You’re deciding what creative work to commission next year, and the budget isn’t getting bigger. That position, more than any trend, decides which outside relationships survive.
Gartner’s CMO Spend in 2026 analysis, drawn from 401 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe who mostly work at billion-dollar companies, puts paid media at 31.4% of marketing budgets, “funded by cuts to agencies.” Total budgets barely moved, sitting at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026 against 7.7% in 2025. So the money for more ads came out of something, and agencies were it.
Here’s our read on flat marketing budgets. They don’t cut evenly. They cut the work nobody can explain. For a smaller buyer, that lands as two questions: what is this piece of work for, and who decides it’s good?
Here is the wider set of moves Gartner reported across that panel.
| Budget line | 2026 | 2025 | What Gartner reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total marketing budget | 7.8% of company revenue | 7.7% | Flat, so every gain is funded by a cut |
| Paid media | 31.4% of budgets | 30.6% | Up 0.8 of a point, “funded by cuts to agencies” |
| Labor | 24.5% of budgets | 21.9% | Up as a share of budget, not a headcount |
| AI initiatives | 15.3% of budgets | Not published | An average across respondents |
| Agencies | No figure published | No figure published | Cut, with no amount given |
Every row describes Gartner’s 2026 panel above, surveyed January through March 2026. The 2025 column comes from Gartner’s 2025 survey of a similar panel.
What actually got cut
Gartner’s 2026 write-up never says which agency work lost the money. Its 2025 survey, of a similar panel of large-company marketing leaders, does name the actions, and they arrive in a revealing order. The top moves to save agency costs were eliminating unproductive agency relationships and streamlining agency rosters, followed by renegotiating agency contracts and scopes of work.
Notice which relationship goes first: the one nobody can point at a purpose for, whatever it costs. Renegotiating price comes later, after the unexplained work is gone.
Those were plans rather than measured results. Thirty-nine percent of CMOs held them, so most did not plan agency cuts at all. When budgets tighten, “what is this for?” gets asked before “what does this cost?”
Companies did not stop sending work outside
You might expect firms to be pulling creative in-house. US data says otherwise. The CMO Survey is run by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association. In January 2026 it asked 308 US marketing leaders what share of their digital marketing activities outside agencies, partners and services perform. The answer was 33.6%, up from 31.6% in 2022, with 34.3% expected in two years.
That survey is a useful counterweight because about 60% of its respondents work at companies under $1 billion in revenue, closer to your size than Gartner’s panel. It measures activities rather than dollars.
One caveat matters for B2B readers. The rise came from consumer-facing companies. B2B product companies reported 28%, down from 29.9% in 2022, and B2B services companies reported 25%, down from 26.6%. If you sell to other businesses, the aggregate doesn’t describe you.
Put the two together carefully, since they cover different companies and can’t be added up. Agency dollars are under pressure at large marketers, while outside partners still do about a third of digital work at US companies overall. Outside help is still being bought. What loses funding is the work that can’t show its job.
Where the AI budget fits
Apply the same test to the newest line in the budget. CMOs put an average 15.3% of marketing budgets into AI initiatives. Meanwhile, 70% call becoming an AI leader a critical goal, and only 30% report mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities by their own assessment.
Gartner reads its own labor figures the same way. Its June release says the rising labor share suggests CMOs increasingly recognize that AI value depends on people, skills and execution, not just technology. That’s Gartner’s interpretation, and it matches what we see in creative work.
So what does the AI money buy? More output, mostly. It doesn’t supply the judgment about which draft ships, whether it sounds like you, and whether it’s accurate. So a new AI budget makes “who judges this” a bigger question, not a smaller one. That’s the same gap we described in the adaptability gap in creative organizations, where knowing what to do runs ahead of doing it.
Make each piece of work explain itself
You don’t need a flat budget to apply the test that flat budgets forced. For anything you’re about to commission, answer two questions before you fund it.
What job does this do? A launch, a campaign’s asset set, a site rebuild, a month of social cutdowns. If the honest answer is “they handle whatever comes up,” that’s the relationship a tighter year cuts first.
Who inside decides it’s good? Name a person, not a committee. That person holds the brief, the feedback and the sign-off. If nobody inside has time to own it, treat that as its own gap rather than something a creator can absorb. Our guide on how to hire a project manager for a creative project covers one way to fill it.
Those two answers also sort what belongs where.
Keep inside:
- Decisions about what the brand will and won’t say
- Final sign-off on anything customers see
- Knowledge of your customers that outsiders can’t pick up quickly
- The definition of “good” for each piece of work
Commission:
- Work with a named job and a clear finish line
- Work someone inside is ready to brief, review and approve
- Skills you need in bursts rather than every week
Two common cases
Say your ad spend is growing. Commission the creative that feeds the channels you’re funding, as asset sets tied to each campaign. The decisions about what your brand says stay with you.
Or say you’re tempted to hire. Ask whether demand is steady enough to fill a role, and whether it’s the production or the brand judgment that has to live inside. Our guide to alternatives to hiring a creative agency walks through the options.
The question a flat budget asks for you
Even Gartner doesn’t treat this reallocation as settled. Its own page calls the year’s shifts toward paid media, digital channels and customer acquisition trade-offs that may boost short-term performance but risk weakening long-term growth.
Large marketers had the question asked for them by marketing budgets that stopped growing. Asking it yourself is cheaper, and you get to keep the work that survives it.
About the data. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey was conducted January through March 2026 among 401 CMOs and marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, the vast majority at companies with over $1 billion in annual revenue. The CMO Survey polled 308 marketing leaders at for-profit US companies from January 7 to January 29, 2026, 97% of them VP-level or higher. Both are self-reported surveys of marketing leaders, not censuses, so treat the percentages as descriptions of those panels rather than of your company.
Work with The Blue Mango. The Blue Mango is a creative services co-op that brings clients and creators together. If you’re deciding what to commission next year, see how working with us works.