The B2B Stack Weekly: Signals, Shifts & Scraps — November 22, 2025
Key moves in ABM, identity, programmatic, GTM, vendors & the wider adtech machine — plus some fast thoughts.
Every week the B2B ecosystem shifts — sometimes quietly, then BAM, all at once.
This is your recap of the signals that actually mattered this week:
the product releases, vendor moves, identity changes, earnings fallout, and GTM shifts shaping 2026.
I track the noise so you don’t have to.
🧠 Fast Takes
Identity is still fragmenting faster than the vendors can consolidate it — and the cracks are now showing inside buying-group orchestration.
ABM vendors are repositioning around media + identity + activation + agentic, not dashboards.
Programmatic is shifting from generic DSP pipes to curated, B2B-safe supply — with Index and curated open-web paths gaining strength.
LinkedIn continues its quiet move into “the default B2B ad platform”, with attribution and API plays signalling deeper identity ambitions.
Intent vendors are pivoting from novelty → coverage + governance.
The Trade Desk’s earnings volatility and share price dip sparked a new wave of questions about the future of “scaled DSPs” in a B2B world.
ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clay, and Clearbit are all amplifying their AI orchestration narratives, signalling a coming convergence between salestech and ABM.
The stack is widening again — and somewhere in the noise sits the upside.
Founder Riff — What Hit Me This Week
B2B doesn’t move slowly — it moves quietly, then violently reshapes itself when no one’s paying attention.
This week, that reshaping was loud.
The tension between agentic GTM storytelling (AI assistants, autopilot outreach, predictive orchestration) and operational reality (fragmented identity, mismatched signals, slow activation windows) is now too visible to ignore.
On LinkedIn you see vendors shouting about intelligence.
On Reddit you see operators drowning in broken workflows.
That gap is widening — and that gap is where the biggest opportunities are being born.
The teams who win 2026 won’t be the ones who buy the most tools.
They’ll be the ones who stitch their stack into a signal engine:
identity → intent → behaviour → programmatic → activation → revenue.
Everything else is noise.
⚡This Week in B2B Stack News — Signals, Shifts & Scraps
Below is everything that actually mattered in B2B adtech, ABM, GTM, identity, and programmatic this week — distilled.
1. Identity & The Supply Chain: Big Moves, Bigger Ambitions
🔍 LinkedIn Signals
Demandbase pushed “2025 State of ABM: Buying Groups, B2B…” — showcasing LinkedIn’s growing footprint in company-level intelligence & attribution.
6sense declared itself “Best ABM Platform of 2025”.
Meanwhile, practitioners posted about churning off 6sense entirely — citing incomplete activation and identity mismatches.
Identity remains the faultline.
🔎 Reddit Signals
Identity fragmentation surfaced again:
“Our tools don’t agree on who’s in the buying group… we’re targeting the wrong people.”
Programmatic ops threads complained about mismatched device graphs and inconsistent company-level attribution.
🧩 Why It Matters
The identity war isn’t about “cookie replacements” anymore.
It’s about account resolution across devices, channels, and regions — mapped to real buying committees.
The platforms that get this right become the control layer for all ABM activation in 2026.
2. ABM Platforms: The Category Quietly Splits into Three
This week confirmed the architecture split we highlighted last Friday:
6sense → agentic GTM orchestration (enterprise)
Demandbase → identity-rich backbone (mid→enterprise)
RollWorks/StackAdapt → media-led ABM activation (SMB→mid)
This isn’t product marketing — this is structural.
LinkedIn chatter shows marketers realising they need both:
A clean identity spine
A media engine capable of reaching buying groups
A workflow layer that can activate signals fast
No single ABM vendor currently does all three — which is why the stack is reshuffling again.
3. Programmatic & Media: The Pipes Keep Moving
🔥 The Trade Desk’s earnings → share price wobble
Earnings beat expectations but the market punished them due to muted forward guidance.
This rattled the “scaled DSP” confidence narrative — especially for B2B teams who’ve leaned heavily on TTD for open-web reach.
The question floating around this week:
Is enterprise B2B shifting away from scale-first DSPs and toward curated identity-led paths? Are we going a classic adtech 180 back to specialist point solutions?
🧵 Reddit Highlights
adops threads flagged:
“High ad-tech tax. Low signal fidelity. Fragmented supply.”
and
“You need curation, not scale.”
Strong signal.
🌐 Index Exchange holds its trust position
Their stance on blocking MFA junk continues to win fans.
For B2B marketers who rely on clean, fraud-free supply for identity signals, this matters.
I’m watching Index closely. They feel increasingly like the “safety layer” for real B2B activation.
4. GTM Stack & Vendor Landscape: AI Narratives Swell
ZoomInfo
Repositioning hard around “AI unified GTM platform”.
Their messaging is aggressively shifting from enrichment → orchestration.
Apollo
Leaning into “AI-powered outbound autopilot”.
Huge implications for mid-market GTM teams.
Clay
Trending heavily in GTM LinkedIn circles as “the workflow brain” teams are stitching into their stacks.
Bombora
Hints of a broader identity + company intelligence play.
The intent vendors know coverage isn’t enough anymore — governance + multi-signal fusion is the new edge.
Clearbit
Doubling down on real-time enrichment + buying-group visibility.
Still a favourite for mid-market.
5. Macro Narrative: Speed to Activation Is the New Battleground
Everyone has data.
Everyone has signals.
Everyone has dashboards.
Very few can turn a signal into activation within the same week.
This is the real gap.
This is why ABM platforms are struggling.
This is why programmatic pipes are being rebuilt.
This is why identity consolidation is accelerating.
2026 belongs to the companies who solve:
“How fast can we move from signal → activation → revenue?”
That’s the real stack.
📚 Recommended Reads (Hand-Picked This Week)
IDC — How ABM Advertising Accelerates B2B Growth
B2B Marketing — 2025 Martech Vendor Spotlight
Demandbase — 2025 State of ABM Report
AdExchanger — debates on curated supply + identity fragmentation
Various LinkedIn/Reddit threads on DSP transparency, AI GTM tools & stack fatigue
💬 What to Ask GPT Next
(copy/paste prompts to deepen understanding, workshop ideas, and generate action plans)
“Using the signals in this week’s newsletter, map the 2026 B2B identity landscape and show where the biggest competitive opportunities lie.”
“Explain how a B2B company can move from ‘data-rich but activation-poor’ to a true signal spine, using the frameworks in this post.”
“Build me a GTM workflow that unifies LinkedIn, programmatic, intent vendors, and CRM signals — based on this week’s Signals Pulse insights.”
“Create a vendor evaluation checklist that reflects the architecture split (agentic GTM → identity backbone → media-led ABM).”
“Summarise this newsletter and turn it into a 3-slide executive briefing I can share with my leadership team.”