Chief marketing officers (CMOs) report that their marketing budgets for 2025 remain flat at 7,7% of overall company revenue, according to a survey by Gartner.
This is consistent with last year when marketing budgets represented 7,7% of overall company revenue.
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
“While marketing budgets have stabilised, marketing spending has stalled at a level that falls short for many CMOs,” says Ewan McIntyre, vice-president analyst and chief of research in the Gartner Marketing Practice. “Given the looming macroeconomic uncertainties, CMOs are now confronting the prospect of in-year budget cuts.”
Fifty-nine percent of CMOs report 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.
Top actions taken to boost productivity include leveraging data and analytics to optimise performance and harnessing technology such as AI to automate key tasks.
GenAI investments are delivering ROI through improved time efficiency (49%), improved cost efficiency (40%) and improving 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,” says McIntyre. “CMOs are leveraging data analytics and technology, particularly AI, in order to squeeze more from static budgets.”
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. Thirty-nine percent of CMOs plan 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. Twenty-two percent of CMOs said GenAI has enabled them to reduce their reliability on external agencies for creativity and strategy building.
Similarly, 39% of CMOs seek to reduce spending on labour, with top cost-saving actions including simplifying overlapping roles and reducing total headcount.