Agency & Consultancy · vs · Publisher & Media Owner
Forrester vs Gartner
Structured technology and market comparison · 2026
Direct Feature Comparison
Forrester · vs · GartnerEnterprise research, advisory and benchmarking subscriptions for business leaders.
Research and advisory firm for enterprise technology and business leaders.
Comparison Analysis
What is the main difference between Forrester and Gartner?
When comparing Forrester and Gartner, both platforms operate within the Publisher & Media Owner ecosystem. Forrester is positioned as Enterprise research, advisory and benchmarking subscriptions for business leaders, whereas Gartner focuses on Research and advisory firm for enterprise technology and business leaders. Decision-makers evaluate both solutions when orchestrating their commercial monetization and technology stack.
What are the top alternatives to Forrester and Gartner?
When evaluating Forrester and Gartner, enterprise buyers also consider other platforms in Publisher & Media Owner. You can discover the full competitive landscape and evaluate other alternatives by viewing their respective footprint profiles on Polaris7.
Market Signals
Recent Market Signals & Activity: Forrester vs Gartner
Documented market movements, strategic partnerships, product releases, and regulatory developments mapped across Polaris7.
Forrester
Recent Signals
- ·https://martechseries.com/feed/Customer Experience / Analytics
CallMiner Named Strong Performer in Forrester Wave Report
CallMiner, a provider of customer experience (CX) automation powered by conversation intelligence, announced it has been named a Strong Performer in the Forrester Wave: Customer Feedback Management and Analytics Solutions, Q3 2026. In its first inclusion in this report, CallMiner received the highest possible scores in eight criteria, including Vision, AI, Topic Modeling, Natural Language Understanding, Conversation Intelligence, Analytics, Specialization, and Data Masking. The report highlights CallMiner's AI-native vision and its depth in conversation intelligence, pairing text mining with advanced AI. CallMiner aims to help organizations turn customer conversations into actionable intelligence, improving frontline performance and customer outcomes through both human and automated actions. The recognition reflects growing pressure on enterprises to translate AI capabilities into measurable CX value.
- CallMiner was named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Customer Feedback Management and Analytics Solutions, Q3 2026.
- CallMiner received the highest possible scores in eight criteria, including Vision, AI, and Natural Language Understanding.
- This is CallMiner's first appearance in a Forrester Wave focused on customer feedback management and analytics.
- ·https://martech.org/feed/Industry Analysis
Marketing Tech Relevance as CMO Role Declines
This analysis explores the implications of the declining CMO role for marketing technology. Forrester's 2026 analysis of the Fortune 500 reveals that only 36% of companies still use the CMO title, down from 49% in 2025, with marketing representation on executive teams also falling. The article argues that marketing is expanding beyond the marketing department, with CEOs taking more direct responsibility and new roles like Chief Growth Officer emerging. This shift creates a challenge for martech: it must justify its value in terms of business outcomes like revenue and margin, not just marketing metrics. The article cites gaps between CEO and CMO perspectives on measuring marketing success, and a significant accountability gap in defining marketing ROI. Ultimately, the author argues that martech becomes more relevant as marketing becomes a broader business responsibility, but only if it can connect technology to business performance.
- Forrester's 2026 analysis found only 36% of Fortune 500 companies use the CMO title, down from 49% in 2025.
- Marketing representation on executive teams reporting to the CEO fell to 52%, down from 58%.
- According to McKinsey, only 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have marketing experience, and 4% have held a CMO-like role.
- ·https://martech.org/feed/AI
Companies Misalign AI Measurement with Customer Value
An opinion piece argues that most companies are measuring AI against internal productivity goals rather than customer value. Epsilon's 2026 benchmark study of 257 marketing decision-makers found 71% use AI for productivity, yet 46% measure its impact by revenue. The article highlights a perception gap between C-level and senior managers regarding AI maturity and value. It also cites data on AI's growing influence in search and retail traffic. The author suggests focusing on customer-centric outcomes and warns against treating AI as a strategy substitute. The piece includes insights from Gartner, Adobe, and Forrester on AI's effects.
- Epsilon's 2026 benchmark study of 257 marketing decision-makers found 71% primarily use AI for productivity, but 46% measure AI performance by revenue.
- Epsilon found 67% of C-level marketers rate their organization as extremely mature in AI, versus 33% of senior managers.
- Adobe found AI referral traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 693% year-over-year during the 2025 holiday season, converting 31% better than non-AI traffic.
Gartner
Recent Signals
- ·PR Newswire: Technology NewsArtificial Intelligence
Survey Finds 72% of Tech Decision-Makers See AI Initiatives Falling Short
A new survey by Collibra and The Harris Poll reveals that 72% of tech decision-makers believe AI initiatives fail due to poor data foundations. The survey, conducted among 306 US decision-makers, found that 87% burn hours re-verifying AI agent context, and 76% face roadblocks moving from pilots to production. Additionally, 51% manually review AI outputs. The report highlights the need for better data governance and runtime controls to scale AI effectively. Collibra's CEO emphasizes the 'hallucination tax' as a hidden cost of manual oversight. The findings also reference Gartner research indicating 50% of enterprise GenAI projects are abandoned after proof of concept.
- 72% of tech decision-makers say AI initiatives fail due to unaligned or poor data foundations.
- 87% of decision-makers say teams regularly re-verify that agent context is accurate.
- 76% of organizations have hit roadblocks moving AI pilots to full production.
- ·https://martech.org/feed/MarTech Strategy
Martech Strategy Must Shift to Operating Environment for AI
As AI systems begin to take on decision-making and autonomous actions, the martech landscape is shifting from a capability-centric model to an operating environment model. This article argues that the key to successful AI implementation in marketing is not merely the technology stack, but the surrounding infrastructure of rules, permissions, and accountability. It highlights a significant gap: although CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI, only 30% report having mature AI readiness. The article emphasizes that for AI to work effectively, organizations must focus on machine operability, ensuring that metadata, approvals, rights, and workflow states are explicit and accessible. This shift impacts areas like CreativeOps, where AI-generated content needs robust governance. It also repositions the DAM as critical infrastructure for AI, requiring strong metadata and clear rights. The article concludes that future martech strategy should start with the desired operating capability, not the existing tech estate.
- Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey found CMOs allocate an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI, but only 30% report mature AI readiness capabilities.
- McKinsey found that only 21% of organizations using generative AI have fundamentally redesigned at least some workflows.
- Adobe's Workfront Content Reviewer is cited as an early example of AI participating in approval workflows.
- ·MarketectureAI Agents
AI Agents Transform Shopping from Circulars to Automated Purchasing
This article explores how AI is reshaping the shopping journey, moving beyond traditional advertising to a future where AI agents act on behalf of consumers. It highlights that 73% of parents plan to use AI in back-to-school shopping, citing a PwC study. The evolution from static ads to predictive, adaptive creative is discussed, with comments from Priti Ohri of Advertible on dynamic creative. The piece also covers conversational AI, referencing Criteo's Prompt Smart Ads, and the transition from assistance to delegation, noting that only 11% of consumers are ready for AI to make purchase decisions. Becky Gundy of CHEQ predicts agents will soon handle purchases end-to-end, emphasizing that advertisers must appeal not only to consumers but also to their AI agents.
- 73% of parents plan to use AI in back-to-school shopping (PwC study, June 2026).
- Only 11% of US consumers are ready to let AI make purchase decisions (Gartner survey).
- Criteo's Prompt Smart Ads use catalog data and prompt-level insights to tailor ad creative.
Compare their exact ecosystem overlaps.
Explore all deep relationships in Polaris7. Discover exactly which mutual clients, integrated technologies, and overlapping partners Forrester and Gartner share across the market ecosystem.