Marketing Wants AI Skill Most and Funds it Least

Marketing leaders have changed their minds about what makes a good hire far faster than they have changed their budgets. CMO Alliance's CMO Insights Report 2026, drawn from surveys and long-form interviews with 50 senior marketing leaders, found tech and AI savviness moving from the least-valued hiring criterion in 2025 at 8% to the most-valued in 2026 at 72%. Over the same period, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs research placed human resources, meaning salaries, training, and development, last among 2026 investment priorities at 9%. The same capability now sits first on the hiring list and last on the budget, and that gap shows up in the results long before anyone connects the two.

What the Two Budget Lines Say

That 16th annual B2B survey was fielded between 24 June and 14 August 2025 among 1,015 marketers, mostly in North America. Asked where 2026 investment would go, respondents put AI tools first at 45%, events at 33%, owned media at 32%, and human resources last at 9%. The same survey reported separately on 266 technology marketers, and their answers followed the same pattern more sharply still, with AI tools taking 51% and human resources again taking 9%. Two different groups of marketers, asked the same question, both put their own people last.

Why the Gains Stop at the Point that Matters

The same research asked what AI has actually improved for the teams already using it, and the answers descend in a straight line. Productivity improved for 87% of them, operational efficiency for 80%, creative capabilities for 65%, content quality for 58%, and content performance for 39%.

Notice what the top of that list has in common. Productivity and efficiency are things a marketing team can see from its own desk, and a tool tends to improve them the week it's switched on. Content performance sits at the other end, where a reader who owes you nothing decides whether to keep reading. Teams are making more work, faster and in better order. Whether any of it lands is the one measure that has barely moved, and no tool has moved that on its own.

What Changed in the Hiring Criteria

No other finding in this year's research moved that far, that fast. Tech and AI savviness rose from the least-valued hiring criterion at 8% to the most-valued at 72% in a single year, while data literacy, which topped the list a year earlier, fell to sixth. A market that reorders its priorities quickly has recognised which capability it needs. The budget figures indicate it has not yet decided to pay for building that capability in the people already employed.

The same report notes teams now producing the same output with 7 to 10 people that previously took 12 to 15. A smaller team places more weight on each remaining person's judgement rather than less, which makes the 9% line harder to defend as headcount falls.

Where the Next CMO is Coming From

The destination of that shift is the top job itself. Writing for MarTech.org on 9 September 2026, Mike Pastore makes the case that the CMO role is moving from a creative focus towards technology leadership, pushed there by AI adoption, revenue accountability, and the demand for provable return, and that the next generation of CMOs will rise from marketing operations rather than from brand and field marketing backgrounds.

Valeria Balaro, chief marketing officer at the technology consultancy Star and the leader interviewed in that piece, names the consequence directly: marketing leaders can no longer delegate technical data and infrastructure decisions. She describes the CMO and the chief information officer as needing shared ownership of technology investments rather than a handover between departments.

Set that against the budget figures and the 9% line stops being an operational decision. The market now treats this capability as the route to the most senior marketing job, and it sits last on the budget list. That is a succession decision nobody in the room realised they were taking.

Why Tools Raise the Floor and Skill Raises the Ceiling

A marketing tool raises the floor of what a team can produce. It removes the blank page and shortens the distance between an idea and something that exists on screen. A capable marketer raises the ceiling, deciding which idea deserved the effort, checking whether the claim in the third paragraph survives contact with its source, and judging whether the finished piece sounds like this company or like every other company using the same tool.

This blog's earlier article on the missing step between AI adoption and marketing value covered the process half of this problem, naming the person who reviews AI-assisted work before it goes out. The budget question is the other half. A named reviewer with no time or training to build the judgement that review depends on is a control on paper rather than in practice.

Where a Marketing Leader Should Move the Money

Three moves close most of this gap without a larger total budget. First, name the capability rather than the line item. Training as a budget line is easy to cut because nobody in the room can say precisely what it buys. A named capability, for example the ability to brief, edit, and fact-check AI-assisted work to a standard the company will publish under, has an owner and an observable outcome.

Second, fund it from the tool line rather than requesting new money. An organisation putting 45% of its 2026 priority into AI tools can move a fraction of that towards the people operating them without opening a new budget conversation. The Marketing Leaders Reality Index 2026, published with CMO Alliance by a marketing-technology vendor and drawing on more than 300 executives, reports that just 7.4% of leaders rate their own AI adoption as advanced.

Third, measure the ceiling rather than the floor. A team reporting how much it published this quarter is measuring the floor, and that number rises the moment a tool is switched on. A team reporting what the content changed is measuring the ceiling, whether that is qualified enquiries, sales conversations starting further along, or citations in the answer engines buyers now ask first.

Why this Hits Founder-Led Companies First

In a founder-led company in tech, web3, or fintech, one person's capability frequently is the ceiling. A marketing function of two or three has no bench to absorb a skills gap and no training budget to close it, so everything published tracks the judgement of whoever is closest to the work. The tools are equally available to a six-person startup and a listed competitor, which leaves the operator as the variable that differs.

The marketing-operations route to the top job lands differently here too. A founder-led company has no marketing operations function to promote anybody out of, so the technical fluency larger organisations are hiring for has to be built inside a team of two or three, or bought in. Deciding which capability to build first, and defending that spend against a tool renewal that looks more measurable on a spreadsheet is a fractional CMO's work in the first 180 days.

FAQs

What does the 9% figure refer to? It is the share of B2B marketers naming human resources, meaning salaries, training, and development, as a 2026 investment priority in Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs research among 1,015 marketers. It ranked last, behind AI tools at 45%, events at 33%, and owned media at 32%.

Is marketing operations really where the next CMO comes from? That is the argument MarTech.org published on 9 September 2026, and it is a projection rather than a measured finding. The reasoning is that AI adoption, revenue accountability, and pressure to prove return have moved the role towards technology leadership, so the people fluent in the data and infrastructure decisions now central to it sit in marketing operations.

Does this mean marketing teams should spend less on AI tools? Not necessarily. The research does not show tool spending producing poor returns. It shows returns concentrating in productivity and efficiency at 87% and 80%, then thinning to 39% at content performance. The argument is for funding the capability that converts tool output into performance, not for cutting the tools.

How does a small marketing team fund capability with no training budget? Reallocate at the margin rather than requesting new money. One tool renewal deferred by a quarter, or a seat removed from a licence nobody fully uses, usually covers focused capability development for whoever does the most published work. The Marketing Leaders Reality Index 2026 found nearly four in 10 teams with higher budgets added no roles, so the constraint is often allocation rather than availability.

Wondering which capability your own marketing budget should be funding first? Reach out at hello@marcomfin.tech.