Awareness and Conversion Account for 62.6% of Total Media Spend, Gartner Finds

Awareness and conversion now account for 62.6 percent of total media spend, as chief marketing officers shift budget toward acquisition and digital channels in pursuit of growth, according to a survey by Gartner.

"As AI reshapes the marketing mix, many CMOs are channeling more investment into digital channels and customer acquisition in pursuit of growth," said Ewan McIntyre, a vice president analyst and chief of research in the Gartner Marketing practice. "However, AI is not a shortcut around marketing capability. The organizations that will pull ahead are those that pair AI investment with the people, processes and discipline required to turn it into business results."

Gartner's research also found that CMOs are rapidly shifting budget from offline to digital channels, with digital media now representing more than two-thirds of total media investments in 2026, up 18 percent since 2024. AI is a key driver of this shift, the firm said, with CMOs citing enhanced personalization and the need to prioritize channels that can be effectively AI-optimized among the biggest influences on their channel mix.

The survey also showed that CMOs are prioritizing customer acquisition over loyalty and retention, which has declined 29 percent to less than 15 percent of total media spend.

However, the most AI-mature marketing organizations allocate a larger share of budget to customer loyalty and retention and a lower share to digital channels, suggesting that less mature organizations may be over-indexing on short-term optimization and channels that are easiest to measure and automate.

"AI can help marketers optimize faster, but optimization is not the same as strategy," McIntyre said. "CMOs must guard against letting AI steer too much budget toward the channels and stages of the journey that are easiest to tune, while underinvesting in the touchpoints that build long-term customer value."

Despite the assumption that AI should reduce people costs, labor is claiming a larger share of marketing budgets, underscoring that artificial intelligence's value depends on people, skills, and execution, not just technology, Gartner also found. Labor's share of the total marketing budget rose from 21.9 percent in 2025 to 24.5 percent in 2026, suggesting CMOs increasingly recognize that AI value depends on people, skills, and execution, not just technology.

Gartner also found that this challenge is compounded by low organizational readiness, with 70 percent of CMOs saying their internal marketing processes are not mature enough to effectively implement and scale AI, and only 30 percent reporting mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities. In addition, lack of internal AI expertise and talent is the top barrier preventing CMOs from achieving AI-driven efficiency, cited by 38 percent of respondents in Gartner's survey.

"AI changes the kind of marketing capability organizations need, but it does not eliminate the need for capability," McIntyre said. "As CMOs invest in AI-powered transformation, they must also invest in the talent, governance and operating maturity required to make those tools work in the real world."