How Identity-Security Companies Advertise — A Competitive Breakdown

We ran competitive ad audits on four of the category's most visible players. Read together, they reveal a market mid-transformation — and a war over a single word.

Identity security is one of the most crowded categories in B2B software, and one of the most heavily advertised. Using ULUK, we ran competitive audits on four of its most visible players — Okta, Ping Identity, CyberArk and JumpCloud. Each audit analyses 30 days of a company's in-market campaign activity across 42 strategic dimensions. Read side by side, the four reveal a category in the middle of a transformation. Here is what their advertising shows.

1. Agentic AI is no longer a differentiator — it is table stakes

All four companies build their core advertising narrative around the same idea: securing AI agents and non-human identities. When every competitor leads with the same theme, it stops being an edge. For marketers in the category, the lesson is uncomfortable — "we secure AI agents" no longer sets anyone apart. The battle has already moved to who says it most distinctively, and to who can attach their own name to it.

2. There is a naming war underway

The sharpest pattern across the four audits is a race to name the category. Okta is building its campaign on "Okta for AI Agents" and the #OktaSecuresAI line. JumpCloud is going a step further — launching and trademarking a competing category term, "Agentic IAM." Two companies are actively contesting the same linguistic territory. Whoever gets buyers and analysts to adopt their phrase will own the category's mental model. It is a reminder that in a crowded market, the most valuable real estate is a word.

3. Four companies, four completely different playbooks

Beneath the shared theme, the strategies diverge sharply:

• Okta runs a broad, full-funnel incumbent campaign — many creatives, every funnel stage, analyst proof and named customers.
• Ping Identity runs lean and conversion-led, anchored on one repeated line — "keep your IdP" — with a small set of creatives run at high frequency.
• CyberArk runs a security-first, document-ad-driven campaign — 26 of its 43 creatives are document ads, a format the others barely touch.
• JumpCloud runs an aggressive mid-market challenger campaign, with named competitive-takeout ads and heavy founder-led thought leadership.

Same category, same headline theme — and no two go to market the same way.

4. The shared blind spots are the opportunity

The four audits also reveal what none of them is doing. None runs vertical-specific campaigns, despite all having industry-specific customer stories ready to use. Most lean on a narrow set of formats. And most have no single, repeated brand line, leaving recall to chance across dozens of creatives. In competitive advertising, the gaps everyone shares are the cheapest ground to take — and right now that ground is open.

Why this matters

None of the above is opinion. It is a structured read of what these companies actually put in-market, every finding tied to a real campaign. That is what a ULUK competitive audit produces — and the full audits behind this piece are public.

This analysis is based on a trailing 30-day window of in-market campaign activity in the United States, drawn from a random sample of up to 100 ads per company. Findings reflect creative, messaging and format patterns observed in that sample.