How much of revenue do companies spend on marketing, and how reliable are the benchmarks?

A founder deciding how much to put into visibility, whether advertising, content, public relations or an agency, usually starts with a benchmark: what share of revenue do comparable companies spend on marketing? Two recurring surveys supply the figures most often quoted.

Gartner's CMO Spend Survey reported an average of 7.8% of company revenue in 2026. The CMO Survey reported 9.0%. Each rests on a different sample, and the differences matter when the number is applied to a smaller company.

What the 2026 surveys report for marketing budgets

Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey found marketing budgets averaging 7.8% of company revenue, up from 7.7% in 2025. Gartner polled 401 chief marketing officers and other marketing leaders between January and March 2026 and released the findings on May 11, 2026, at its Marketing Symposium/Xpo in London.

Gartner's 2025 survey had reported the same 7.7% as in 2024, which is why that release described budgets as flat. The 2026 move to 7.8% is a change of one-tenth of a percentage point.

The CMO Survey's 35th edition reported marketing at 9.0% of company revenue and 9.6% of overall company budgets. It drew on 308 marketing leaders at for-profit U.S. companies, 97% of them at VP level or above. The results were published on the survey's blog on March 31, 2026. The page did not state the fielding dates.

The CMO Survey described the 9.6% share of overall budgets as the lowest in several years. Gartner's figures, by comparison, have barely moved across its last three annual readings.

The two headline figures are close but not the same. The sources do not reconcile them, so a reader should treat the range between roughly 8% and 9% as the output of two different panels, not a single agreed number.

Who was surveyed, and why that limits the comparison

Gartner's respondents were in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. The vast majority reported annual revenue above $1 billion. That is the population behind the 7.8% average.

A founder running a company with a fraction of that revenue is outside the main body of Gartner's sample. The source does not say how a smaller company's budget share compares, and it does not break results down by company size.

The CMO Survey covers U.S. for-profit companies and does not describe its sample by revenue size in the page that was reviewed. Neither survey gives a figure specific to founder-led businesses, so neither can stand in for a target.

Both surveys also ask marketing leaders, not finance teams or owners. The figures are what those leaders reported, and the sources do not describe any independent check against company accounts.

Where the money goes: paid media, agencies and people

Gartner's 2025 survey, which polled 402 marketing leaders in February and March 2025, found paid media to be the largest spending category. It took 30.6% of the marketing budget, equal to 2.4% of company revenue. Gartner noted that media price inflation means CMOs get less for each dollar spent.

The same survey recorded pressure on outside spending. In it, 39% of CMOs planned to cut agency budgets, and 22% said generative AI had reduced their reliance on external agencies for creativity and strategy.

Gartner listed the leading savings actions as eliminating unproductive agency relationships and streamlining agency rosters. Renegotiating contracts and scopes of work came next.

Another 39% of CMOs said they wanted to reduce labor spending. The top actions were simplifying overlapping roles and reducing total headcount.

These are shares of respondents, not shares of spend. The 2025 release as read does not report what proportion of budgets goes to agencies, and it does not separate public relations from other agency work.

The CMO Survey added a view of how growth spending is directed. Almost 60% of it goes to market penetration, meaning selling more existing products to existing customers. Acquisition spending is 26% larger than retention spending, even though, according to the survey, retention outperforms acquisition in the performance data.

How tight budgets are shaping decisions

Gartner found that 56% of CMOs in 2026 said their marketing organisation lacked the budget to deliver its strategy, and 54% reported insufficient resources overall. The 2025 survey put the budget figure at 59%, which was five percentage points lower than in 2024.

Ewan McIntyre, a research chief in Gartner's marketing practice, said in the 2025 release: "Given the looming macroeconomic uncertainties, CMOs are now confronting the prospect of in-year budget cuts."

Gartner also reported that CMOs allocate an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI. In 2026, 70% of CMOs called becoming an AI leader a critical goal, while 30% reported mature or fully developed readiness capabilities.

The CMO Survey recorded overall marketing spending growth of 1.7% over the prior 12 months, the smallest increase since 2021. Among companies changing their investment levels, cuts outnumbered increases almost four to one.

When profits fall short of expectations, 53.1% of executives said they focus on cutting expenses rather than investing in revenue growth, up from 46% a year earlier. In those cases, marketing is cut 45.4% of the time, more often than other expense categories.

Marketing headcount growth fell by more than half from the prior year's rate. Training budgets stood at 3.8% of marketing spending, down from a pre-pandemic high of 5.8%.

Using a benchmark without over-reading it

A percentage of revenue is simple arithmetic. At 7.8%, a company with $10 million in revenue would have $780,000 in marketing; at 9.0%, it would have $900,000. That illustrates the calculation and is not a recommendation for any company.

Both surveys report averages across companies at different stages and in different sectors. Gartner's 2026 data show the spread within its own sample: organisations reporting mature AI readiness averaged marketing budgets of 8.9% of revenue, above the 7.8% overall figure.

Gartner and the CMO Survey measure budgets, not outcomes. Neither tells a founder what a given level of spending produces in sales, press coverage or search visibility. A budget share describes what comparable companies spend, not what is required to reach a result.

Gartner's full 2026 report, titled "Insights From The 2026 CMO Spend Survey," is available to Gartner clients. The public release and the CMO Survey blog post carry the figures cited here, but the underlying breakdowns were not available in the pages reviewed.