Marketing budgets are now just 6.4% of total revenue, according to a survey of marketers in North America and Europe by Gartner. This is down from 11.0% of revenue in 2020 as Gartner says that "a swift return to prepandemic funding levels proved elusive for many marketing organizations".
This has been seen across industries, with no category achieving a double-digit budget in 2021.
Consumer products had the smallest budget decline, with marketing's share of revenue falling from 10.8% to 8.3%.
In comparison, tech products (5.0%), manufacturing (5.8%) and media (5.8%) have more than halved their marketing spend as...