Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2024 & 2025 — marketing budgets averaged 7.7% of revenue (down from 11% pre-pandemic); 59% of CMOs report insufficient budget in 2025

Claim: Gartner's May 13, 2024 press release (395 CMOs surveyed Feb–Mar 2024; median respondent revenue >$5.3B) reports marketing budgets averaged 7.7% of revenue, down from 9.1% in 2023. Ewan McIntyre, VP Analyst and Chief of Research at the Gartner Marketing Practice: "CMOs are living in an 'era of less' [...]. In the four years preceding the pandemic, average marketing budgets were 11% of overall revenue."

Gartner's May 12, 2025 update (402 CMOs) found the figure flat at 7.7%, with 59% of CMOs reporting insufficient budget to execute 2025 strategy (down 5pp from 2024). McIntyre: "While marketing budgets have stabilized, marketing spending has stalled at a level that falls short for many CMOs."

Sources:

• Gartner press release, May 13, 2024: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-05-13
• Gartner press release, May 12, 2025.

Confidence: Verified.

For Candid: The cross-industry CMO benchmark is 7.7%, residential builders sit at 0.8–3.2% ([[nahb-cost-of-constructing-2024-marketing-0-8pct]], [[buildern-2026-1-8-to-3-2pct-residential-builder-spend]]). The construction-industry undershoot is 3–10×, depending on which builder figure you use. Candid cannot pitch the GC on "catching up" to the cross-industry norm; that pitch fails the [[nahb-remodelers-cdb-2024-6-3pct-net-margin]] take-home test in five seconds. Honest framing is in [[marketing-budget-benchmarks-cross-industry-vs-construction-table]].