Gartner reported on June 8, 2026 that awareness and conversion now take 62.6% of total media spend, as CMOs move more budget toward customer acquisition and digital channels.
The less comfortable number sits below the headline. Spending on customer loyalty and retention has fallen 29% since 2024 to less than 15% of media spend. Gartner also found that the most AI-mature marketing organizations put more money into retention and less into digital channels than less mature teams.
For B2B marketing leaders, that makes this a warning about measurement bias. AI can optimize the channels and funnel stages that produce fast, visible signals. It can also make it easier to underfund customer value, brand preference, and retention because those outcomes take longer to prove.
Key Takeaways
- Awareness and conversion account for 62.6% of total media spend in Gartner’s 2026 survey.
- Loyalty and retention spending fell 29% since 2024 to less than 15% of media spend.
- Digital media now represents more than two-thirds of media investment, up 18% since 2024.
- Labor’s share of the marketing budget rose from 21.9% in 2025 to 24.5% in 2026.
- AI-mature organizations spend relatively more on retention and less on digital channels.
What Gartner’s Media Spend Survey Found
Gartner surveyed 401 CMOs and senior marketing leaders across North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe between January and March 2026. Most respondents worked at companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
The survey shows media budgets concentrating at the two ends of the funnel. Awareness and conversion rose more than 10% from 2024 to reach 62.6% of total media spend. Loyalty and retention moved in the opposite direction, dropping below 15%.
That allocation sits inside the flat-budget environment covered in our earlier reporting on Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey. Gartner previously found that marketing budgets equal 7.8% of company revenue, while CMOs allocate 15.3% of their budgets to AI and only 30% say they are ready to scale it.
The Retention Cut Is the Real Warning
The 62.6% figure will attract attention because awareness and conversion are easy to place on a media plan. The retention cut matters more because it reveals what is being traded away.
Gartner’s own comparison says the most AI-mature organizations allocate a larger share to loyalty and retention. That finding weakens the idea that shifting more spend toward digital acquisition is automatically an advanced AI strategy. It may instead show that less mature teams are funding the channels that AI can tune most visibly.
Our read: optimization is starting to shape strategy instead of serving it. If a platform can quickly improve cost per click, reach, or conversion rate, the channel earns another budget cycle. Customer expansion, renewal influence, and brand preference often take longer to connect to revenue, so they lose the same contest.
AI Is Rewarding What Is Easy to Measure
This is not an argument against acquisition. B2B teams need pipeline, and digital channels can produce it. The risk appears when the measurement system treats short-term response as the only proof worth funding.
Gartner’s May CMO Spend release found that 70% of marketing organizations lack the process maturity needed to scale AI. The new media allocation data shows one possible result: teams use AI to optimize visible acquisition activity before building a customer-value model that can protect retention spend.
The measurement weakness is already visible elsewhere. GrowthLoop found only 23% of marketers can reliably connect actions to business outcomes. When causal proof is weak, the fastest platform metric tends to win the budget argument.
Gartner also says labor’s budget share rose to 24.5%, despite expectations that AI would reduce people costs. That supports the same conclusion as its forecast that AI automation of marketing work will reach 36% by 2028: AI value still depends on people who can set goals, inspect decisions, and challenge the metric the system is optimizing.
What B2B CMOs Should Do Now
- Separate acquisition efficiency from customer value. Keep cost-per-lead and conversion metrics, but report expansion, renewal influence, and retained revenue beside them.
- Give retention a protected test budget. Do not force customer marketing to compete only on the same short-window metrics as paid acquisition.
- Audit what the AI system is optimizing. Check whether budget recommendations favor channels with cleaner signals rather than channels with greater long-term value.
- Require one cross-funnel review. Before shifting spend, show the effect on awareness, acquisition, expansion, and retention in the same decision document.
- Fund measurement capability as operating infrastructure. The move toward 36% AI-automated marketing work raises the cost of letting incomplete metrics guide allocation.
The important part of Gartner’s new survey is not that CMOs want growth. It is that the teams most prepared to use AI appear less willing to let easily optimized acquisition channels take the whole plan. B2B marketers should treat that difference as a budget-design signal, not a footnote.
Frequently Asked Questions
Gartner found that awareness and conversion account for 62.6% of total media spend. Loyalty and retention receive less than 15%, after falling 29% since 2024. Digital media now represents more than two-thirds of media investment.
Gartner says CMOs are prioritizing acquisition and digital channels in pursuit of growth. A likely operating factor is that acquisition channels produce faster, cleaner signals for AI optimization, while loyalty and retention outcomes are slower and harder to attribute.
Gartner found that the most AI-mature marketing organizations allocate relatively more budget to customer loyalty and retention and less to digital channels. The finding suggests AI maturity involves better allocation decisions, not simply more automated acquisition.
B2B CMOs should report acquisition and retained customer value together, protect a retention test budget, inspect what AI allocation systems optimize, and require cross-funnel reviews before moving media spend toward channels with the fastest visible metrics.
