Gartner surveyed marketing leaders in the US, UK, Germany and France through May 2021.
Despite the economic downturn and budget cuts in 2020 due to the pandemic, CMOs had expected budgets to bounce back in 2021. In reality, marketing budgets as a percentage of the overall revenue reached the lowest level recorded since Gartner began tracking such allocation as a part of its annual CMO Spend Survey.
The study found marketing budgets slipped from 11% of company revenue in 2020 to only 6.4% in 2021. Travel and hospitality, manufacturing and tech product companies saw some of the biggest drops in marketing budgets. No single industry recorded double-digit marketing budgets in relation to company revenues this year.
Consumer packaged goods fared relatively well, with marketing budgets at 8.3% of company revenue. A separate WARC report found global ad spending is forecast to rise 12.6% this year to reach $665 billion.
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