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Industry surveyGartner, 2025

Search advertising stands out as a high-spend, high-impact digital channel

Channel validation

Reader Note:
The chart ranks channels rather than measuring them: both axes are relative ranks across the 19 channels the survey covers, with no units, so nothing here says what a channel costs or returns.
Evidence:
Expert judgment
Vendor interest:
Low
Sample:
Gartner CMO Spend Survey respondents across 11 countries and 10 major industries; mix of 42% B2B, 23% B2C, and 35% even mix B2B/B2C; mean annual revenue $5.7B. Some breakout charts show industry sample sizes such as consumer products (n=43), manufacturing (n=52), pharma (n=32), financial services (n=50), retail (n=36), insurance (n=43), media (n=31), healthcare (n=42), travel and hospitality (n=37), and IT/business services (n=36).

Good for

Hearing how someone who knows the field reads it, and deciding what to check yourself.

Not for

  • Anything that needs a measurement. Nobody counted or tested this.
  • 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.
  • The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.
Channel validationTrend

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Vendor report

GWI, 2026

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Go deeper on this topic

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