Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Day 1 of the 2026 Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in London. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. 

On Day 1, we are highlighting sessions on  findings from the 2026 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, how to capture and sustain AI value and how to use AI for marketing strategic planning.

• Gartner Survey Reveals Marketing Leaders Expect AI Automation of Marketing Work to Double by 2028
• Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey Finds CMOs Allocate 15.3% of Marketing Budgets to AI, But Only 30% Are Ready to Scale AI Capabilities

Presented by Ewan McIntyre, Vice President Analyst at Gartner

CMOs are playing on a tougher “chessboard” in 2026 than ever before: CEOs want growth and an AI-driven enterprise transformation - but marketing leaders should not expect meaningful budget relief. In his session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Ewan McIntyre, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, unpacked the latest insights from the Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, outlining marketing’s “growth-with-less” mandate, and how CMOs can thrive by embracing transformation.

• “In 2026, it’s no longer about doing ‘more with less’ - it’s growth with less. CEOs are demanding growth while expecting an AI-driven overhaul of how the enterprise creates and captures value.”

• “CMOs are going all-in on AI, allocating 15.3% of budgets to AI initiatives, but many organizations lack the maturity to scale those investments.”

• “Seventy percent of CMOs say becoming an AI leader is a critical goal for 2026, but just 30% report fully developed AI readiness.”

• “Marketing budgets have plateaued at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026.”

• “Seventy-six percent of CEOs say AI is the most disruptive technology, and 88% plan to increase AI investment.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Ewan McIntyre by contacting Jordan Brackenbury at jordan.brackenbury@gartner.com.
  

Presented by Amy Abatangle, Vice President Analyst at Gartner

CMOs are facing a new “triple mandate”: drive growth, deliver AI transformation, and maintain cost discipline - all at once. In her session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Amy Abatangle, Vice President Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice, discussed how most marketing teams are still using AI to boost productivity, but the real opportunity is to move AI upstream into strategic decision support.

• “The role of the CMO is about to change fast: 65% of CMOs say advances in AI will dramatically change their role in the next two years.”

• “Most marketing AI is still focused on productivity - time saved, cost efficiency, speed of delivery. That helps with cost pressure, but it doesn’t improve the decisions that drive growth.”

• “Strategy creates more value than tactics - so AI has to move upstream into decision support.”

• “Agentic AI changes the unit of work from task to decision. Marketing must evolve from a campaign factory into a learning system - one that makes decisions based on value, volume, lift, risk and signal readiness.”

• “AI creates value when it becomes a decision-support layer across marketing strategy, planning and execution - creating closed-loop learning where insights continuously inform decisions.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Amy Abatangle by contacting Jordan Brackenbury at jordan.brackenbury@gartner.com.

Presented by Alan Lopez, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner

Buyers are increasingly consulting GenAI tools and chatbots instead of brand websites, and AI systems are now speaking on behalf of the brand. In his session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Alan Lopez, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice, explained what marketing leaders must do to shape how answer engines, chatbots and agents describe, compare and recommend their products. 

• “AI is already representing your brand. According to Gartner research, 47% of consumers and 60% of B2B buyers say they consulted GenAI tools or chatbots for a recent purchase decision.”

• “AI systems don’t experience your brand the way humans do. They extract patterns, pull structured claims, detect differentiation and compress nuance. If your content is vague or overly clever, AI flattens it into something average.”

• “To make your brand survive summarization, infuse AI-preferred content with brand style: use proprietary terms, quote wrapping, first-person expertise, and stylized schema content so the AI has fewer generic words to swap in.”

• “Don’t ignore multimodal influence. Modern AI ‘sees’ your images - so your hero images, captions and alt text can shape the adjectives AI uses to describe your products.”

• “This is not about adding another channel. It’s about redefining brand stewardship: brand is also how intelligent systems behave when no one from your company is in the room.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Alan Lopez by contacting Jordan Brackenbury at jordan.brackenbury@gartner.com.