The 34th edition of The CMO Survey reveals a complex landscape for marketing leaders: While their organizational influence grows and AI adoption accelerates, they face increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI amid slowing budget growth and performance metrics. Based on insights from 281 marketing leaders (99% at VP-level or higher) at for-profit U.S. companies, findings highlight critical trends shaping marketing’s strategic direction in 2025.
AI Transforms Marketing Operations with Measurable Returns
Marketing’s AI revolution continues, with artificial intelligence now powering 17.2% of marketing efforts—a remarkable 100% increase since 2022. Leaders project this integration will reach 44.2% within three years.
Generative AI adoption has surged 116% year-over-year, now deployed across 15.1% of marketing activities compared to just 7.0% a year ago. Organizations have made significant progress in addressing these implementation challenges: minimizing bias and ensuring fairness, investing in necessary hardware infrastructure, and reducing vulnerability to malicious attacks. Smaller improvements were made in ensuring that the marketing strategy created by generative AI produces is a good fit for the brand and target markets.
The investment is delivering tangible results:
- 8.6% improvement in sales productivity (up from 5.1% in Spring 2024)
- 8.5% increase in customer satisfaction (up from 6.1%)
- 10.8% reduction in marketing overhead costs (versus 7.0% previously)
Marketing’s Strategic Influence Expands
Digital transformation and AI capabilities have elevated marketing’s organizational stature. On a scale from “significantly narrowed” (-7) to “significantly broadened” (+7), marketing leaders rate their role expansion at 3.2 over the past five years. This broader mandate has been accompanied by increased influence, rated at 2.9 on a similar scale.
Despite these gains, marketing still plays a limited role in critical strategic domains such as revenue growth, product/service innovation, and market selection.
The elevated profile comes with heightened scrutiny. Marketing leaders identify “demonstrating impact on financial outcomes” as their primary challenge, with “securing cross-functional support for new marketing investments” emerging as a fast-growing concern (24% increase over two years).
This intensified pressure comes from multiple stakeholders:
- 63% report increased pressure from CFOs (up from 52%)
- 61% face greater scrutiny from CEOs (up from 51%)
- 50% experience more pressure from Board members (up from 33%)
While marketing and C-suite colleagues align on “innovation,” “growth,” and “profitability” as key objectives, misalignment persists in other areas. Marketing leaders place greater emphasis on “defending market position” and “investing in talent/capabilities,” while other executives prioritize “attracting investors and business partners.”
Cross-functional collaboration continues to improve, particularly with finance and human resources departments in brand-building initiatives. Nearly 70% of respondents expect their senior marketing leadership title to remain unchanged in the next five years, with Chief Growth Officer and Chief Customer Officer seen as the most likely alternatives.
Talent Acquisition Remains Robust Despite Economic Uncertainty
Marketing organizations expanded headcount by 5.4% in 2024, with similar growth projected for the coming year. “Hiring top talent” represents marketing leaders’ most significant people challenge, followed by “identifying best candidates,” “retention,” and “training.” Primary hiring obstacles include inadequate compensation, difficulty finding specialized expertise, and talent scarcity.
The composition of marketing teams continues to evolve, with full-time employees now representing 77.9% of expected hires—down from 82.5% in 2019. This shift reflects increasing reliance on:
- Full-time contractors (7.8%, up from 5.4% in 2019)
- Part-time contractors (9.9%, up from 9.0%)
- Part-time employees (4.4%, up from 3.1%)
Economic Headwinds Impact Performance and Budgets
Marketing leaders express declining optimism about economic conditions, with nearly half reporting they are “less optimistic” about the U.S. economy compared to the previous quarter. Inflationary pressures continue to constrain marketing activities, with 43.5% of leaders reporting decreased spending.
Key performance indicators reflect these challenges:
- Corporate sales growth fell to 8.3%, continuing a two-year decline from 14.1% in 2022.
- Profit growth showed modest improvement to 7.8% (from 7.4% in 2024), but remains below the 2022 peak of 10.7%.
- Customer retention and brand value metrics hit two-year lows.
- Customer acquisition showed slight improvement as the only bright spot.
In this constrained environment, marketing budgets grew just 3.3% over the past 12 months (down from 5.8% in Fall 2024), with digital marketing spending up 7.3% (down from 11.1%). Despite slower growth rates, marketing budgets now represent 9.4% of revenues and 11.4% of overall company budgets—increases from 7.7% and 10.1% in 2024, respectively. This paradox suggests even slower growth in overall company revenues and budgets.
Looking ahead to 2026, marketing leaders forecast stronger budget growth: 8.9% for overall marketing spending and 11.9% for digital marketing initiatives.
Social Media Spending Shows Consistent Pattern of Unrealized Projections
Social media investments decreased to 11.3% of marketing budgets (from 12.1% in Fall 2024), though leaders project increases to 13.3% within 12 months and 18.4% within five years. However, these optimistic projections follow a decade-long pattern that has consistently failed to materialize:
- Spring 2024 projections called for 12.2% social media spending within a year (actual: 11.3%)
- Spring 2023 projections anticipated 20.3% social media spending within a year (actual: 11%)
Marketing Excellence Recognition
The 2025 CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence, selected by peer marketers, recognizes companies setting industry standards. For the 17th consecutive year, Apple Inc. claimed the overall award, while Amazon, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, and Airbnb received recognition as industry leaders.
For detailed findings and additional insights, visit https://cmosurvey.org
View the survey results here: https://cmosurvey.org/results