G2, the premier software marketplace, has entered into a binding agreement to acquire three major software discovery and recommendation businesses, namely Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp, from Gartner, Inc. The deal is expected to be closed in Q1 of 2026.
In this way, the decision to combine the most impactful B2B software review and evaluation platforms will bring together a combined ecosystem that G2 aims to define as the largest source of verified software reviews and buyer signals. Combined, the platforms will aggregate over 6 million verified customer reviews, reach over 200 million software buyers every year, and reach over 10,000 software vendors and over 2,000 categories-the unprecedented foundation for software discovery and decision-making in the age of AI.
G2 leadership asserts that the agreement seeks to ease the international process for purchasing software, eliminate difficulties in the evaluation process, and facilitate greater insights for contributors as well as opportunities for growth.
What This Means for the B2B Marketing and Advertising Industry
The deal goes beyond software marketplaces and reviews. The ripple effect touches the heart of B2B marketing and advertising, influencing the ways that marketers attract attention, generate interest, and ultimately translate buyer knowledge into actual business results.
A Single, powerhouse of data and intent signals
Determining who’s in-market and taking action on it has always been one of the challenges in B2B marketing. With this acquisition, G2 intends to combine its own intent signals and review data on multiple platforms into a massive dataset. The end result will be:
- Deeper buyer intent insights: More refined buyer intent signals based on search behavior, review interaction, and category navigation help teams identify the prospect earlier and accurately.
- AI-Ready Datasets: As AI-based discovery capabilities improve, a common foundation of reviewed findings and behavioral knowledge could enhance AI-based recommendations, predictions, and audience targeting.
- Sharper segmentation intelligence: With more information about how personas have engaged with the content, such as review interactions, side-by-bys, and category-specific content, marketers may refine customer persona models. For advertisers, that means better purchase intent signals and audience signals to power more impactful campaigns, especially in intent-driven channels such as programmatic, paid search, and account-based marketing.
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Stronger Demand Capture and Attribution
Beyond just the signals, at play here is also the growth of G2’s ad stack such that sellers get a moment to reach the demand at a moment that matters. That means larger web traffic as well as better visibility, so that software sellers aren’t wasting their marketing dollars along the way.
What does pay-per-lead adds represent?
Think of pay-per-lead adds as another option to add to the mix. G2’s rumored to be developing lead gen products that utilize buyer intent and turn it into qualified sales leads, providing a new type of performance-based opportunity for B2B marketers beyond other forms of branding and awareness advertising.
This is particularly relevant to B2B advertisers, who often have a hard time relating brand awareness to pipeline numbers. A healthy PPC lead generation model, leveraged by genuine buyer intent, may help prioritize spend on activities that produce quantified, economically significant outcomes.
Sharper Creative, Messaging Relevance
If we look into the detailed reviews and analyses presented by Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp, rich and detailed qualitative information regarding the thoughts of the buyer can be gained. If the information is put into a broader context, then:
- Shape ad messages that speak in the buyers’ own words and speak to their genuine concerns.
- Guide content marketing and thought leadership topics toward what matters to the audience.
Assisting the sales force by reconciling market feedback with our position and conversation. In a nutshell, what this acquisition does is to close the loop between what our consumers say and how we use that feedback to fine-tune our creative communications.
Wider Effects on Businesses Operating in the B2B Space
Elevated Trust and Discovery Experiences
G2 seeks to minimize fragmentation, which often causes a buying process to slow down, by bringing various review tools under a single umbrella. The smoother process enables:
- The teams involved in procurement and evaluation benefit from having a single authentic body of reviews.
- Benchmarking against rivals and backing up ROI claims can be done more easily.
- Sales forces converse with potential customers who are aided by contextual information from a unified review resource.
Accelerated AI-Driven Search and Recommendations
As AI becomes integral to how buyers discover and consider software, G2’s collective data set works well for enabling AI-driven recommendations. This is important because:
- “More accurate and relevant suggestions are made by AI systems that are trained on rich and verified data.”
- The unified platform has strong potential to integrate with large language models, answer engines, and conversational assistants as part of software discovery.
The opportunity to tailor campaigns for quality engagement, rather than just “clicks,” and genuinely qualified consideration exists. Overall, the acquisition establishes a precedent for what AI and verifiable data contribute to the enhancement or reconstruction of software discovery and enterprise buying patterns.
Implications for Competitive Strategy and Partner Ecosystems
For software vendors and agencies operating in B2B marketing, this consolidation has strategic ramifications:
- Competitive differentiation becomes more data-driven, as companies can use review and intent insights to tailor positioning.
- Media agencies may integrate these insights into cross-channel orchestration platforms, improving targeting and measurement.
Partnerships and ecosystem plays can leverage the expanded dataset to build integrated solutions – such as AI-powered buyer recommendation engines or intent-based prospecting tools.
Challenges and Considerations
The acquisition isn’t without potential hurdles:
- Data integration complexity: Harmonizing review taxonomies, privacy standards, and platform architectures will require careful execution.
- Marketplace dominance and regulatory scrutiny: Consolidating four major platforms could raise competitive concerns that will need to be observed as the deal progresses.
- Vendor transition management: Software companies accustomed to separate profiles and advertising programs may face operational transitions as G2 unifies offerings.
Nonetheless, the strategic benefits – particularly around intent data and performance-oriented marketing opportunities – position this move as a landmark shift in B2B marketing infrastructure.
Conclusion: A Transformational Moment in B2B Marketing
The integration of Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp into the single platform known as G2 creates an AI-ready platform by combining in-depth customer review data, a wide buyer audience, and intent scale. From the marketing and advertising perspective of the buyer, this represents more buyer insight, increased capture of demand, and more accurate data to target precisely.
As the B2B buyers are looking for effortless and data-based discovery, along with the push for marketing measurement and revenue results, this consolidation may significantly impact the way the software companies reach the market and measure the marketing results even until the AI era.