86% services, 11% software: how the US growth-vendor market splits
Classified across The Wall’s full index, 1,964 listings are agencies, 246 are software providers, and 76 are business services — evidence that growth problems are still overwhelmingly bought as services.
Every listing in The Wall's index is classified as one of three types. The split across all 2,286 listings:
| Listing type | Listings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing / creative agency | 1,964 | 85.9% |
| Software provider | 246 | 10.8% |
| Business service | 76 | 3.3% |
For all the industry attention on marketing technology, the supply side of the US growth market remains overwhelmingly a services market: nearly nine in ten vendors sell expertise and execution, not licenses.
Services and software solve different halves of the wall
The distinction matters at the point of purchase. Software compounds an existing capability — a team that already runs pipeline gets more from a sales-engagement platform. Services substitute for a missing capability — which is usually what "hitting a wall" means in practice. The index classifies every listing so a buyer filtering for one type never wades through the other, and each profile's data sheet states the type alongside the engagement facts.
The mix also varies by category: the software share concentrates in the Sales, Automation, and AI Marketing pillars, while the creative and content categories are almost purely services. Category-level breakdowns are covered in the respective pillar briefings.
How this was computed. Figures are computed from The Wall's index of approved, US-based, machine-verified-live listings, using the index snapshot current when each briefing was published: 2,286 listings at launch (August 3, 2026) and 3,460 in the latest snapshot (captured August 9, 2026). Engagement data (rates, minimum project sizes, team sizes, founding years, ratings) are provider-declared figures published on public Clutch profiles; they were present for 1,738 of the 2,286 launch listings, and coverage counts for later snapshots are stated inside each briefing that uses them. Percentages of "disclosed" values exclude listings that publish no figure. Nothing in this briefing is estimated or modeled. Sourcing standards: editorial policy.