC research, and conversations with key stakeholders in the worldwide oil and gas sector. Account-based actions must consider that individual company strategic business priorities and initiatives might differ across subindustries or organizations’ digital maturity.

“Oil and gas companies are no longer asking whether to digitize; they are deciding where to move faster and which technology partners have the depth to keep up. Technology suppliers that align their narratives with concrete operational outcomes, rather than generic platform capabilities, will command the conversations that lead to real deal flows,” said Gaurav Verma, research director, IDC Energy Insights.

Marketing Applications Banner Book: CX Path 2026

Nadia Ballard, Roger Beharry Lall, Douglas Hayward, Eric Newmark, Aly Pinder — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Pivot Table banner book provides the data set for the marketing applications category of IDC’s 2026 CX Path program.

The CX Path program includes a total of 14 application categories: advertising, marketing, sales, digital commerce, configure price quote (CPQ), product information management/product experience management (PIM/PXM), contact center and customer service, voice of the customer (VOC), customer experience (CX) orchestration, content and experience management, customer data platforms (CDPs), customer and digital experience analytics, aftermarket service life-cycle management, and price optimization applications.

Coverage includes application adoption, deployment models, budget plans and replacement cycle timing, purchasing preferences and attitudes toward CX SaaS buying channels, packaging and pricing options, and generative AI and agentic AI adoption and use for CX use cases. In addition, the program provides in-depth vendor reviews, vendor ratings, spend, and advocacy scores for all 14 application markets.

Reintroducing Accenture's Song Organization

Douglas Hayward — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective reintroduces Accenture's Song Organization, Accenture Song (fka Accenture Interactive). Accenture Song is a global leader in customer experience, marketing, and design transformation, leveraging deep industry expertise and advanced AI capabilities. With a distinct culture emphasizing creativity and human-centric growth, Song helps CMOs and enterprise clients drive revenue and efficiency.

"While clients praise Song's breadth, talent, and insight, challenges include delivery complexity and cost," said Douglas Hayward, senior research director, Worldwide Customer Experience Strategies and Services at IDC. "Song's approach blends productivity with growth, positioning itself as a strategic partner for end-to-end business reinvention."

CMO's Guide to Know Your Agent

Gerry Murray — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective provides guidance on applying and complying with know your agent (KYA), a governance and verification framework for managing interactions with agentic buyers. KYA implementation is a critical step on the path to agentic commerce readiness.

"Brands require new frameworks to manage agentic identity, trust, and accountability. Know your agent is an emerging standard for marketing organizations, and they should embrace KYA if they want to lead as agentic commerce scales. Learn from the share losses that unprepared brands suffered when webstores and mobile commerce scaled after deceptively slow starts." — Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Apps and Agents at IDC

OpenAI's Plug-Ins for Marketing

Gerry Murray — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

OpenAI's launch of Codex plug-ins and AWS Bedrock integration marks a strategic push into enterprise marketing technology, offering bundled tools for creative production, analytics, sales, and product design. Codex's enterprise-ready stack positions it as a cost-effective alternative, challenging established martech platforms to innovate user experience and workflow integration.

Sales Applications Banner Book: CX Path 2026

Nadia Ballard, Douglas Hayward, Michelle Morgan, Eric Newmark, Aly Pinder — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Pivot Table banner book provides the data set for the sales application category of IDC’s 2026 CX Path program.

AI Inference Infrastructure Optimization Demands Token Economics–Driven Decision-Making

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective shares an overview of how, as enterprises scale AI from experimentation to production, the explosive growth of inference workloads and agentic AI pipelines is making token cost management a board-level financial priority. Token economics (aka “Tokenomics”), the discipline of measuring, governing, and optimizing the full cost of AI token production and consumption, is emerging as the essential framework for every AI infrastructure, architectural, and purchasing decision.

IDC recommends that technology buyers build a full-stack token cost model capturing all infrastructure layers, including compute, storage, networking, power, cooling, and datacenter facilities, when comparing on-premises/dedicated versus cloud-based AI infrastructure options. “Enterprises need to reframe AI infrastructure decisions around token economics to accurately represent the true cost and benefits of AI infrastructure investments at scale,” explains Mary Johnston Turner, IDC research vice president, AI Infrastructure Strategies.

Gradial's Bid to Become the Agentic Execution Layer for Enterprise Marketing

Gerry Murray — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Gradial, the Seattle-based agentic marketing operations company, announced a $65 million Series C on June 17, 2026. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from VMG Partners, Madrona, and PruVen Capital. The financing values Gradial at $675 million and brings its reported capital raised to more than $110 million over 16 months. The company had closed a $35 million Series B in December 2025.

Gradial provides an orchestration and execution layer that simplifies and unifies the user experience (UX) across complex martech stacks. Its value proposition is based on removing the queues, handoffs, and repetitive production work that slow enterprise marketing operations. Supported integrations include Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Workfront, Sitecore, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, Jira, Figma, Wrike, Bynder, and other content, workflow, and campaign systems. The new funding reflects investor confidence in its "chat as workflow" vision for the future work of marketing.

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Are IT and Line-of-Business Buyers Approaching Growing Content and Experience Demands Differently?

Jordan Jewell — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how enterprises are keeping up with growing content and experience demands, comparing the approaches IT and line-of-business buyers are adopting. The results, from IDC's 2025 CX Path Survey, reveal that while both groups prioritize AI agents for the content supply chain, their strategies diverge sharply after that: IT bets on generative AI and in-house teams, while line-of-business buyers rely more on freelancers, existing authors, and external content sources.