From Shubhi K | Product & Market Analysis
Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey: Flat Budgets, and Paid Media Took the Gains
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Marketing budgets were 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, according to Gartner's annual CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders. That is 0.1 points above 2025 and still far below the 11% Gartner reports for the years before the pandemic. The total barely moved. The mix underneath it moved a lot, and mostly in one direction: toward paid media.
Key takeaways
- The 2026 marketing budget is flat at 7.8% of revenue. Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey reports 7.8%, against 7.7% in both 2024 and 2025 and 9.1% in 2023, across roughly 400 large-company marketing leaders each year.
- Paid media is the only major line that grew every year. Its share of the marketing budget rose from 25.6% in 2023 to 27.9%, 30.6% and then 31.4% in 2026, while martech fell to 19.4%, a five-year low.
- Search advertising gained share in 2026, it did not lose it. Search took 16.0% of digital marketing budgets in 2026, up from 14.8% in 2025, and remained the largest single digital channel in the survey.
- The 15.3% AI figure is an overlay, not a fifth budget category. Gartner reports CMOs put an average 15.3% of marketing budgets into AI initiatives, money that sits inside labor, martech, agency and media lines rather than beside them.
Short answer: Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts the average marketing budget at 7.8% of company revenue, effectively flat on 2025. Within that budget, paid media rose to 31.4%, labor recovered to 24.5% and martech fell to 19.4%. Search advertising grew its share of digital spend, and AI took 15.3% of budgets across all lines.
The 2026 marketing budget is 7.8% of revenue, which means flat
Gartner surveyed 401 CMOs and marketing leaders between January and March 2026, across North America, the UK and Europe. The May 2026 release describes budgets as rising only slightly, to 7.8% from 7.7%.
A 0.1 point move on a survey of about 400 people is noise. Treat 2026 as the third consecutive flat year, not as a recovery. Anyone citing 7.8% as evidence that marketing budgets are coming back is reading the decimal, not the trend.
Gartner's 2024 release quoted its chief of research, Ewan McIntyre, saying budgets averaged 11% of revenue in the four years before the pandemic and 8.2% in the four years after. Marketing Dive's coverage of the same survey records the path: 6.4% in 2021, 9.5% in 2022, 9.1% in 2023, then 7.7%.
That sequence matters for planning. The 2022 and 2023 figures were the rebound. The 2024 to 2026 plateau is the new baseline, and your board has almost certainly already priced it in.
Six years of Gartner CMO spend data in one table
Gartner does not publish one consistent multi-year table. The numbers below are assembled from each year's release and from trade coverage of the underlying figures. Where no source we opened printed a figure, the cell says so rather than guessing.
| Survey year | Budget, % of revenue | Paid media share | Martech share | Labor share | Agency share | Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 6.4% | 25.1% | 26.6% | Not in sources opened | Not in sources opened | Not stated |
| 2023 | 9.1% | 25.6% | 25.4% | 24.6% | 23.2% | 410 |
| 2024 | 7.7% | 27.9% | 23.8% | Fell, figure not printed | Fell, figure not printed | 395 |
| 2025 | 7.7% | 30.6% | Not in sources opened | 21.9% | Not in sources opened | 402 |
| 2026 | 7.8% | 31.4% | 19.4% | 24.5% | Not in sources opened | 401 |
2021 shares are Gartner figures as reported by Chief Marketer in June 2026; the 2021 budget level is from Marketing Dive, May 2024. The 2023 split is from Marketing Dive, May 2023. 2024, 2025 and 2026 figures are from Gartner's own releases except paid media and martech for 2026, which come from Chief Marketer's report of the survey. 2022 is omitted from the split because no source we opened gave one.
A share of a shrinking budget can hide what happened to the money. So multiply each share by the budget level. Paid media was about 2.3% of company revenue in 2023 (25.6% of 9.1%) and about 2.4% in 2026 (31.4% of 7.8%). Gartner itself put 2025 paid media at 2.4% of revenue.
Martech went the other way, from roughly 2.3% of revenue in 2023 to roughly 1.5% in 2026. That is a fall of about a third. Paid media held its dollars while the budget around it shrank, and martech paid for it.
| Line | 2023 | 2026 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total marketing budget | 9.1% | 7.8% | Down about 14% |
| Paid media | About 2.3% | About 2.4% | Held, slightly up |
| Martech | About 2.3% | About 1.5% | Down about a third |
| Labor | About 2.2% | About 1.9% | Down, but recovering from 2025 |
Our arithmetic, not Gartner's. Each cell multiplies two survey means, which is not the same as the mean of each respondent's own product, and respondent panels differ year to year. Treat these as directional.
Paid media is the line that kept growing
Paid media rose from 25.1% of marketing budgets in 2021 to 31.4% in 2026, according to Chief Marketer's report of the 2026 data. It is the only one of the four major lines with an unbroken rise across the years we could verify.
Intentions point the same way. 53% of 2026 respondents planned to invest more in paid media, against 25% expecting to cut it. For labor the balance was reversed, with 34% planning increases and 43% planning cuts.
Gartner's June 2026 release says digital media now represents more than two-thirds of total media investment, up 18% since 2024. Chief Marketer gives the figure as 67.5%, against 54.9% in 2023 and 57.1% in 2024.
That means the paid media line is increasingly a digital line. The offline lines still exist and are not trivial. Events took 23.1% of offline budgets in 2026, up from 19.4%, and that shift is examined in detail in the analysis of where event marketing budgets went.
Why paid media wins a flat-budget fight
My read is that paid media wins because it is the easiest line to defend in a budget meeting. It reports a cost per result every week. Martech reports utilisation, and agencies report activity.
That is not proof paid media earns more. It is proof it is easier to measure, and those are different things. A CFO cutting a flat budget will protect the line with a dashboard first, which is exactly what six years of this survey show.
Paid search did not lose budget share in 2026
The popular version of this story says AI answers are draining paid search, so marketers are pulling money out of it. The 2026 survey does not support that. Search advertising took 16.0% of digital marketing budgets in 2026, up from 14.8% in 2025, and stayed the largest digital channel.
I expected the opposite when I started this post, so it is worth being plain about it. On Gartner's numbers, demand generation dollars did not move away from paid search this year. They moved toward it, and toward social at a faster rate.
Search, social and SEO by the numbers
Social advertising was close behind search at 15.7% of digital budgets, up from 12.7%. Chief Marketer also reports SEO at 9.4%, against 8.9% the year before. The order of planned increases was digital video and streaming TV, then social, SEO, search and display.
Social and search advertising also appear among the top five channels planned for cuts. Both are being bought more and questioned more at the same time. That is what a channel under scrutiny but still performing looks like.
Click-through on results pages has genuinely fallen where AI answers appear, and that evidence is laid out in the breakdown of paid search click-through under AI Overviews. A falling click rate and a rising budget share can both be true. If each click costs more and converts at least as well, budgets rise to buy the same volume.
The survey measures where money went, not what it returned. If your own search costs per opportunity rose in 2026, the survey cannot tell you whether you are an outlier or the norm. Your ad platform data can.
Where the AI money actually sits in a marketing budget
The 2026 headline figure is 15.3%. That is the average share of marketing budgets CMOs report allocating to AI initiatives. Respondents Gartner classes as AI-ready, about 30% of the sample, allocate 21.3%.
The common misreading is to add 15.3% to the four category shares. It does not work that way. AI spend shows up as consumption-priced martech, agency work, new hires and media bought by automated systems.
Martech fell while AI spend rose
This is the counterintuitive line in the data. 62% of 2026 respondents said they planned to invest more in marketing technology. Yet martech's share of the budget fell to 19.4%, from 26.6% in 2021.
Part of the answer is pricing. 56% of respondents increased the share of martech budget on consumption-based pricing in the past year, against 9% who decreased it. A tool billed by usage can look like a smaller line while doing more work. Whether that holds up at renewal is the question raised in the analysis of SaaS sprawl and rationalisation.
Labor came back in 2026
Labor's share rose from 21.9% in 2025 to 24.5% in 2026, per Gartner's June release. That rebound sits alongside AI adoption, not against it. The top barrier to AI that respondents named was a lack of internal expertise and talent, cited by 38%.
I think this is the most useful finding in the release. Large marketing teams are not replacing people with tools in 2026. They are hiring people who can run the tools, and cutting the tool line to fund them.
AI-ready organisations reported marketing budgets of 8.9% of revenue, against the 7.8% average. Chief Marketer reports that the 9% of respondents describing themselves as fully optimised averaged 11%. Those figures are correlation inside one survey, and the direction of cause is open.
Demand generation in the 2026 survey: awareness and conversion won
Gartner does not report a demand generation line. The closest it gets is a funnel split of media spend. Awareness and conversion together took 62.6% of total media spend in 2026, a rise of more than 10% since 2024.
Loyalty and retention moved the other way. Their share fell 29% over the same period, to less than 15% of total media spend. In plain terms, budgets moved toward the top and bottom of the funnel and away from existing customers.
That should worry B2B readers more than consumer ones. Net revenue retention is where most B2B software growth comes from, and the media that supports it is the line being cut. Gartner notes that its most AI-mature respondents put more into loyalty and retention, not less.
20% of 2026 respondents missed their customer acquisition goals, up from 13% a year earlier. 62% said missing growth goals would lead to budget cuts. That is a strong incentive to fund whatever produces a measurable acquisition number this quarter.
Reallocation is also getting faster. One in five respondents shift more than 5% of budget every month, 38% do so quarterly and 14% reallocate continuously. A fast reallocation cycle rewards channels with fast feedback, which again favours paid media, and it raises the stakes on measuring the discovery your attribution cannot see.
What the Gartner CMO Spend Survey cannot tell you
The survey is the best-known public benchmark on marketing budget allocation. It is also narrower than the way it is usually quoted.
| Question | Does the survey answer it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| What share of revenue do large firms spend on marketing? | Yes | Core measure, asked the same way each year |
| Which budget lines are gaining share? | Yes, with gaps | Category splits are published, but not every year in the release text |
| What should a $20M ARR B2B company spend? | No | Most respondents report over $1 billion in revenue |
| Does paid search still pay back? | No | The survey records allocation, not return |
| How much pipeline does demand generation create? | No | There is no pipeline or revenue outcome measure |
The sample is large companies in three regions
Every year from 2023 to 2026, most respondents reported annual revenue over $1 billion. The 2024 release described a median over $5.3 billion. If you run a smaller company, the 7.8% figure describes a different kind of firm, with different fixed costs and brand spend.
The bases shift between releases
Some channel figures are a share of the digital budget, some of total media and some of the whole marketing budget. Release wording is not always clear about which. Compare like with like, and be suspicious of any chart that lines up channel shares across years without naming the base.
Where this reading of the survey is weakest
The argument above leans on a handful of numbers. Here is where they are softest.
Several figures come through trade coverage
Gartner's own 2026 release prints the budget level, the AI share and the labor share. The 2026 paid media, martech and channel figures come from Chief Marketer's report of the survey, and the 2023 split comes from Marketing Dive. Those outlets had access to Gartner's data, but they are secondary sources, and the full report sits behind Gartner's paywall.
Other benchmarks disagree
The CMO Survey, run with Duke University and Deloitte, uses a different panel and reports different levels. Secondary coverage of its spring 2026 wave puts B2B product firms near 7.0% of revenue and B2B services firms near 10.1%. I could not open the primary report, so treat those as directional. Neither survey is wrong; they measure different populations.
Self-reported AI readiness flatters the spenders
The finding that AI-ready teams spend more is self-classified. A CMO with a bigger budget may simply feel more ready. Do not read 8.9% against 7.8% as evidence that AI investment raises budgets. It may be that larger budgets fund AI.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of revenue is the marketing budget in 2026?
Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts the average marketing budget at 7.8% of company revenue, up from 7.7% in 2025 and 2024. The survey covered 401 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, most at companies with over $1 billion in revenue. Gartner reports pre-pandemic budgets averaged 11%, so the current level remains well below that.
What does the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2026 say about AI spending?
CMOs allocate an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives in 2026. Organisations Gartner classes as AI-ready, about 30% of respondents, allocate 21.3% and report total marketing budgets of 8.9% of revenue. The AI share overlaps other categories such as martech, labor and agencies, so it should not be added to them as a separate line.
How should a B2B marketing budget be allocated in 2026?
Gartner's 2026 data shows large companies putting 31.4% into paid media, 24.5% into labor and 19.4% into martech, with the rest largely in agencies. Those are averages from mostly billion-dollar firms, not a prescription. A smaller B2B company should start from its own cost per opportunity by channel and use the survey only as a sanity check on the mix.
Is paid search spending declining in 2026?
Not according to Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey. Search advertising took 16.0% of digital marketing budgets in 2026, up from 14.8% in 2025, and remained the largest digital channel. Social advertising grew faster, to 15.7% from 12.7%. Search does appear among channels some CMOs plan to cut, so scrutiny is rising even as share grows.
How much of the marketing budget goes to martech in 2026?
Martech took 19.4% of marketing budgets in 2026, a five-year low, down from 26.6% in 2021, based on Gartner data reported by Chief Marketer. That fall happened while 62% of respondents planned to invest more in martech. Part of the explanation is a shift to consumption-based pricing, which 56% of respondents increased in the past year.
Is the Gartner CMO Spend Survey reliable for small B2B companies?
Only partly. The survey is consistent year to year and useful for direction, but most respondents report revenue above $1 billion. Smaller firms typically spend a different share of revenue and carry different fixed costs. Use it to see which lines large companies are growing or cutting, and use your own channel data to set your actual numbers.
How to use the 2026 numbers this quarter
Rebuild your marketing budget in two columns: share of budget and share of revenue. If a line looks stable as a share but fell as a share of revenue, it was cut, and you should decide whether that was deliberate. Gartner's own data shows martech being cut this way for three years.
Then pull one number per paid channel, cost per qualified opportunity for the last two quarters. If search costs rose and you are still buying more of it, you are matching the survey average. Whether the average is right for you is a question only that number answers, and it connects to the shift toward outcome metrics for AI spend.
References
- Gartner, Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey Finds CMOs Allocate 15.3% of Marketing Budgets to AI, 11 May 2026. Used for budget level, AI share, readiness and sample.
- Gartner, Gartner Marketing Survey Finds Awareness and Conversion Account for 62.6% of Total Media Spend, 8 June 2026. Used for funnel split, digital share and labor share.
- Chief Marketer, Sherry Chiger, Gartner CMO Spend Survey: Budgets Reflect Increase in Consumption-Based Martech, Paid Media Spend, 24 June 2026. Used for 2021 and 2026 paid media and martech shares, channel splits and reallocation cadence.
- Gartner, Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined at 7.7%, 12 May 2025. Used for 2025 budget level and paid media share.
- Gartner, Gartner CMO Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Dropped to 7.7%, 13 May 2024. Used for 2023 and 2024 budget levels, paid media and digital shares.
- Marketing Dive, Peter Adams, CMOs enter 'era of less' as budgets plunge below pre-pandemic levels, 15 May 2024. Used for 2021 and 2022 budget levels and 2024 martech share.
- Marketing Dive, Jessica Hammers, 71% of CMOs lack the budget needed to execute marketing strategy in 2023, 23 May 2023. Used for the 2023 category split.
The weakest part of this source base: Gartner's full report is paywalled, so several category shares come from trade press reporting Gartner's data rather than from Gartner's own text, and some year-to-year channel comparisons may not share a common base. Figures current as of 12 October 2026.
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