A survey of CMO’s by Gartner found marketing budgets for 2025 remain flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue compared to the year before.
With budgets stagnant, CMOs are seeking productivity gains through artificial intelligence (AI) and data as 59% reported they have insufficient budget to execute their strategy in 2025, down by five percentage points since 2024.
Although budgets have failed to grow year-on-year, marketing leaders appear to be using their funds in a more productive way with top actions taken to boost productivity include leveraging data and analytics to optimize performance and harnessing technology such as AI to automate key tasks
Budget Uncertainties Ahead
“While marketing budgets have stabilized, marketing spending has stalled at a level that falls short for many CMOs,” said Ewan McIntyre, VP Analyst and Chief of Research in Gartner Marketing Practice. “Given the looming macroeconomic uncertainties, CMOs are now confronting the prospect of in-year budget cuts.”
The annual Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey was conducted February through March 2025 among 402 CMOs and other marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe across different industries, company sizes and revenue, with the vast majority of respondents reporting annual revenue of over $1 billion.
The AI Advantage
Respondents found GenAI investments are delivering ROI through improved time efficiency (49%), cost efficiency (40%) and capacity to produce more content and/or handle more business (27%). Just 1% of CMOs said GenAI investments are not currently a priority.
“With limited funds, marketing leaders are boosting productivity in order to drive growth,” said McIntyre. “CMOs are leveraging data analytics and technology, particularly AI, in order to squeeze more from static budgets.”
CMOs Prioritize Paid Media
Paid media continues to dominate marketing spend, accounting for 30.6% of marketing budgets or 2.4% of company revenue. However, media price inflation means CMOs are getting less for every dollar spent. As CMOs benefit from AI-driven productivity gains, many are making cuts to labor and agencies.
This has led to 39 percent of CMOs planning to cut back on agency budgets, and top actions to save agency costs include eliminating unproductive agency relationships and streamlining agency rosters, followed by renegotiating agency contracts and scopes of work. The same percentage of CMOs will look at reducing spending on labor, with top cost-saving actions including simplifying overlapping roles and reducing total headcount.
Twenty-two percent of CMOs said GenAI has enabled them to reduce their reliability on external agencies for creativity and strategy building.
For more on the insights from the 2025 CMO Spend Survey, Gartner clients can go here.
