SAN JOSE, Calif. (May 21, 2024) – The CMO Council and Zeta Global, a leading AI Powered Marketing Cloud, announced today the findings of the ‘CMO Intentions 2024: Fueling Martech Innovation Through AI’ study. The study, conducted during the first quarter, surveyed nearly 200 CMO Council members in North America and Europe, revealing a clear and confident shift in marketing technology.

One of the key findings revealed Chief Marketing Officers appear clear, confident, and intentional in where Gen AI integration and application will deliver the best results in marketing process improvement and execution in 2024. Companies like Zeta Global, adding value with AI, have focused on three key Generative AI drivers to improve marketing productivity, effectiveness, and innovation. The new study also reveals that 60 percent of marketers see marketing as providing the most value and ROI in 2024.

The CMO Council teamed with leading AI Powered Marketing Cloud Zeta Global to gain insights and predictions from a sample of its 16,000 members, who collectively control nearly $1 trillion in annual, aggregated marketing spend worldwide. The full report can be sourced here: https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/cmo-intentions-2024

Over 40 percent of those surveyed by the CMO Council are looking to AI to light up content origination and minimize mistakes, inaccuracies, flubs, gaffes, snafus, and errors in marketing communication images, video, and text. They also seek more predictive outcomes from creative investments and higher levels of automation, productivity, and efficiency in internal and agency teams. All translating into improved output and inspiration from a lower headcount.

Survey respondents report they will heavily target content creation for more invention, impact, and personal resonance when deploying AI applications in marketing. They expect AI-driven execution will help brands be both adept and adaptive in connecting and engaging more individually across cultures, borders, boundaries, shoppergraphics, psychographics, and the requirements of localized marketing partners and channels.

“Marketing technology procurement intentions have made a massive swing to embracing new Gen AI tools, applications, and analytics,” notes Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. He noted that almost 60 percent of marketers surveyed view this area of investment as offering the most value and ROI in 2024.

Customer data is seen by nearly 46% of marketing leaders as the essential lubricant to recognize, personalize, humanize, prioritize, and vitalize engagement with the most valued buyers and loyal shoppers. Better knowledge and understanding of customer journeys - along with improved process, productivity, and workflow are high on the priority list for marketing technology investment in 2024.

"This study reinforces that we are in the early stages of a Replacement Cycle. Generative AI is the catalyst for sophisticated CMOs to recognize that there are superior technologies and tools to deliver better experiences for consumers and better results for their brands," adds Steven Gerber, COO of Zeta Global.

The report stresses that CMOs face multiplying in gaining organizational adoption while using or marketing automation platforms and point solutions. The CMO Council Survey Report believes dedicated marketing technology management and digital transformation expertise appear to be maturing and more widely accepted, supported, and represented in global organizations. Teams of cross-functional leaders are now being deployed with clear strategies for selection, deployment, adoption and scaling of new or existing platforms, solutions, and tools.

Key survey findings include:

• Half (50%) of all surveyed chief marketers prioritize functional alignment and unified execution in 2024, followed by acquiring customer insights for better outcomes.


• Only 17% of CMOs believe their teams lack digital skills and just 18% face resistance to change.


• About 14% of chief marketers rated their teams excellent in 2023, while nearly 50% said they met expectations. Around 30% see room for improvement, and 8% reported underperformance.


• Top-line revenue growth is the top priority for nearly 60% of respondents, who also expect more operational efficiency and cost reduction from marketing in 2024, with big expectations for AI's impact on productivity and performance.


• CMOs view IT, CIOs, CTOs, and chief digital officers as key partners for leveraging customer data, driven by expanding marketing stacks, point solutions, channel partners, eCommerce, and customer-facing groups.

CMO Intentions 2024 research findings are based on a Q1 online survey of nearly 200 chief marketing executives at both B2B and B2C/hybrid companies in a cross-section of industry sectors throughout North America and Europe. Over 90 percent of respondents held CMO/CRO/CGO/CXO/SVP/VP titles and 70 percent represented large corporations with annual revenues of more than $ 1 billion. The balance of survey participants came from mid-sized enterprises with less than $1 billion in annual sales. Nearly 30 percent of survey respondents spend over $5 million annually on marketing technology and a further 43 percent between $2 million and $5 million.

About Zeta Global Holdings

Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE: ZETA) is a leading data-driven, cloud-based marketing technology company that empowers enterprises to acquire, grow and retain customers. The Company’s Zeta Marketing Platform (the “ZMP”) is the largest omnichannel marketing platform with identity data at its core. The ZMP analyzes billions of structured and unstructured data points to predict consumer intent by leveraging sophisticated artificial intelligence to personalize experiences at scale. Founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, the Company is headquartered in New York City. For more information, please go to www.zetaglobal.com.

About CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 16,000+ members control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in over 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE). To learn more, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org.

Media Contact:

Kevin Sugarman
ksugarman@cmocouncil.org