Industry surveyThe CMO Survey, 2026

53.9% of US marketing leaders say marketing keeps influencing a customer for a year or longer, though the most common single answer is several months at 24.4% and the report's median is six months

Channel mix & planning

Marketing Performance: Perceived marketing influence duration on customers, as reported by US CMOs in 2026

Marketing Performance: Perceived marketing influence duration on customers, as reported by US CMOs in 2026
Duration	Percent (%)
An hour	0.6%
12 hours	0.6%
A day	1.3%
A week	2.6%
A month	6.4%
Several months	24.4%
6 months	10.3%
1 year	21.8%
2 years	18.6%
5 years	9%
7 years	0%
10 years or more	4.5%

Reader Note:: This question was answered by 156 of the 308, just over half the panel. 53.9% chose a year or longer, but the answers cluster below that: several months is the single most common answer at 24.4%, six months adds 10.3%, and the report puts the median at six months. At the far end, 4.5% chose ten years or more and 5.1% chose a week or less. These are beliefs about how long marketing keeps working, not a measured decay curve from any campaign.
Evidence:: Self-reported behaviour
Vendor interest:: Low
Sample:: Online survey of 308 marketing leaders at U.S. for-profit companies drawn from a sample of 2,111; 14.6% response rate; 97% were VP level or above.

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A rough sense of size and direction, and deciding what to look at first.

Not for

Exact numbers, or saying that one thing caused another.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
The source never says how this number was measured.

Paid media overtook martech as the largest slice of the marketing budget between 2018 and 2025, rising from 23.2% to 30.6% while martech fell from 29.2% to 22.4%

Change in marketing budget allocation by resource, 2018 to 2025
Resource	Change 2018 to 2025 (percentage points)
Paid media	7.4
Labor	-2.6
Agencies	-2.3
Martech	-6.8

33.8%

of US Fashion site visits now come from paid channels (Search + Social + Display), overtaking Direct traffic's 27.8% share for the first time in three years (Jul 2023–Jul 2026).

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9.6%

of overall budget and company revenues go to marketing on average (2026 survey of US companies)

Marketing budgets ranged from 5.8% to 9.7% of company revenue across industries in 2025, with consumer products highest and IT and business services lowest

Marketing budget as a percent of total revenue by industry, 2025
Industry	2025 (%)
Consumer products	9.7%
Manufacturing	9.5%
Pharma	9%
Media	8%
Insurance	7.5%
Financial services	7.2%
Retail	7.1%
Tech services and products companies with over $250M revenue	7.1%
Travel and hospitality	6.7%
Healthcare	5.9%
IT and business services	5.8%

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39%

of CMOs plan to reduce their agency budget in 2025, and the same share plan to reduce labour

53.9% of US marketing leaders say marketing keeps influencing a customer for a year or longer, though the most common single answer is several months at 24.4% and the report's median is six months

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