Marketers have increased the number of campaigns they run, but face many more challenges when it comes to budgets, technical capabilities, and analyzing and explaining the outcomes to those responsible for allocating budgets.

Gartner estimates about 44% of the total marketing budget is spent on campaigns — up by 31% year-over-year — but the majority of survey respondents are dissatisfied with campaign performance.

The 2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey analyzed top-line marketing budgets to identify how evolving customer journeys, C-suite pressures and cost challenges impact spending priorities and channels for marketing. The research was conducted online from February through March 2024 among 395 respondents in North America and Europe.

The survey results found gaps across some fundamental requirements. More than two-thirds of CMOs report they face moderate to significant challenges measuring the return on investments (ROIs) of campaigns or demonstrating the impact of campaigns.

Some 60% said they faced challenges aligning campaign strategies to business objectives, indicating that campaigns’ performance is obstructed from the outset and cannot seem to align with business goals, according to Gartner.

There are a range of challenges, but advanced analysts for both performance marketing and generative AI (GAI), at 35% and 29%, respectively, seem to face the most issues.

On average, 87% report they experienced issues with campaign performance in the last 12 months, with nearly one-quarter reporting they often or always face challenges.

Marketing leaders who adopt a complete approach to channel and campaign management enable strategic consistency by bridging many of the main parts of campaign planning, execution, measurement and governance.

High performers are much more likely to favor this way of working — 68% of high performers employ a holistic approach versus 41% of the rest.

Gartner reported that 55% of marketing budget allocations during the past year went to technology or transformation, compared with 45% to campaign and media buying.

Some 65% reported their decisions were based on the estimated costs of achieving the objectives, with 49% stating that affordability was a key consideration.

A significantly lower number of CMOs employed more advanced techniques that link activities to value such as zero-based budgeting.

The majority of marketers struggled to make ends meet, according to Gartner, with 68% reporting they experienced moderate or significant challenges getting the right budget to manage their campaigns.

Realities of the “more with less challenge” seem to inspire productivity gains, “but they can dilute the impact and performance of campaign activity, stifling share of voice or reducing opportunities for audiences to engage,” according to the report.

And it would not be a complete study if not addressing the use of GAI. Ninety-four percent of CMOs claimed some level of GAI use across their marketing teams, but at different levels, from 21% reporting extremely limited use, to 19% leveraging it extremely broad or the entire marketing team.

High performers deploy GAI across a wider variety of tasks compared to their peers. For example, 84% of high performers utilize Gen AI for creative development tasks such as content creation compared to an average of 77% for others. 

Marketers have increased the number of campaigns they run, but face many more challenges with budgets, technical capabilities and analyzing and explaining outcomes to those responsible for allocating budgets.