{"id":2021,"slug":"gartner-2025-marketing-7-7-percent-revenue","title":"Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey — marketing = 7.7% of revenue (flat YoY, down from ~11% pre-pandemic)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["marketing-spend-benchmarks"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey — marketing = **7.7% of company revenue**, flat vs 2024 and down from ~11% pre-pandemic. The survey polled **402 leaders** (Feb-Mar 2025), the vast majority at companies with **>$1B revenue**. \"Half of CMOs report budgets of 6% or less\" (Campaign US). Gartner's Ewan McIntyre noted \"marketing spending has stalled at a level that falls short for many CMOs.\"\n\n**Source:** Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey. Corroborated across Gartner, Marketing Brew, Campaign, Chief Marketer.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Caveat for Candid:** Enterprise-skewed (>$1B firms dominate). SMB behavior almost certainly tilts MORE toward cheap/free owned channels and AWAY from martech, but Gartner does not break this out.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** This is the cleanest cross-channel decomposition available — the anchor for all subsequent derivation. Used together with [[gartner-2025-digital-share-61-percent]] and [[gartner-2025-paid-owned-69-31-split]] to derive owned-digital share.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-smb-widget-spend-benchmarks-june-2026","title":"Research brief: SMB widget spend benchmarks — feasibility of a \"digital-minus-ads\" % of revenue (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"derived-owned-digital-share-of-revenue-range","title":"Derived \"owned digital\" share of revenue — ~0.5%-2% (Directional-Speculative)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:01.883Z","updated_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:01.883Z"}