Optimizely and Storyteq lead the pack in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for content marketing platforms (CMPs) 2025.
Yet, this year, they face new competition in the leader quadrant.
Indeed, after launching Content Hub just 12 months ago, HubSpot storms into the top-right quadrant.
It’s joined by Sprinklr and Adobe, with the latter achieving leader status after placing as a challenger in 2024’s edition.
Other significant shifts in the Magic Quadrant include Skyword and Sitecore losing their leader status, slipping to become a challenger and visionary, respectively.
Meanwhile, Acquia dropped out of the study completely. Last year’s “challenger” failed to qualify this time around, with Gartner citing missing content strategy, editorial planning, and calendarization capabilities.
2025 entrant Lytho takes its place in the challenger quadrant.
Meanwhile, Contentstack, Contentful, and Amplience remain surprise omissions.
The Definition of a Content Marketing Platform
A content marketing platform comprises solutions for content planning, design, and optimization, with workflows for end-to-end content production.
A CMP incorporates many types of content. Think e-books and whitepapers, graphics, videos, interactive assets, etc.
The best content management platforms help businesses to run a thread through these assets, allowing them to tell connected stories and monitor performance.
In doing so, CMPs help brands bolster engagement, drive awareness, and – ultimately – boost demand in what they sell.
This year, features like generative AI (GenAI) content creation, AI-assisted workflows, and marketplaces for content sourcing have come to the fore.
Gartner now highlights these as “common” features, amongst many others in its report.
From there, the analyst splits 11 CMP providers into four groups: leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players. Here’s how they performed.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders
Leaders in the Magic Quadrant have established a global base of generally satisfied customers, provide comprehensive CMP solutions, and demonstrate a “progressive” roadmap. This year’s leaders are:
- Optimizely
- Storyteq
- HubSpot
- Sprinklr
- Adobe
Optimizely
Optimizely earns plaudits for its “innovative product strategy” in the Magic Quadrant report, with Gartner pointing to its network of AI agents that automate the “entire” content lifecycle.
Yet, other excellent examples of this strategy – which Gartner omits – include its advanced content optimization tools, an advanced visual editing capability, and collaboration features. The latter allows Optimizely to take content planning outside the CMP and into Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Elsewhere, Gartner pinpoints “market responsiveness” and “full-service content strategy” as additional core strengths for Optimizely.
Storyteq
Storyteq excels in data management, integrating insights to inform campaign goals and content initiatives. Recent innovations include a knowledge graph and data mesh to bolster this differentiator.
Gartner somewhat alludes to this in the study when praising Storyteq’s “product strategy”, citing how Storyteq leverages data to power the platform’s embedded AI.
The analyst also commends the vendor’s “AI innovation” – including its GenAI-driven “infinite” content engine – and overall “product sophistication”
HubSpot
HubSpot has hit the ground running, entering the Magic Quadrant as a leader, despite only launching Content Hub in 2024.
The CMP leverages the power of HubSpot’s Smart CRM ecosystem to streamline content channels, workflows, and delivery. Gartner also notes how the broader ecosystem enables access to more customer data, which allows content managers to better track campaign performance.
Additionally, the research firm notes how HubSpot’s “market responsiveness” and “marketing strategy,” which focuses on replacing integrated point solutions, are significant pluses.
Sprinklr
Sprinklr supports the likes of Microsoft, Telefónica, and Uber with its leading social media management suite. It pulls on these strengths with its CMP.
That’s key to the “product strategy” strength that Gartner emphasizes, as it cites features like social scheduling, listening, and paid media capabilities. These underline how Sprinklr effectively leverages its broader portfolio.
Gartner also gives plaudits to Sprinklr’s “market responsiveness” and “overall viability”, citing its “solid” customer retention, despite organizational changes and the appointment of a new CEO.
Adobe
Adobe is at the forefront of innovation in the CMP space, with Gartner highlighting its “market vision” as a key strength.
That vision involves transitioning the conventional single-product CMP toward more of an ecosystem. Key innovations here that Gartner doesn’t note include its conversational agent-like interface and integrated GenAI-powered content analytics
Adobe also boasts a FedRAMP certification that Gartner neglects to mention, which is a major consideration for not just the public sector, but all security and compliance-cautious enterprises.
The analyst does, however, underscore Adobe’s “global partner network” and “corporate viability”.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Challengers
Challengers in the Magic Quadrant offer mature capabilities across the content lifecycle, which they leverage to meet complex customer requirements. However, they may lack the vision and innovation pace of market rivals. This year’s challengers are:
- Skyword
- Lytho
Skyword
Skyword loses its place as a market leader in this year’s CMP Magic Quadrant. However, it still wins praise for its “customer experience” and “marketing execution”.
The vendor also remains adept at target verticals, delivering custom solutions and establishing a base of “easy access” content creators with niche expertise.
Nevertheless, Gartner frets that this vertical specialism has hampered its broader market understanding and cautions as to the vendor’s “product strategy”.
Lytho
The second new entry to this Magic Quadrant – after HubSpot – is Lytho.
Like Skyword, it earns commendation for its “customer experience”, with Gartner citing the ease in talking with human support teams, short sales cycle, and ease of implementation.
Gartner also pinpoints “market understanding” and “business model” – recently bolstered by the acquisition of DivvyHQ – as strengths.
However, the analyst stresses that an “innovation gap” remains, spotlighting its lack of GenAI innovation as a key example.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Visionaries
Visionaries in the Magic Quadrant demonstrate a thoughtful vision for the future of CMPs. As Gartner puts it, they can “see around the corners to know what is coming next.” However, they typically trail leaders in feature depth and ability to execute. This year’s visionary is:
Sitecore
As with Skyword, Sitecore has lost its leader spot in this year’s Magic Quadrant.
Nonetheless, it still has a big differentiator in its “composable business model”, with a library of powerful add-ons and product configurations to elevate content strategies.
Gartner also applauds Sitecore’s “overall viability” and “market understanding”, touting its use of GenAI to deliver “scalable personalization”.
So, why did it lose ground? The analyst cites the tiered “customer support” system as a critical reason, alongside the amount of technical knowledge required to maximize the platform’s success.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Niche Players
Niche players in the Magic Quadrant satisfy the CMP criteria and can point to numerous successful deployments. Yet, mixed customer reviews of viability and innovations have hindered their performance in this report. This year’s niche players are:
- CoSchedule
- Upland
- Contently
CoSchedule
CoSchedule hopped on the GenAI bandwagon early, providing proactive customer support that many customers crave when experimenting with new technologies.
Gartner didn’t note this, but praised the vendor’s “calendar capability”, “market responsiveness”, and “marketing execution”. Its library of free entry-level tools is an excellent example of the latter.
Nevertheless, the analyst warns of “limited dashboard capabilities” and “overall viability”, noting the CosSchedule’s slowing growth.
Upland
Upland provides an entire team to support implementations while offering ongoing solutions consulting led by a project manager. That underscores the company’s commitment to customer experience.
Gartner recognizes this, alongside other strengths in its “product strategy” and “market responsiveness”.
Nevertheless, the research firm cautions as to Upland’s “product UX” and “AI innovation” – noting that the vendor has only made one GenAI feature release.
Contently
Contently slips further into the Niche Player category in 2025, despite continued strengths in its “customer experience” and “vertical strategy”.
The vendor also works closely with customers to inform its innovation strategy, helping enterprises overcome their most pressing problems.
However, Gartner cautions about its 2024 acquisition by Zax Capital, due to the lack of clarity it has brought around the vendor’s go-forward plans. Its market understanding and responsiveness are also listed as concerns.
For more Gartner Magic Quadrant coverage, check out the following articles:
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms 2025: The Rundown
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC) 2024: The Rundown
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises 2024: The Rundown
