Market Strategy

CMO Tenure Ticks Up as B2B Marketing Adopts AI

Spencer Stuart finds Fortune 500 CMO tenure edged up in 2024, while Forrester reports wide AI tool adoption alongside gaps in strategy and measurement.

2026 CMO Survey: Talent Rivals Tech as Growth Driver

Deloitte's 35th CMO Survey finds marketing leaders split evenly between talent and technology as the top driver of revenue growth, amid economic caution.

Influ2 puts a number on sales and marketing alignment: a 35% hand-off rate

Influ2’s 2025 benchmark ties alignment to a single operational metric: how often ad-engaged contacts actually get a sales touch.

Nearly 3 in 4 companies put RevOps in the C-suite, but 89% still lack goals

Salesloft and Wakefield found 73% of firms now have a C-suite RevOps role. Nearly all see AI ROI, yet strategic mandates and metrics are still muddy.

Canva’s AI marketing push is running into “AI slop” governance

Canva’s 2026 survey data and its World Tour playbook point to the same ops shift: scale creative with AI, but prove it’s human-led.

Demand Gen Report’s 2026 sales-marketing alignment survey makes the SLA the new procurement line item for RevOps

Demand Gen Report opened its 2026 alignment benchmark survey. The operational shift is treating lead handoff SLAs like system requirements, not culture work.

Gartner’s 2026 digital marketing Hype Cycle frames AI spend as a governance problem, not a tooling race

Gartner’s 2026 Hype Cycle says CMOs face flat budgets, “answer engines,” and a shift toward autonomous marketing. Operators should treat AI as governed spend.

Optimizely’s Forrester Wave leader slot turns “agentic” marketing into an enterprise architecture decision

Optimizely’s Forrester Wave recognition spotlights a shift: “experience optimization” is being bought as agent-driven workflow plus data architecture, not just

B2B marketing teams are treating identity resolution as an ops problem, not a martech feature

New 2026 benchmarks and fall event agendas point to the same bottleneck: fragmented buyer signals. The fix is governance, not another dashboard.

Optimizely’s Forrester Wave Leader rating puts agentic experimentation into 2026 martech RFPs

Optimizely’s Leader and Customer Favorite marks a practical shift: AI agents are moving into controlled experimentation workflows tied to data platforms.

ABM automation is getting down to 10 minutes, but revenue still hinges on a 5-minute handoff

Multiply’s “10 Min ABM” promise speeds campaign launches, but MarTech data shows response-time and context in the marketing-to-sales handoff still decides wheth

Most B2B content marketing programs fail because teams can't define what success looks like

CMI's decade of B2B content marketing research shows the gap between effective and ineffective programs traces to one factor: clarity on what success means.

Agentic B2B buying is making structured data the new homepage

As AI agents take over enterprise product research, your brand's discoverability now depends on data architecture, not design or ad spend.

Creator-executives are rewriting what a CMO looks like in 2026

Nadya Okamoto's appointment as CMO of Pie signals a broader shift: brands are trading boardroom experience for built-in audience fluency.

Jasper promotes Tom Newton to CMO and hires Lauren Newman as CFO as enterprise AI marketing shifts from experimentation to execution

Jasper named Tom Newton CMO and Lauren Newman CFO on Aug. 3, signaling a push to scale enterprise AI marketing beyond pilots.

Pure Storage's rebrand to Everpure shows why B2B tech companies change their name before moving upmarket

Pure Storage became Everpure to shed its storage-only identity and compete for enterprise data platform deals, as AI reshapes how B2B buyers research vendors.

Mobile app orders are driving Etsy's Q2 revenue growth as ecommerce expands globally

Etsy's Q2 revenue rose 6.2% on stronger app engagement, while broader ecommerce data signals accelerating global growth that operators can't afford to ignore.

84% of B2B marketers pay to rent audiences they don't own, and Breaker says newsletters fix that

Breaker argues B2B brands spending on paid social and sponsored placements build no lasting channel. A newsletter changes that math.

B2B demand gen teams are ditching MQL volume for revenue attribution as leadership pressure mounts

Demand Gen Report's 2026 benchmark survey reveals B2B marketers are under pressure to prove sourced revenue and influenced pipeline, not just clicks.

Amazon's ad segment hits $19.8B in Q2 as multisport strategy doubles advertiser reach

Amazon's ad revenue grew 26% YoY to $19.8B in Q2 2026, with multisport advertisers seeing 2.3x unduplicated reach and 17% more orders.

B2B marketers with full-funnel attribution are nearly twice as likely to exceed their goals

Three 2026 reports show the gaps widening between B2B marketing leaders and the rest on attribution, budget discipline, and buying-group strategy.

CMOs are shrinking marketing's role to survive short-term pressure, the 2026 data shows

The 2026 CMO Survey finds AI adoption rising faster than team readiness, while Forbes' influential CMOs list shows the function absorbing broader commercial man

Albertsons, Tractor Supply, and Bero show how retailers are rebuilding digital operations for scale in 2026

Three retailers are restructuring merchandising, AI-powered B2B portals, and omnichannel tools as ecommerce resets toward operational discipline.

B2B marketing's top performers share three traits: buying groups, full-funnel attribution, and AI-visible brands

New research and a fresh GTM intelligence partnership reveal what separates high-performing B2B marketing teams from the rest in 2026.

Adobe CMO Lara Balazs says the modern marketing leader must be a perpetual beginner

Adobe's CMO Lara Balazs told Business Insider at Cannes Lions 2026 that today's marketing chiefs must reinvent themselves continuously or fall behind.

Most B2B GTM programs fail because data, strategy, and execution never actually connect

B2B companies have data, strategy, and execution teams. The gap is alignment, and in 2026, misalignment is showing up in pipeline, win rates, and GTM spend.

Most B2B ABM programs fail at execution, not strategy. Two 2026 approaches show why

Multiply's 10 Min ABM and B2BMX 2026 sessions from Salesforce and WordPress VIP reveal a shared diagnosis: AI execution gaps are killing B2B pipeline.

Clari + Salesloft embeds conversation intelligence directly into revenue execution, targeting the 87% of businesses that missed 2025 revenue goals

Clari + Salesloft launches Conversation Intelligence to turn buyer signals into real-time revenue actions, targeting the 87% of businesses that missed 2025 goal

Most B2B ABM programs stall at execution, and AI-native tools are being built to fix that

Multiply's 10 Minute ABM and B2BMX 2026 sessions reveal a shared diagnosis: B2B teams have ABM strategy but lack the execution infrastructure to run it.

95% of B2B marketers use AI in 2026, but fewer than 4 in 10 say it's actually working

CMI's 2026 B2B research exposes the gap between AI adoption and real performance gains, while buying committees hit 11.2 members on average.