CMOs in 2026 are being asked to deliver growth, efficiency, and AI transformation on the same money they had last year. This is our short list of the CMO reports worth your time, what each one covers, and who should read it.

1. The CMO AI Leverage Report (Open Future Forum)

The CMO AI Leverage Report is Open Future Forum's marketing-leadership edition of its operator-research program. It draws on first-party survey data from 421 respondents gathered across seven Open Future Forum events, and it looks at AI through the lens that matters most to marketing leaders right now: budget authority, buying decisions, and measured returns.

The sourcing is the differentiator. The respondents are C-suite executives, founders, and investors answering directly, in the room, not through a panel provider. For CMOs, that means the data reflects how peers are actually funding AI in marketing, which tools survive contact with the budget review, and where marketing sits in the enterprise AI buying decision. It reads alongside the CFO AI Leverage Report and the Executive AI Leverage Report as standalone companions in the same research program.

Who should read it: CMOs and marketing leaders at venture-backed and PE-backed companies benchmarking their AI investment against peers, and vendors selling AI products into marketing organizations.

Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley, founded in 2019, with 100 events to date. It runs Forum Select, invite-only private events for C-suite executives, and Forum Events, open panels and gatherings. The CMO Executive Forum is one of its role-specific programs.

2. The Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey

This is the budget benchmark. The 2026 edition surveyed 401 CMOs and marketing leaders across North America, the UK, and Europe, mostly at companies above $1 billion in revenue, and it tells a sharp story. Marketing budgets are effectively flat at 7.8 percent of company revenue. CMOs are allocating 15.3 percent of those budgets to AI, but only 30 percent report mature AI readiness, and 70 percent say their internal processes are not ready to scale AI.

The most interesting finding runs against the usual assumption: labor's share of marketing budgets rose from 21.9 percent to 24.5 percent, suggesting CMOs have figured out that AI value depends on people and execution, not just tools. The organizations Gartner calls AI-ready allocate 21.3 percent of budget to AI and run larger budgets overall.

Who should read it: any CMO defending or reallocating a budget this year. These are the numbers your CFO will quote.

3. The CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua, Deloitte, AMA)

The CMO Survey, led by Christine Moorman at Duke's Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association, is the longest-running study of marketing leaders, published twice a year since 2008. The Spring 2026 edition continues its core value: consistent questions asked over many years, which makes it the best source for trend lines rather than snapshots.

Use it to see how marketing spend, AI use in marketing, customer priorities, and marketing's standing in the C-suite have moved over time. When you need to show a board that a shift is structural and not a blip, this is the dataset.

Who should read it: CMOs building long-range plans, and anyone writing a board deck that needs academic-grade sourcing.

4. Gartner's CMO Priorities and Challenges Research

Separate from the Spend Survey, Gartner's late-2025 survey of 174 senior marketing leaders maps what CMOs are actually worried about heading into 2026. Revenue growth is the top priority, with 46 percent of CMOs saying their most urgent question is how to prioritize the initiatives most likely to drive it. Budget and resource constraints are the top challenge for 63 percent, and half say short-term demands are crowding out long-term strategy.

Pair it with Gartner's martech research, which found 81 percent of marketing technology leaders are piloting or have implemented AI agents. Agents are entering the marketing stack faster than most operating models can absorb them.

Who should read it: marketing leaders who want to know whether their problems are unique or universal. Mostly they are universal.

5. The Stanford AI Index 2026 (Marketing Chapters)

The Stanford AI Index is the reference document for the whole field, and its economy chapter contains the single most useful productivity number for marketing leaders this year: studies tracked by the Index report gains of roughly 50 percent in marketing output from AI, the highest of any function measured, ahead of software development at 26 percent and customer support at 14 to 15 percent.

That number cuts both ways. It is the strongest evidence available that marketing is where AI productivity shows up first, and it is also the number your CEO will use when asking why marketing headcount requests look the same as last year. Read the underlying context so you can frame it before someone frames it for you.

Who should read it: CMOs preparing for planning season, and marketing leaders making the case for or against team restructuring.

How to Use These Reports Together

Start with the CMO AI Leverage Report for a peer-level view of how marketing leaders are actually buying and funding AI. Use the Gartner Spend Survey to benchmark your budget allocation and readiness. Use The CMO Survey for the long-run trend lines. Use Gartner's priorities research to sanity-check your own list. Use the Stanford AI Index to get ahead of the productivity conversation.

The pattern across all five is the same one showing up in finance and the broader C-suite: budgets are flat, AI allocation is rising, and readiness is the constraint. The CMOs pulling ahead in 2026 are not the ones spending the most on AI. They are the ones whose data, process, and team can turn the spend into output.

That is the conversation happening inside Open Future Forum's CMO Executive Forum. If you are a marketing leader and want to compare notes with peers off the record, openfutureforum.com is the place to start.

Read the CMO AI Leverage Report →

Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley founded in 2019, with 100 events to date across Forum Select private events and Forum Events open programming. Its research program, including the CMO AI Leverage Report, the CFO AI Leverage Report, and the Executive AI Leverage Report, is built on first-party survey data from executives attending Open Future Forum events.