U.S. B2B CMOs' expected change in ad spend 2026| ��ƽ��

Expected change in digital marketing spending and traditional advertising in the following 12 months according to business-to-business (B2B) chief marketing officers (CMOs) in the United States as of January 2026

Characteristic	B2B product	B2B services
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Release date

March 2026

More information

Region

United States

Survey time period

January 7 to 29, 2026

Number of respondents

154 respondents

Special properties

among marketers from for-profit companies

Supplementary notes

This question was phrased by the source as follows: "Relative to the prior 12 months, note your company’s percentage change in spending during the next 12 months."

The source does not specify the survey type.

Citation formats

During an early 2026 survey among chief marketing officers (CMOs) from for-profit business-to-business (B2B) companies in the United States, respondents from firms selling B2B products said they expected that their digital marketing budget would increase by an average of **** percent in the following 12 months. Among interviewees from companies providing B2B services, the average stood at **** percent. Meanwhile, B2B product CMOs expected their traditional advertising spending to grow by **** percent, whereas B2B service participants anticipated an increase of **** percent in their traditional ad expenditure.

B2B services' marketing

The survey results reveal a trend among B2B service providers to spread their budget across off- and online media almost equally, in contrast with B2B product companies. Furthermore, the former spend more of their turnover on promoting their services. According to the same study, around **** of B2B service companies' revenues were allocated to marketing as of 2026, versus only percent among respondents from B2B product segment.

AI obstacles and the human factor

A 2025 survey showed that ** percent of U.S. B2B executives considered it important that marketers understood their business challenges and neeeds, with an additional ** percent wanting vendors to comprehend trends affecting their industry. As for U.S. B2B marketers themselves, another study that year revealed that nearly ** percent of them feared a replacement of employees by artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. The dedication to clients' dynamics might be the differentiating factor when competing with large language models (LLMs).