State of Marketing 2026
Budgets are flat, AI is everywhere, acquisition keeps getting pricier and discovery is splintering. The numbers behind marketing in 2026 — compiled from Gartner, McKinsey, eMarketer, HubSpot, Pew and more.
From the Paid Growth & Performance Media toolset.
Marketing enters 2026 in a strange equilibrium. Budgets have flatlined at 7.7% of company revenue for two consecutive years by Gartner’s count, media prices keep inflating, and yet nearly four in five marketers tell HubSpot they expect at least a modest budget increase this year. The gap between those two readings is the story of the year: CMOs are being asked to fund an AI transformation, a retail media land grab and a retention pivot out of a budget that has stopped growing as a share of the business.
The response has been a hard turn toward efficiency. Gartner finds 39% of CMOs planning cuts to agency spend and a similar share trimming labor costs, while generative AI absorbs work that used to be bought or hired. At the same time the demand side is moving: search behavior is splintering across AI assistants and AI-summarized results pages, retail media is compounding at high-teens growth, and short-form video has become the highest-ROI content format by a wide margin.
This report compiles the published numbers that matter — budget trends, AI adoption and productivity data, channel shifts, acquisition-cost inflation, the privacy landscape and the reshaping of marketing organizations — each figure attributed to its source, with our read on what it means for 2026 planning.
Budgets: two flat years and an efficiency mandate
Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey puts marketing budgets at 7.7% of overall company revenue — identical to 2024 and well below the 9.1–9.5% range of 2022–2023. The average also hides a harder truth: half of surveyed CMOs report budgets of 6% of revenue or less. Gartner has been describing this as an “era of less,” and two consecutive flat years suggest it is a structural reset rather than a cyclical dip.
Within that flat envelope, allocation is shifting decisively toward working media. Paid media takes 30.6% of the 2025 budget — the largest single category — while martech, labor and agencies all lost share year over year. Media price inflation compounds the squeeze: Gartner notes CMOs are getting less for every dollar as CPMs and CPCs rise across major auctions.
Practitioner sentiment is more optimistic than the CFO math. HubSpot’s 2026 survey finds 79.2% of marketers expecting at least a slight budget increase and only 6% expecting a decrease. Both readings can be true at once — individual line items grow while marketing’s share of revenue stays capped — but planning against the Gartner number is the safer posture.
- Marketing budgets averaged 7.7% of company revenue in 2025, unchanged from 2024. — Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 2025
- Half of CMOs report budgets at 6% of revenue or less. — Gartner, 2025
- Paid media claims 30.6% of the marketing budget — about 2.4% of company revenue — the largest cost category. — Gartner, 2025
- 39% of CMOs plan to cut agency budgets, and 39% aim to reduce labor costs through role consolidation and headcount reduction. — Gartner, 2025
- 79.2% of marketers expect at least a slight budget increase in 2026; 21.2% expect a significant one. — HubSpot State of Marketing, 2026
Marketing budget as % of company revenue, 2020–2025
Gartner CMO Spend Surveys, 2020–2025. Fielded each spring among roughly 400 marketing leaders, most at companies with over $1B in annual revenue. The 2021 collapse reflects pandemic-year cuts; the 7.7% plateau of 2024–2025 is the new baseline.
Growth ambitions now have to be funded from efficiency gains inside a flat budget. The CMOs winning 2026 planning cycles are the ones showing CFOs a credible swap: AI-assisted production and consolidated stacks paying for incremental working media.
The AI-in-marketing reality: adoption is done, accountability is next
The adoption question is settled. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing finds 86.4% of marketing teams using AI in at least part of their workflow, and McKinsey’s latest State of AI survey puts organizational adoption at 88% of companies using AI in at least one business function, up from 78% a year earlier. Content creation leads the use cases — 42.5% of teams use AI extensively for it, with another 38% using it occasionally — followed by media creation, advertising automation and administrative work.
The productivity data is real and large. Roughly a third of teams tell HubSpot that AI saves them 10–14 hours per week, and another third report saving more than 15 hours. What changed between 2025 and 2026 is confidence in the machinery: the share of marketers who say they understand how to use AI in marketing jumped from 47% to 68.2%, and those who can measure its impact rose from 48% to 67.5%. Agentic systems are the frontier — McKinsey finds 62% of organizations at least experimenting with AI agents.
Headcount effects are arriving more slowly than the headlines suggest, but they are arriving. Across business functions, a median of 17% of McKinsey respondents reported AI-driven workforce reductions over the past year, while roughly 30% expect reductions in the year ahead. Inside marketing, the pressure shows up indirectly: Gartner ties CMOs’ agency and labor cuts to generative AI absorbing production work that used to be briefed out. The scarce skill in 2026 is directing the machine — brief quality, taste, measurement design and workflow engineering.
- 86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least a few areas of their workflow. — HubSpot State of Marketing, 2026
- 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% the prior year. — McKinsey State of AI, 2025
- Content creation is the top marketing use case: 42.5% use AI extensively, 38% occasionally. — HubSpot, 2026
- About two-thirds of teams report AI saves them 10 or more hours per week. — HubSpot, 2026
- 62% of organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents. — McKinsey, 2025
- A median of 17% of respondents report AI-driven workforce declines in the past year; about 30% expect declines in the next. — McKinsey, 2025
AI in the marketing organization — 2026 snapshot
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing teams using AI somewhere in the workflow | 86.4% | HubSpot, 2026 |
| Organizations using AI in at least one function | 88% | McKinsey, 2025 |
| Marketers who understand how to apply AI | 68.2% (from 47% in 2025) | HubSpot, 2026 |
| Marketers who can measure AI’s impact | 67.5% (from 48% in 2025) | HubSpot, 2026 |
| Teams using AI extensively for content creation | 42.5% | HubSpot, 2026 |
| Organizations experimenting with AI agents | 62% | McKinsey, 2025 |
Adoption is near-universal; the 2026 differentiator is the measurement layer — teams that can attribute AI’s impact to output, cost and revenue are the ones that keep their budgets.
Channel shifts: retail media, short-form video and the splintering of search
Retail media is the decade’s fastest-compounding line item. eMarketer forecasts US retail media ad spend rising from $58.8B in 2025 to roughly $69B in 2026 — about 18% growth — with worldwide spend climbing from $174.9B to $196.7B. The growth is strikingly concentrated: of the incremental US dollars, roughly $9.4B of $10.5B flows to Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect. Social commerce crosses its own milestone, with US sales passing $100B for the first time in 2026.
On the content side, short-form video has consolidated its lead. HubSpot finds 48.6% of marketers naming it the format with the biggest ROI, far ahead of long-form video at 28.6% and live-streaming at 25.1%. Creator spend is scaling with it — eMarketer sizes US creator-driven ad spend at $37B in 2025, heading toward $43.9B in 2026.
Search, the old center of gravity, is diversifying. Google’s AI Overviews reach more than 2 billion monthly users by Alphabet’s own count, and Pew Research finds users click a traditional result roughly half as often when an AI summary is present — 8% of visits versus 15% without one. Meanwhile assistant-native discovery is compounding from a small base: Semrush’s clickstream analysis measured 206% year-over-year growth in ChatGPT outbound referral traffic between January 2025 and January 2026, on top of OpenAI’s 800M+ weekly active users. Search budgets now need three lanes — classic SEO/SEM, AI-answer optimization and retail media search.
- US retail media ad spend grows ~18% to about $69B in 2026; worldwide spend reaches $196.7B. — eMarketer, 2025
- Roughly $9.4B of the $10.5B in incremental US retail media spend accrues to Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect. — eMarketer, 2025
- US social commerce sales surpass $100B in 2026 for the first time. — eMarketer, 2026
- 48.6% of marketers say short-form video delivers their biggest content ROI. — HubSpot, 2026
- Google AI Overviews serve more than 2 billion monthly users. — Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings call
- ChatGPT outbound referral traffic grew 206% year over year (Jan 2025 → Jan 2026). — Semrush, 2026
Content format ROI — % of marketers naming each their biggest ROI driver
HubSpot State of Marketing, 2026. Short-form video leads its nearest format by 20 points — the widest ROI gap HubSpot has recorded for the category.
Where the channel dollars are moving, 2025 → 2026
| Channel | 2025 | 2026 (fcst) | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US retail media ad spend | $58.8B | $69.3B | +18% | eMarketer |
| Worldwide retail media ad spend | $174.9B | $196.7B | +12.4% | eMarketer |
| US creator-driven ad spend | $37.0B | $43.9B | +19% | eMarketer |
| US social commerce sales | ~$85B | $101.0B | first year above $100B | eMarketer |
eMarketer forecasts, 2025–2026. Retail media and creator spend are compounding at high-teens rates while total media budgets stay flat — every incremental dollar here is being reallocated from somewhere else.
The CAC problem: auction inflation meets flat budgets
Acquisition keeps getting more expensive faster than budgets grow. WordStream/LocalIQ’s 2025 Google Ads benchmarks put the all-industry average CPC at $5.26, up 12.9% year over year, with average cost per lead at $70.11. The one piece of relief is that CPL inflation cooled: leads got pricier in 13 of 23 industries in 2025, after rising in 21 of 23 industries with a roughly 25% average jump the year before. Longer-run studies frame the structural trend — SimplicityDX estimated ecommerce customer acquisition costs rose 222% between 2013 and 2022, and nothing in the auction data since suggests the curve has bent back.
The demand side compounds the cost side. Pew’s finding that AI summaries roughly halve organic click-through means brands pay to replace traffic they used to earn, and privacy-driven signal loss keeps degrading targeting efficiency in paid social. Gartner’s blunt summary applies across channels: media inflation means CMOs get less for every dollar.
The rational response — visible in nearly every 2025–2026 planning survey — is a rebalance toward retention and lifecycle economics. When a new customer costs $70+ to acquire through search and margins are already thin, the highest-leverage moves are raising repeat purchase rate, activating owned channels like email and SMS where marginal sends are nearly free, and underwriting acquisition with LTV models instead of last-click ROAS. Teams that operationalize payback-period math are cutting spend on segments that never return the money.
- Average Google Ads CPC hit $5.26 in 2025, up 12.9% year over year. — WordStream/LocalIQ, 2025
- Average Google Ads cost per lead reached $70.11, up 5.1% — after a ~25% average jump the prior year. — WordStream/LocalIQ, 2025
- Ecommerce CAC rose an estimated 222% from 2013 to 2022, making many first purchases loss-making. — SimplicityDX, 2022
- Users click a traditional result on only 8% of Google visits that include an AI summary, versus 15% without one — paid recapture of lost organic traffic adds hidden CAC. — Pew Research Center, 2025
- Gartner attributes part of the budget squeeze to media inflation: CMOs get less for every dollar spent. — Gartner, 2025
Google Ads cost inflation — all-industry averages
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average cost per click (search) | $4.66 | $5.26 | +12.9% |
| Average cost per lead | $66.69 | $70.11 | +5.1% |
| Industries with rising CPL | 21 of 23 | 13 of 23 | inflation cooling |
WordStream/LocalIQ Google Ads benchmark reports, 2024–2025. Averages across 23 industries; individual verticals vary widely — legal, home services and B2B SaaS sit far above these means.
At $70 per lead and rising, retention is the cheapest growth channel most teams own. The 2026 pattern among efficient operators: cap acquisition at a payback threshold, reinvest the savings in lifecycle flows and post-purchase experience, and measure blended CAC against LTV cohorts rather than per-channel ROAS.
Privacy and data: the cookie survived, the strategy didn’t change
Google ended the third-party-cookie saga with a shrug. In April 2025 it announced Chrome would keep third-party cookies with existing user controls and would ship no standalone choice prompt, and it has since wound down much of the Privacy Sandbox program. After six years of deadline whiplash, the deprecation project is effectively over.
That reprieve changes less than it appears to. Safari and Firefox have blocked third-party cookies by default for years, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency already gutted mobile identifiers, and roughly twenty US states have now enacted comprehensive privacy laws layered on top of GDPR for any brand operating internationally. The addressable, consented share of the audience keeps shrinking regardless of what Chrome defaults to.
So the first-party imperative stands on its own economics. Google and BCG’s research found brands using first-party data for key marketing functions generated up to 2.9x revenue uplift and 1.5x cost savings versus those that lag. The 2026 investment pattern reflects it: server-side tagging and conversion APIs to preserve measurement fidelity, enriched zero-party data capture at signup and checkout, and incrementality testing plus media mix modeling to replace what user-level attribution can no longer see.
- Google confirmed in April 2025 that Chrome keeps third-party cookies under existing settings, with no new standalone choice prompt. — Google Privacy Sandbox announcement, 2025
- Safari and Firefox block third-party cookies by default, and Apple’s ATT already limits mobile identifiers — a large share of the web stayed cookieless regardless of Chrome. — Platform documentation, 2025
- Roughly twenty US states have enacted comprehensive consumer privacy laws as of 2026. — IAPP state privacy legislation tracker, 2026
- Brands using first-party data in key marketing functions saw up to 2.9x revenue uplift and 1.5x cost efficiency. — BCG & Google, 2021
The deadline vanished; the direction held. Every structural force — browser defaults, mobile platforms, state legislatures, AI assistants that never pass a cookie — still points toward owned data and modeled measurement. Teams that kept building through the cookie drama now hold a durable advantage.
Org and skills: in-housing, creators and the great martech consolidation
The shape of the marketing organization is changing along three axes. First, work is moving in-house: Gartner’s 2025 budget breakdown shows in-house labor (21.9% of budget) now out-earning external agencies (20.7%), with 39% of CMOs planning further agency cuts — eliminating unproductive relationships, streamlining rosters and renegotiating scopes. Generative AI accelerates the shift by making smaller internal teams capable of production volume that once required external partners.
Second, creator spend is becoming a standing line item rather than an experiment. Goldman Sachs sizes the creator economy at roughly $480B by 2027, growing 10–20% annually, and eMarketer’s $37B-to-$43.9B US trajectory means creator budgets now rival what many brands spend on entire traditional channels. The skill demand follows: creator sourcing, brief and rights management, and performance measurement are becoming in-house competencies.
Third, the stack is shrinking. Martech’s share of the marketing budget fell to 22.4% in 2025 — its lowest level in a decade — while Gartner’s utilization data explains why: teams report using only 33% of their stack’s capabilities, down from 42% in 2022 and 58% in 2020. Consolidation reviews, seat audits and AI-native replacements for point tools are now standard operating procedure, and the savings are the most common funding source for new AI investments.
- In-house labor takes 21.9% of the marketing budget versus 20.7% for agencies, with both categories declining and 39% of CMOs planning agency cuts. — Gartner, 2025
- The creator economy is on track to approach $480B by 2027, with creators growing 10–20% annually. — Goldman Sachs Research
- US creator-driven ad spend reaches $43.9B in 2026, up from $37B in 2025. — eMarketer, 2025
- Martech fell to 22.4% of marketing budgets in 2025 — the lowest share in ten years. — Gartner, via MarTech.org, 2025
- Teams use just 33% of their martech stack’s capabilities, down from 58% in 2020 — six straight years of declining utilization. — Gartner Marketing Technology Survey
Outlook: five calls for the year ahead
Marketing budgets stay near 7.7% of revenue through 2026, and the efficiency mandate becomes permanent operating doctrine.
Two consecutive flat years in Gartner’s survey, half of CMOs at 6% or less, and CFO scrutiny of AI-era productivity all point the same direction. Plans built on efficiency-funded growth will survive budget season; plans that assume expansion will get rewritten.
AI accountability replaces AI adoption as the boardroom question — and teams that can measure impact win the reallocation.
With 86–88% adoption (HubSpot, McKinsey), usage no longer differentiates. The measurement gap is closing fast — marketers who can quantify AI impact jumped from 48% to 67.5% in a year — and budget will follow the teams that can show cost-per-output and revenue lift from AI workflows.
Retail media and creator budgets keep compounding at high-teens rates and start displacing legacy search and display line items.
eMarketer forecasts ~18% US retail media growth and ~19% creator spend growth into 2026 against a flat total budget. The arithmetic forces displacement, and the concentration of gains at Amazon and Walmart means negotiating leverage matters more each quarter.
Search strategy formally splits into three lanes — classic SEO/SEM, AI-answer optimization and retail media search — with dedicated measurement for each.
AI Overviews already reach 2B+ monthly users and roughly halve organic clicks where they appear (Pew), while ChatGPT referrals grew 206% year over year (Semrush). Discovery volume is growing overall; its distribution across surfaces is what changed.
First-party data programs accelerate through 2026 even with third-party cookies alive in Chrome.
Browser defaults outside Chrome, ATT, roughly twenty state privacy laws and cookie-blind AI assistants keep shrinking third-party addressability. The 2.9x revenue uplift BCG and Google measured for first-party leaders is the economic case; the regulatory trajectory is the forcing function.
Sources
- Gartner — 2025 CMO Spend Survey: budgets flatlined at 7.7% of company revenue (2025)
- Gartner — CMO survey: marketing budgets dropped to 7.7% of company revenue in 2024 (2024)
- Gartner — marketing budgets increased to 9.5% of company revenue in 2022 (2022)
- Gartner — CMO Spend Survey 2021 (budgets fell to 6.4% of revenue) (2021)
- HubSpot — 2026 State of Marketing report (2026)
- HubSpot Blog — 2026 state of marketing: data from 1,500+ global marketers (2026)
- McKinsey — The State of AI: global survey (2025)
- eMarketer — Retail media ad spending forecast and trends, H2 2025 (2025)
- eMarketer — US social commerce forecast 2026 (2026)
- eMarketer — Creator economy 2026 (2026)
- Goldman Sachs Research — The creator economy could approach half a trillion dollars by 2027 (2023)
- Pew Research Center — Google users click less when an AI summary appears in results (via Search Engine Land) (2025)
- Semrush — ChatGPT traffic analysis: 17 months of clickstream data (2026)
- WordStream/LocalIQ — Google Ads benchmarks 2025 (2025)
- Google Privacy Sandbox — next steps for Privacy Sandbox and tracking protections in Chrome (2025)
- MarTech.org — martech share of budget falls to lowest level in 10 years (Gartner data) (2025)
- SimplicityDX — ecommerce customer acquisition cost study (222% rise, 2013–2022) (2022)
- BCG & Google — first-party data maturity research (2.9x revenue uplift) (2021)
- Alphabet — Q2 2025 earnings call (AI Overviews at 2B+ monthly users) (2025)
- OpenAI — DevDay announcement (800M weekly active ChatGPT users) (2025)
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