Even as marketing budgets have slipped to comprise their smallest segment of organizational revenue in half a decade, nearly two-thirds of chief marketing officers expect their budgets to rebound in 2020, per a new Gartner report.
According to the CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020, marketing budgets dropped to just 10.5 percent of overall company revenue in 2019, down from 11.2 percent in 2018, and the first time that proportion has dropped below 11 percent since 2014.
Despite downward trends in both their revenue share and the overall economy, however, more than 60 percent of the 340 marketing executives surveyed said they expect to see their budgets increase next year. Just over 20 percent predicted their budgets will stay the same in 2020, while only 18 percent forecasted another decrease.
"While we're not yet witnessing a precipitous drop in budgets, this year's downtick presents a counterintuitive scenario," Ewan McIntyre, vice president analyst in Gartner's marketing division, said in a release. "You could call this confidence in the face of adversity. Or you could call it hubris."