Hey, Big Spender

Gartner called it as far back as 2016: CMOs would soon be spending more than their IT counterparts on tech they said, and sure enough, such has come to pass. CMOs are having their moment, with a mandate growing from a relatively simple promotional role to a key growth driver across the business. That means greater influence on customer experience, P&L performance and greater tech spending as a means to deliver growth.

According to the 2017-2018 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 67 percent of CMOs planned to increase their spending in digital advertising in 2018. Futhermore, CMO focus on analytics reflects the need to demonstrate performance and effectiveness to the business, and digital channels are purpose-built to feed digital performance data to CMOs.

Put another way, marketers are now deeply dependent on technology – and the budgets have grown to reflect that. Martech spending now accounts for around 22 percent of a typical marketing budget.

But it’s not all beer, skittles and in-house programmatic trading desks. While 22 percent is still a significant portion of the overall budget, it’s actually down from the 27 percent reported in last year’s spend survey.

“One thing is clear,” says Ewan McIntyre, research director at Gartner for Marketers. “Previous budget increases have come