Where the 2025 Marketing Budget Went
Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, based on a poll of 402 CMOs, broke marketing budget into four major categories: paid media took the largest share at 30.6%, followed by martech at 22.4%, in-house labor at 21.9%, and external agency spend at 20.7%. Two independently published secondaries, Christopholivierconsulting.com and CMSWire, report the identical martech, labor, and agency triplet, both naming the same Gartner survey and sample size, strong convergent confirmation of the same underlying data.
Separately, 39% of the CMOs surveyed in that 2025 wave said they planned to cut agency budgets specifically, a data point that helps explain why agency spend’s 20.7% share sits at the bottom of the four-category breakdown rather than the top.
In-House Labor and Agency Spend Are Nearly Tied
At 21.9% for in-house labor versus 20.7% for external agency spend, the two categories sit close enough that neither can be described as clearly ahead of the other in 2025. Both figures fell year over year within the same survey, as paid media and martech claimed a larger combined share of the total budget.
The 2026 wave of the same Gartner survey shows that shift continuing: labor’s share rose to 24.5% while martech’s fell to 19.4%. No agency-specific percentage for the 2026 wave was located in what this research could retrieve, so the 20.7% figure above remains the most recent confirmed agency-spend data point, and it should be read as such rather than assumed to hold steady into the newer wave.
The Numbers
Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey (402 CMOs) put paid media at 30.6% of marketing budget, martech at 22.4%, in-house labor at 21.9%, and external agency spend at 20.7%, confirmed identically by two independent secondaries.
39% of CMOs surveyed in the 2025 wave said they planned to cut agency budgets.
A second, independently published secondary reports the identical 22.4%, 21.9%, and 20.7% martech, labor, and agency triplet, naming the same 2025 Gartner CMO Spend Survey.
CMSWire, “Agency Cuts vs. Martech Gains: The 2025 CMO Tradeoff,” citing Gartner
The 2026 wave of the same survey shifted labor’s share to 24.5% and martech’s to 19.4%, though no agency-specific percentage for 2026 surfaced in what this research could retrieve.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Christopholivierconsulting.com, “CMO & Marketing Budget Statistics 2026,” citing Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey
- CMSWire, “Agency Cuts vs. Martech Gains: The 2025 CMO Tradeoff,” citing Gartner