Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey, conducted among 401 marketing leaders across North America, the UK and Europe, finds that CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3 per cent of marketing budgets to AI initiatives — yet only 30 per cent say their organisations have the maturity to scale those investments.

The money is moving. The readiness is not keeping pace. That gap, rather than the headline investment figure, is the finding that Gartner’s chief of research for marketing, Ewan McIntyre, led with when the 2026 CMO Spend Survey results were presented at the Gartner Marketing Symposium in London in May.

Seventy per cent of CMOs told Gartner that becoming a leader in AI is a critical goal for 2026. The average marketing organisation is now directing 15.3 per cent of its budget to AI initiatives. But only three in ten say their organisation has the infrastructure, processes and capability maturity to scale those investments effectively. The most AI-ready organisations allocate 21.3 per cent of their budgets to AI and report average marketing budgets of 8.9 per cent of company revenue — above the 2026 survey average of 7.8 per cent.

Where the money is going and what it is buying

At 15.3 per cent of the marketing budget, AI is no longer a line item being debated — it is a material allocation sitting alongside paid media, technology and headcount. The productively deployed share is going into AI-driven performance analytics, content production workflows, personalisation at scale and, in more advanced organisations, early-stage agentic automation for campaign management and lead routing. The less productive share is sitting in pilots that have not yet connected to measurable business outcomes.

McIntyre’s framing was direct: AI maturity is beginning to separate marketing leaders from laggards. The most advanced CMOs are not simply spending more on AI. They are building the operating discipline — the data infrastructure, the governance processes, the workforce capability — needed to turn that investment into measurable business impact. For the 70 per cent who have the ambition but lack the maturity, spending more does not solve the problem.

The readiness gap and what causes it

The 30 per cent readiness figure is not primarily a technology problem. Clean first-party data, integrated martech stacks and reliable attribution are prerequisites for AI to function usefully — but Gartner’s broader 2026 research points to leadership capability as the deeper constraint.

Separate Gartner research published earlier in 2026 found that 65 per cent of CMOs acknowledge AI will dramatically transform their roles within two years, yet only 32 per cent believe significant changes are needed to their personal skill sets. Only 15 per cent of CEOs believe their marketing leaders are currently AI-savvy. A CMO who delegates AI ownership entirely to IT, analytics or agency partners will see the organisation move — but not coherently.

The 56 per cent of CMOs who told Gartner their marketing organisation lacks the budget required to deliver their 2026 strategy adds a further layer. Directing 15 per cent of a flat budget to AI often means redirecting it from elsewhere — agencies and headcount are the primary sources, with 39 per cent of CMOs planning reductions in both.

What separates the 30 per cent who are ready

The organisations reporting mature AI readiness share a pattern. They have made deliberate investments in data infrastructure before layering AI on top. They have defined governance frameworks that specify which tools are approved, what AI can and cannot do at each stage of a workflow, and who holds final accountability for outputs. And their senior marketing leaders have personal fluency in AI capabilities and limitations — not deep technical expertise, but enough working knowledge to direct investments, interrogate results and catch failure modes before they compound.

Gartner’s McIntyre described this as building the budget agility and innovation capacity that allows AI spend to translate into measurable impact rather than sitting in a capabilities audit. For the majority of marketing organisations heading into the second half of 2026, building those conditions is the work ahead of them.