Will digital marketing budgets increase or decrease in 2025?

Let’s just say that last year wasn’t good for most.

We know, as we’re in the same boat. And we mentioned our own challenges in our public annual report.

But it’s a new financial year—which means new predictions, new mood swings—and new budgets. And speaking off…

We’ve taken some time and looked at multiple surveys and reports that might tell us if we’ll see more of the same this year. Or if the trend is starting to shift.

And tell you what, it just might be the latter… Let’s check the pulse.

For context: Digital marketing budgets are rising year over year

The global ad spend keeps increasing.

Dentsu reported that the ad market—which grew to a record $772B last year—will keep growing in 2025 at 5.9%, which will outpace the global economy (3.2%).

Why are we saying this? Because out of all the global ad spend, most of it is going to digital advertising or digital extension of traditional media, such as connected TV (CTV). 

And since we’re all mostly digital marketers, this means we’re battling in an arena that’s getting more expensive and more crowded.

Check this out:

Pre-covid, combined digital ad spend accounted for less than half of global ad spend. Now, five years later, it’s more than two thirds. 

This shows that diving into online marketing today can drain your financial resources quite quickly if you’re not careful. 

But even more importantly, it shows that sailing in the digital sea requires a much bigger boat than a few years ago.

And yes, by boat we mean budget.

CMOs expect ad budgets to increase in 2025

Uncertainty? What uncertainty? 

Well, it looks like the sentiment is shifting when it comes to the economy. The challenges we’ve seen in 2023 and 2024 with rising prices and interest rates aren’t as prominent today.

…that’s according to the marketers worldwide. 

And going by that feeling, most CMOs are looking at increases in their marketing budgets for this year:

Yep. Merkle says that 89% of all CMO survey respondents will increase their ad budgets. Of course, most will raise it marginally, by 5% (40% of respondents), while 18% will increase their budgets by 10% or more.

Still, those who forecast budget decreases fall into the statistically insignificant range (<3%).

The Crew’s Take: There’s a growing optimism in marketing leaders worldwide, boosted by better economic outlook. 

This might make advertising more challenging—and expensive—since most CMOs will want to ride out this wave. It’s good news for ad agencies or ad sellers, since brands might look for ways to capitalize on this wave of optimism.

However, take note that the first and second quarters of 2025 might still bring more of the same, as most will start with gradual budget increases. So if you’ve been meaning to spend a bit more on ads, you might want to do it earlier, too.

And speaking of…

B2B marketers might be more careful than the rest 

We can’t say B2B marketers are overly pessimistic. 

But they are definitely less optimistic than the CMOs in global:

It looks like 41% of B2B marketers are growth-focused, but 32% are still feeling economic uncertainty—which might be due to financial constraints or overall, gloomier feeling.

If you’re in B2B and have excess marketing budget, you might have lower competition than in other industries at the start of the year. It’s also a good time to experiment with multiple strategies while most of the industry remains stagnant, or overly cautious.

Out-of-the-box tip: The data shows B2B brands are experiencing slow growth and lack of finances. So if you’re targeting other businesses, and:

• Can explain how your product or service can boost ROI, or
• You promote cost-effective, high-impact solutions like automation or AI

…you can position your own tool to target these segments with your own marketing strategies. 

How will marketers allocate budgets?

So, budgets could be there this year. 

But how will marketers choose to spend it? Let’s check out a few reports.

Marketers will focus on new tools, brand awareness, and acquisition

If you thought AI is the top priority, you could be wrong.

Here is how marketing teams are prioritizing their tasks for 2025:

What can this tell us about budgeting? Well, let’s focus on the top three priorities. 

Most will look to develop a martech strategy—this does not necessarily mean adding new tools to the stack, but quite the opposite. It could also mean downsizing on tools that are no longer needed.

On the other hand, awareness and acquisition remain top priority—which will probably drive spending on content creation, influencer partnerships, social media campaigns and… ads, of course.  

Implementing AI across marketing is on the lower side (21%), as is retention (25%)—which usually comes secondary to acquisition. But it is still crucial.

The Crew’s opinion: Awareness and acquisition channels might be crowded with competitors. There’s not much you can do bar trying to pinpoint your target audience so you spend your budget strategically, whether it is on paid or organic campaigns. 

How will marketers allocate budgets depending on advertising channels

As a part of our big survey late last year, we asked our readers how they’ll spread their advertising budget depending on the channels.

Here’s what they said:

It appears that what worked in the years prior will keep working in 2025. 

Meta Ads, Google Ads, and SEO remain the “big three,” and are still the channels that take up the most of the marketing budgets.  

For example, more than 6% of all advertisers would spend almost their entire budget on Meta Ads only. And for all talk of SEO being toasted… Well, this report disagrees. Only 17% of all respondents won’t spend money on it. 

YouTube, Native Ads, and TikTok will see some portion of ad budgets, but digital billboards may also see a decent amount of ad dollars coming in.

The Crew’s opinion: The lack of single-channel allocations suggests marketers are hedging their bets in multiple platforms. However, Meta and Google still remain the core ad platforms.

On one end, smaller teams don’t have resources to stretch over multiple channels, but in case you do have excess budget, this can be an opportunity to try something new.

How will marketers allocate their budgets by industry and sector?

B2B marketers might not be optimistic about budget increases, but they are definitely most proactive when it comes to budget allocation.

Going by this report, CMOs that market B2B products will invest most of their budget into customer experience (7.8%), CRMs (8.2%), brand building (9.5%), and new product introductions (12%). 

What does this tell us? Yep, marketing B2B products is super expensive. You simply need to spread out your budget a lot to market efficiently.

On the contrary, B2C will focus on new product introductions (7.7%) and customer relationship management (6.9%) showing that a lot of money goes into proactive processes—acquisition and retention.

The Crew’s opinion: This data—along with the reported B2B budgets decreasing—shows B2B will take more time to recover compared to other industries. 

B2B businesses might have less dollars on their disposal, yet need to invest plenty in various areas of their business. 

So if you’re in the B2B industry—and you have to carefully think of every dollar spent… you’re not alone.

The budgeting conundrum

So, what do the marketing budgets look like in 2025? 

On one hand, opportunistic—with rising optimism and larger budgets. Challenging on the other—with increased competition, rising costs, and slower recovery.

What you can do is think through your allocation, leverage data-driven insights (like this report), and if possible—experiment with emerging channels.

And of course, stay vigilant. Just because the situation is looking good today, it doesn’t mean you won’t need to adapt tomorrow. But you’re a marketer, we shouldn’t be telling you that…