CMOs are pouring money into AI, but most marketing organizations still are not ready to make those investments pay off.

That’s one of the clearest findings from Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey, which found that CMOs now allocate an average of 15.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives. At the same time, only 30% say their organizations have mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities.

In other words, marketers are buying the tools faster than they are building the infrastructure needed to support them.

According to Gartner, 70% of CMOs say becoming an AI leader is now a critical goal for 2026.…