CMOs are investing money in AI, but most marketing organizations are still not ready to make these investments profitable.
That’s one of the clearest findings from Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spending Survey, which found that CMOs now allocate an average of 15.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives. At the same time, only 30% say their organization has mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities.
In other words, marketers are buying the tools faster than they are building the infrastructure to support them.
According to Gartner, 70% of CMOs say that becoming an AI leader is now a critical goal for 2026. The problem is, the same percentage also admit that their internal processes are not mature enough to implement and scale AI effectively.
Readiness lags far behind preparedness
This gap between ambition and operational readiness is currently becoming one of the defining tensions in business marketing.
“CMOs recognize the potential of AI as a force multiplier for growth, efficiency and transformation, but most marketing organizations are not yet designed to capture this value,” said Ewan McIntyre, vice president analyst and research leader in Gartner’s marketing practice, in a statement.
Many companies still lack the governance structures, databases, workflows, and talent models needed to operationalize AI at scale. This creates a situation where organizations can quickly deploy AI tools but struggle to integrate them into repeatable and measurable business processes.
Companies that are furthest along in terms of AI maturity already appear to be breaking away from the pack.
According to Gartner, well-prepared AI organizations allocate 21.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives, which is significantly higher than the overall average. These companies also tend to have larger marketing budgets overall, averaging 8.9% of revenue, compared to a broader average of 7.8%.
More importantly, Gartner says these organizations are pairing AI spending with stronger operational discipline and budgetary flexibility.
Marketing budgets remain stable
Overall marketing spending increased only slightly year over year, from 7.7% of company revenue in 2025 to 7.8% in 2026. Meanwhile, 56% of CMOs say they don’t have enough budget to execute their strategy, and 54% say they lack sufficient resources.
CMOs are increasingly being forced to decide which programs to cut, which workflows to automate, and where AI can realistically improve efficiency or performance. The challenge is that AI initiatives often require broader organizational changes than many companies initially anticipated.
The survey reveals a broader trend emerging across martech: AI readiness depends less on access to models and more on organizational coordination. Most large companies can now purchase similar AI capabilities. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from how effectively businesses connect these tools to their data, operations, processes and teams.
Or, more simply, the race to AI is starting to look less like a technology problem and more like a management problem.
Methodology
The survey, conducted between January and March 2026, included 401 CMOs and senior marketing managers in North America and Europe, most of whom worked for companies generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
