By Sam Bradley • May 11, 2026 •
Marketing budgets are all but flat, but chief marketing officers are being tasked with juggling investments marked for media, creative and AI on the same departmental balance sheet, according to Gartner.
Advertisers currently spend 7.8% of company revenue on marketing on average, a paltry increase of 0.1% compared with last year, according to the company’s annual CMO Spend Survey of more than 400 marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Ewan McIntyre, vp analyst and chief of research at Gartner, said that single figure percentage budgets were “the new normal” for advertisers following the end of the pandemic-era spending boom.
Within that share of revenue, marketers are on average allocating 15.3% to AI initiatives, the survey found. Brands across the globe now use generative AI for initiatives spanning chatbots, virtual focus groups, automated creative production, media measurement as well as agentic media planning and buying tools.
