As marketing becomes more directly tied to revenue goals, the ability to measure and report on its impact has declined. Some of that can be attributed to signal loss as the industry moves away from third-party tracking to more privacy-safe identifiers. Today’s audiences are also spread across multiple channels and devices. This makes it harder to track the customer journey and attribute results to specific marketing efforts.

"The role of a CMO... was once primarily a creative role focused on the four Ps of marketing—product, price, place, promotion—but that's no longer the case," Raja Rajamannar, CMO at Mastercard, told our analyst Kelsey Voss for a recent report. "Traditional marketing is a concept of the past."

Here are five key stats on the modern CMO’s challenges and opportunities.

Key stat: Marketing budgets have decreased from 11.0% of company revenues in 2020 to 7.7% in 2024, according to Gartner.

• This indicates a significant reduction in resources allocated to marketing, which has implications for how CMOs approach their strategies.
• Hiring and retaining talent was cited as the area with the highest change in marketing budget in the next two years, according to an October 2024 Econsultancy study of worldwide brand marketers. Sixteen percent of respondents said hiring and retaining talent would decrease.

Key stat: CMO tenure averages just 3.1 years among top US advertisers, according to an April 2024 Spencer Stuart report.

• This high turnover rate suggests instability in marketing leadership and highlights the pressures and challenges that CMOs face in their roles.
• “CMOs now intersect with all different business aspects such as finance and technology and operations, as well as the traditional collaboration with sales and product and customer success,” Voss said on a recent EMARKETER podcast.

Key stat: 88% of marketing leaders are responsible for meeting a revenue goal, per a June 2024 Airtable survey of over 550 marketing leaders. That’s an increase from 79% the previous year.

• This demonstrates the increasing pressure on CMOs to tie marketing activities directly to financial outcomes. However, only 25% report very high ROI visibility, down from 33% the previous year.
• "The role of the CMO used to have a playbook. It used to be, 'Here's the brand strategy, here's the execution, here's the analytics.' But now it is more dynamic. It is understanding integration, where to pivot, and setting that longer-term strategy," Laura Brooks, fractional CMO at Made by Nacho, told Voss.

Key stat: 75% of CMOs reported that AI's deep-learning capabilities benefit marketing performance, planning, and optimization, per a December 2023 Plus Company survey.

• This shows the high level of confidence in AI's potential to enhance various aspects of marketing.
• "The role of the CMO has completely shifted to be equally focused on tech, data, analytics, creative, and culture," Rajamannar told Voss.

Key stat: A survey of IT decision-makers found that only 17% reported they are already seeing ROI from their AI technology, while the majority, 33%, expect to see a return within one to three years, per a UST Global survey.

• This suggests that while there is considerable investment and expectation in AI, realizing tangible benefits is still a work in progress for many organizations.
• "AI is not an isolated initiative but a transformative tool that enables us to be more effective and efficient in our marketing strategies, delivering more personalized and impactful experiences," Rajamannar told Voss.

Learn more about challenges of the modern CMO by downloading our report on “The AI-Powered CMO.”

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