Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey — marketing = 7.7% of revenue (flat YoY, down from ~11% pre-pandemic)

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."

Source: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey. Corroborated across Gartner, Marketing Brew, Campaign, Chief Marketer.

Confidence: Verified.

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.

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 = 61.1% of total marketing budget (highest since 2013) and Gartner 2025 — paid online = 69% of digital, owned/earned = ~31% (declining 9% YoY) to derive owned-digital share.