Category labels in martech have stopped meaning anything

Results:

• 11 of 17 vendors put AI or "agentic" language into the headline of the homepage. Three use nearly identical formulations: one promises an agentic platform for people and AI agents, another — an agentic platform for growth and management, a third claims to be built for people and ready for agents.
• 13 of 17 ship verifiable AI capabilities. Three do not, and for one more, no evidence could be found.
• The name matched the product in 11 out of 17 cases. In three it overstated, in three — understated.

The shift is real, and that is precisely what makes the behavior with names strange. When nearly every company in a category builds the same capability, putting it in the name communicates nothing to the buyer.

When the label runs ahead of the product

One vendor calls itself an agentic experience platform. Of 53 changelog entries over six months after the rename, only four mention AI at all, and the only "agentic" release is a minor update of a component that first appeared in late February, in the same week the homepage changed.

A second calls itself an agentic DXP and across 13 major release notes covering a full year contains no mention of AI, agents, or standards for connecting external AI tools. Its agentic modules exist separately, have their own versions, and are labeled as beta.

A third stakes its bet on "AI-Tailored" — and has no AI mentions in its available platform release notes.

The reverse cases are no less telling. The market leader, whose product page headline contains no word about AI, shipped a release full of it: content authenticity labeling, agentic rights management, AI search, automatic video captioning, an agent beta program. Another vendor with the slogan "Marketers deserve tools that work as hard as they do" runs 11 changelog sections dedicated to an AI assistant and connectors for external AI tools.

Three more companies make no AI claims and show almost no AI work. One has zero AI mentions across 27 releases from mid-2024 to mid-2025, another has nothing in recent public release notes, and a third's sole AI item for the year is a connector to someone else's AI tool.

The justification doesn't hold up to scrutiny

When asked about the reasons for renaming, vendors give the same answer: that's the category now, otherwise you won't make it into analyst reports. In May, Gartner published "Innovation Insight: Agentic CMS" and named six representative providers — in the original, six representative providers. One of them has called itself a headless CMS on its homepage every year since 2020, never adopted the new label — and still made the report. In September it added AI agents to its product. A second vendor, which kept the headless CMS label and didn't make the report, ships the same kind of connector.

Renaming was never the price of a ticket.

But the costs on the other side are real. Analysts organize research by categories. Buyers search by categories. Dropping the term everyone else uses reduces visibility precisely at the moment the shortlist is being formed.

The timing is telling. Gartner published the agentic CMS report on May 12. One vendor issued a press release on May 21. Its homepage headline changed during May 26 to June 1. Nine days from the analyst document to the press release. Less than three weeks — to the new headline. Those nine days changed the vendor's label. Its customers on May 11 faced the same problems as before.

What buyers should do

Category labels once carried information. Now that connection has weakened so much that a label shouldn't be used as a filter. Three free checks before the next call with a vendor:

1. Load the vendor's homepage into the Internet Archive and read the headline once a year for five years. More than two changes — you're evaluating a marketing decision.
2. Open the public release notes for six months after a rename and count the entries tied to the new name. At one vendor that "renamed itself into agentic," AI was mentioned in 4 of 53 entries; at two vendors actually building that functionality, AI appeared in most updates. That gap is the difference between repositioning and renaming.
3. Ask what changed in the product in the month the name changed. Request the release notes and read them yourself.

A vendor's statement of its own category communicates only what its marketing department decided this year. Release notes are free, dated, and describe what you're buying.

Methodology: homepage language was captured on September 12, 2026 from live pages and the Internet Archive; for one vendor without a single product page, the DXP page was used. The release notes analysis is based on published changelogs. 15 of 17 vendors were assessed against dated release notes; two publish dated changelogs within accessible scope and were assessed using product documentation — weaker evidence. Vendor names are intentionally not disclosed. All checks are reproducible by any reader with a browser.