ABM Stack 2026: Where AdRoll/RollWorks, Demandbase & 6sense Actually Diverge
From mid market to enterprise
📰 The B2B Stack News Pulse — 13 Nov 2025
A quick scan of what actually matters in B2B adtech, GTM, identity, and ABM this week.
🚀 Platform & Vendor Moves
6sense launches RevvyAI — the first fully agentic GTM engine in a major ABM platform. Expect workflows that collapse SDR → RevOps → Campaign Ops steps into AI sequences.
Demandbase named “Leader” in 2025 Gartner MQ for ABM Platforms — loud chest-beating across LinkedIn; signals a category re-shaping.
AdRoll & RollWorks unify — ABM becomes a product line, not a standalone brand. Big implications for mid-market buyers.
ID5 acquires TrueData — the identity consolidation accelerates; a stronger probabilistic graph + demographic enrichment.
Index Exchange sues Google — another challenger to Google’s SSP/auction positioning; signals fresh instability in supply chain trust.
The Trade Desk Q3: +18% YoY revenue; CTV remains the engine.
Clearbit’s free Logo API outage fuels migration discussions — smaller GTM stacks looking for alternatives.
📉 Market Signals
Reddit adops threads report CPMs down YoY but slightly up QoQ — soft recovery but not a rebound. Zero click search supply and demand mechanics yet to be reflected in higher CPM’s
GTM communities discussing agentic workflows vs headcount reduction — are they replacing tasks or roles?
Strong operator frustration with “use-our-entire-stack-or-nothing” vendor models. Partnerships are replacing the single stack to rule them all
💡 Premium Deep-Dive:
ABM Stack 2026: Where AdRoll/RollWorks, Demandbase & 6sense Actually Diverge
How the category is splitting into three architectures — and what each one means for mid-market vs enterprise budgets.
1. The ABM Platforms Are Converging at the Surface… but Splitting Under the Hood
On the surface, every ABM vendor now promises:
“Unified intelligence”
“AI for GTM”
“Cross-channel orchestration”
“Predictive insights”
“Personalization at scale”
But underneath, the architectures are diverging dramatically.
The next 18 months will create a clear separation:
3 ABM stacks → 3 GTM philosophies → 3 operational cost envelopes.
Let’s break them down.
2. The 6sense Architecture: The Full-Funnel AI Engine
Who it’s built for: Upper mid-market → Enterprise
Budget reality: High platform fee, heavy RevOps investment
Philosophy: Predict + orchestrate everything from one pane of glass
What defines 6sense in 2026
6sense is moving fastest into the agentic GTM era.
RevvyAI isn’t just a bolt-on — it signals a future where:
account prioritization
persona sequencing
content generation
outbound tasking
routing & scoring
AE enablement
multi-signal enrichment
…happen via automated workflows, not humans stitching systems together.
Strengths
Deepest intent + predictive layer
Scoring is sophisticated enough for enterprise complexity
Strong partner ecosystem
Now moving into AI ops faster than anyone
Risks
Very heavy lift on RevOps
Expensive
Requires clean CRM, clean events, and structured governance
Overkill for companies without volume or multi-persona complexity
The 6sense Buyer Profile
You have:
High ACVs
Multi-stakeholder sales cycles
10-person RevOps or Marketing Ops
Appetite for orchestration, not just activation
This is an enterprise intelligence machine, not a plug-and-play tool.
3. Demandbase Architecture: The Integrated, Data-Rich Backbone
Who it’s built for: Mid-market → Enterprise
Budget reality: More flexible, more modular
Philosophy: Data-first ABM with broad identity + channel coverage
Demandbase’s advantage in 2026 is breadth and identity depth.
What defines Demandbase
Strong proprietary IP enrichment, although it is a declining signal. Are they really doing enough under the hood to really validate it. Open question
Solid intent + account scoring
Good ABM platform + DSP adjacency
Strong data activation layer
Best-in-class reporting UI for non-technical users
More modular deployment paths than 6sense
Demandbase is becoming the “connective tissue” ABM stack:
not fully agentic, not fully media-led — but solid across everything. Their challenge in the partnership era will be to avoid becoming a jack of all trades, where partner ecosystems start to bring the masters together in one collective
Strengths
Strong identity + firmographic graph
Good TAL enrichment workflow
Broad GTM team usability
Lower RevOps overhead than 6sense
Better for B2B teams not ready for AI orchestration
Risks
Predictive less advanced than 6sense
CDP capabilities aren’t as deeply integrated
Needs strong sales adoption to reach value
The Demandbase Buyer Profile
You want:
A unified GTM platform
Fewer people required to run it
Strong enrichment + account insights
A modern ABM engine without enterprise complexity
Multi-channel activation but not necessarily AI orchestration
4. AdRoll/RollWorks Architecture: The Paid Media + Lightweight ABM Hybrid
Who it’s built for: SMB → Mid-market
Budget reality: Lower platform cost, lower operational burden
Philosophy: Simple, media-led ABM that scales with spend
AdRoll’s unification of RollWorks signals a strategic pivot:
ABM becomes a channel, not a category.
This stack is for companies who want:
Smarter retargeting
Account-based ad campaigns
Simple firmographic triggers
Lightweight intent
Affordable orchestration
Fast time-to-value
Strengths
Fast cold-start
Strong ad delivery engine
Friendly for non-technical marketers
Good for B2B companies without a deep RevOps function
Risks
Weak predictive layer
Limited identity resolution
Not built for multi-persona buying committees
Ultimately media-driven, not signal-driven
The AdRoll/RollWorks Buyer Profile
You want:
Simple ABM activation
No dedicated RevOps
Ad-led inbound acceleration
Account-based retargeting
A stack that ramps in days, not quarters
5. The Real Divergence: 3 Architectures, 3 When people talk about ABM platforms, they still lump them into one category — as if they’re interchangeable.
But by 2026, the platforms aren’t competing in the same race anymore. They’re solving three different problems for three different types of GTM teams.
Here’s the real divergence:
1. 6sense → The Predictive + Agentic GTM Engine
6sense isn’t really an ABM platform anymore. It’s becoming the operating system for enterprise GTM.
The company’s bet is clear: the future belongs to predictive scoring, automated sequences, and AI agents that perform the tasks RevOps teams currently stitch together manually.
This is the stack for teams swimming in data, personas, regions, and complexity.
It’s powerful — and expensive — because it’s designed for organisations where orchestration creates outsized gains.
2. Demandbase → The Identity-Rich Integrated Backbone
Demandbase is carving out a different future: the unified GTM backbone that brings identity, intent, enrichment, and activation into one structured environment.
It’s not trying to automate everything.
It’s trying to connect everything, cleanly and coherently.
This is the stack for companies that need a strong data foundation, cross-team usability, and a platform that elevates insights without requiring the heavy RevOps muscle of a 6sense deployment.
3. AdRoll/RollWorks → The Media-Led ABM Activator
And then there’s the pragmatic end of the market: ABM as an activation layer.
RollWorks merging into AdRoll is a signal — ABM becomes a channel, not a category.
This architecture is built for simplicity:
launch account-based ads, retarget intelligently, enrich lightly, and keep the GTM motion moving.
For SMBs and mid-market teams without a deep operations function, this is the stack that delivers time-to-value measured in days, not quarters.
Three platforms. Three philosophies. Three futures.
6sense is betting on automation.
Demandbase is betting on integration.
AdRoll/RollWorks is betting on activation.
Those differences aren’t cosmetic — they determine the team structure you need, the signals you’ll capture, and the budget you’ll spend.
And over the next 18 months, these divergences will reshape the ABM category more than any feature release or Gartner quadrant ever will.
Great, I prefer media led abm activator
🤔