2026 CMO Growth Survey
Moving beyond the AI cost-cutting spiral to build the marketing growth engine of tomorrow.
AI Growth & the Bottom Line
·
AI Growth & the Bottom Line ·
“Great, substantive report. It’s real-time relevant with tons of CMO-specific insights for how to go on the offensive with AI.”
Patti Boyle, CMO Dstillery
2026 CMO Growth Survey
There is immense noise surrounding AI in marketing. To find the ground truth, we gathered anonymous data from CMOs and senior marketing budget holders representing a combined annual revenue of over $30 billion.
The findings are unambiguous: While the majority of the industry is running down an efficiency spiral, compressing budgets today only to justify cuts tomorrow, a distinct minority is using AI to play offence.
Want to learn how? Read below for a brief summary or access the full report:
AI, Growth & the Bottom Line
“The survey's central finding is striking: the biggest competitive advantage in making the most of AI isn't technology – it's talent.”
Gastón Tourn, CMO Oddbox
Our Findings
The Challenge:
The Efficiency Spiral
78% of marketing leaders expect their initial AI return to come from efficiency rather than growth. With 86% funding AI by cannibalizing existing spend, including vital lines like working media, the department risks dismantling its own growth engine.
The Size Inversion
Scale has become a strategic liability. Smaller organizations (under $1B) are 3x more likely to already have measurable ROI from AI and 2x more likely to be scaling it into broader operations, while larger enterprises remain trapped in risk-averse pilot phases.
The Talent Paradox
The talent gap is categorically named as the primary barrier to AI-driven growth (56%). Yet, 75% of those who prioritize this need have no immediate plans to hire specialists. The data shows that active specialist hiring is a strict precondition to building for scale.
The Opportunity:
How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
The data reveals four specific behaviours that separate leaders building a high-performing AI growth flywheel from those trapped in a cost-cutting spiral:
Reposition the conversation: Shifting the board-level focus from cost reduction to revenue generation.
Secure net-new budget: Breaking the cannibalization pattern early to enable accurate ROI tracking.
Build reinvestment structures early: Structuring mechanisms to pump AI savings back into marketing before those savings arrive.
Solve the talent question: Actively recruiting strategic architects instead of relying solely on baseline upskilling.
“The teams transforming successfully with AI treat it as a growth investment, not a way to trim budget or headcount.”
Tim Rutten, CMO Backbase
Our Story
It all begins with an idea.
Tom and I believe that there is growth on the other side of disruption. And CMOs are at the coal face of AI-driven change. So we set out to better understand the challenges that CMOs and their teams face, the tradeoffs that they are navigating and to uncover the secret to charting a course to business growth.
Want to connect about this research, looking for an event speaker, or keen to speak with us about how we might be able to help you and your organisation to transition to AI-enabled growth? Click below to get in touch.
