{"id":2028,"slug":"gartner-2025-paid-owned-69-31-split","title":"Gartner 2025 — paid online = 69% of digital, owned/earned = ~31% (declining 9% YoY)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["paid-vs-owned-digital-split"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey (official infographic \"2025 digital channel investment allocations — mean % of digital channel budget\"):\n\n- **Paid online channels = 69% of total digital spend.**\n- **Owned/earned = ~31%**, and owned/earned (except email) **declined 9% year-over-year**.\n\n**Source:** Gartner 2025 official infographic. Single-source but high quality.\n\n**Confidence:** Single-source (Verified for the figure itself; no independent equivalent).\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** The closest published proxy for \"digital minus advertising\" is the 31% owned/earned slice. Combined with prior anchors: **~31% × ~61% × ~7.7% ≈ 1.5% of revenue** for owned/earned digital (Directional-Speculative — see [[derived-owned-digital-share-of-revenue-range]]).","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":"2026-06-23T19:16:01.923Z","updated_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:01.923Z"}