Retail chief marketing officers report a marketing budget that is 7.1% of a company’s revenue, a decrease from last year and lower than the average across industries.
Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey finds that marketers are continuing to operate with a reduced budget post-pandemic, with a mean budget of 7.7% of a company’s revenue in 2025. This is the same as 2024.
Gartner’s survey is of 405 global marketing decision makers across 10 industries, including retail, consumer products, manufacturing and more.
This 7.7% budget allocation is in-line with what marketers have had to work with after the COVID-19 pandemic. Marketing budgets were 8.2% of a company’s revenue on average in the four years after pandemic, compared with 11.0% of a company’s revenue on average for the four years before the pandemic.
Within retail specifically, 7.1% of a merchant’s revenue is allocated to marketing, down slightly from 7.2% in 2024.
Across industries, a 7.7% budget for 2025 is both good and bad news. A flat budget is not a year-over year-decrease, however 59% of CMOs say they have insufficient budget to execute their strategy.
What’s more, half of the marketing leaders surveyed this year are working with budgets that are 6% or less of their company’s revenue.
Marketers turn to paid media, AI
Marketers are turning to paid media channels to navigate uncertain times, and search advertising specifically to drive impact. Even though consumers are starting to use generative AI channels to search, in 2025, paid search is still a key marketing channel.
To boost productivity of marketing, within the past 12 months, the top three most popular actions marketers took was:
- Leverage data, analytics and measurement to optimize performance (41% of CMOs)
- Used technology, such as AI, to automate tasks (40%)
- Integrated advanced technology, including AI, to enhance efficiency (37%)
Where marketers spend their budget in 2025
CMOs are pouring an increasing amount of dollars into digital advertising, with CMOs allocating 61.1% of their budget to digital channels in 2025, up from 57.1% of their budget in 2024 and 54.9% in 2023. This comes at the expense of offline channels, which only received 38.9% of the marketing budget in 2025.
Within digital, here is the marketing budget investment breakdown by channel:
- Search advertising – 13.9%
- Digital display advertising – 12.5%
- Social advertising – 12.2%
- Video and streaming- 10.7%
- SEO – 8.9%
- Audio and podcast – 7.5%
- Email marketing – 7.4%
- Retail media networks – 6.4%
- Influencer marketing – 5.9%
- Sponsored content – 5.5%
- Digital out of home – 5.4%
- SMS/push notifications – 3.5%
Of offline channel investments for marketers, the mean percentage of budget allocation is:
- Event marketing – 19.3%
- Sponsorship – 17.4%
- Linear TV – 16.2%
- Partner/co-op – 13.0%
- Out of home – 12.3%
- Direct mail – 11.9%
- Radio – 9.5%
Figures are rounded.
Marketers with less, transform less
For marketers with only 4% or less of the company’s revenue as a budget, they focus their investment in performance channels, which can dependably provide a return. These marketers allocate the highest portion of their budget to digital ads, and allocate a large share of that budget to paid search.
However, this means that only 29% of their budget is allocated to change and transformation, lower than marketers with bigger budgets.
Some good news
The survey did reveal some optimism from chief marketers:
- More than 60% of marketers said their company viewed marketing as a profit center rather than a cost center, up from 53% last year.
- At 94%, the large majority of CMOs said they met or exceeded their ROI goals in the last 12 months.
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