CMO Barometer 2025

With insights from 835 marketing leaders (428 of whom were from the DACH region) across eleven countries, the CMO Barometer 2025 of the Serviceplan Group, in partnership with the University of St. Gallen, reveals the top strategies CMOs are counting on to navigate the future.

Munich, November 27, 2024 – Munich, November 27, 2024 – In 2025, artificial intelligence will dominate the marketing landscape as CMOs increasingly lean on AI to drive efficiency and navigate economic turbulence. Facing mixed economic forecasts and tightening budgets, CMOs are seeing AI as a critical tool for process optimization. The annual CMO Barometer 2025, by Serviceplan Group in partnership with the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland, provides insight into how marketing leaders from around the globe are preparing for this pivotal year. The study surveyed 835 marketing decision-makers across 11 countries, capturing exclusive insights into their strategies for the upcoming year.

This year respondents came from Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates.

For CMOs, the challenges of 2024 were anything but routine. With consumers uneasy due to economic instability and crises, and companies recalibrating strategies, it’s clear that marketing success now requires agility. With AI’s promise of automation and predictive capabilities, CMOs anticipate new paths to efficiency in 2025. However, the study reveals divergent outlooks globally, reflecting unique market pressures and opportunities.

The latest study, conducted in September, yielded the following key findings:

• A majority of CMOs (51%) expect the economy to stay roughly the same in 2025, but it is worth noting that more than a third of those surveyed (37%) still expect marketing budgets to increase, with a downward trend.
• Nearly half (48%) of CMOs rank AI and marketing automation as their most critical focus for 2025, underscoring the push for automated processes and deeper customer insights.
• There are significant discrepancies between the eleven countries in terms of their assessment of the economic situation, marketing budgets and trend topics.
• The CMOs surveyed see their strengths primarily in the areas of leadership (38%) and innovation (32%) They also associated agencies with creativity and inspiration.

Based on the findings of the new CMO Barometer, Florian Haller, CEO of the Serviceplan Group, is optimistic about the new year: “The findings are striking: CMOs are under tremendous pressure to deliver stronger results with leaner budgets. AI-driven solutions are a natural outcome of this drive for efficiency. For all its efficiency, I hope that we will exploit this potential even more and use AI as a creative tool and source of inspiration. I also see a trend towards pessimism in marketing departments when it comes to evaluation: fewer and fewer CMOs expect the economic situation or marketing budgets to improve. This is bound to increase in the wake of recent events. I am even more pleased to see positive signals from individual markets.”

Optimism in the Netherlands and the Middle East despite tough economic conditions

While more than a third of those surveyed still expected positive economic development in the previous year, only 25% currently anticipate this for the coming year 2025. A full 51% expect a development comparable to this year's, indicating a broad standstill is anticipated. The sometimes significant differences between individual countries are striking: the CMOs in the Netherlands and the Middle East are the most optimistic, while their colleagues in Austria are particularly pessimistic about the future.

Mixed international picture on budgets – from growth to cuts

The outlook for marketing budgets is more positive, with the majority (37%) of respondents anticipating an increase in spending, compared to 40% in the previous year. However, the responses are more pessimistic than in the previous year. As with the previous question, there is considerable variation in the responses from different markets. In addition to those in the Netherlands (57%) and the Middle East (58%), respondents in Spain (51%), Italy (49%) and the UK (44%) also expect corresponding increases for 2025.

However, there is less optimism in Austria (47%) and Germany (33%), where a greater proportion of respondents expect budget cuts.

Hot Topic in Marketing 2025: Artificial Intelligence & Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence will be the primary focus of marketing discussions by 2025. 48% of respondents identified AI and marketing automation as the most important topics for 2025. The trend was followed by brand building and differentiation, transformation of marketing and tools, customer-centric processes, which were also named in the context of AI. While emotional branding remains a significant consideration, automated marketing processes have emerged as a dominant priority.

Lorena Mercedes, Senior Marketing Director at Salesforce Iberia, notes that “Hyper-personalization, enabled by AI, will be a game-changer in both B2C and B2B sectors.”

Rik Strubel, CMO at Westwing Group: “The focus is on finding efficiency gains in marketing as pressure on profits continues to mount and consumer spending is not likely to increase. AI will need to be at the top of the agenda to achieve some of these efficiency gains.”

For a comprehensive look at the findings of the CMO Barometer 2025, including industry analysis and insights from leading CMOs, please see the attached presentation. Further details are available here.