Budget expectations fall faster than business optimism for marketers in 2026

Only a fifth (19%) of brand marketers expect budgets to rise next year, despite over half (59%) believing business will improve.  

40 percentage point gap highlights continuing need for marketers to do more with less 

WARC releases The Voice of the Marketer report- a deep dive into a survey of 1,000+ marketers worldwide 

Marketers’ cooling optimism, uncertainty around US trade policies, the impact of AI adoption and the dominance of digital channels on media planning, are the top themes examined in WARC’s Voice of the Marketer report. 

Part of WARC’s Evolution of Marketing programme, The Voice of the Marketer uncovers marketers’ opinions on where the industry is headed in the coming year and examines four different themes that have emerged from the annual survey of 1,000+ marketers worldwide fielded between September to October 2025. The survey also fuels trend analysis in the recently released Marketer’s Toolkit report. 

Stephanie Siew, Senior Research Executive, WARC, said: “Despite the decline in marketer optimism, it’s worth pointing out that the majority of both brand and agency marketers (54%) still expect next year to be better than this one. However budget expectations are a lot lower, which will heap more pressure on marketers in 2026.”  

Aditya Kishore, Insight Director, WARC, added: “A significant red flag for marketers is the tension between poor macroeconomic visibility and the need to plan for long-term business growth — which is why more than half see short-termism as a major industry concern.” 

The key findings outlined in The Voice of the Marketer are:  

• Business optimism is failing to translate into budget optimism: 59% of brand marketers expect business in 2026 to be better than in 2025 but only 19% expect marketing budgets to be higher next year. 

Marketers are still mostly optimistic about business expectations for 2026 but anticipate budget reductions. Only a fifth (19%) of brand marketers expect budgets to rise next year, despite over half (59%) believing business will improve

The survey data shows that those expecting lower budgets next year are more likely to invest in performance marketing (42%) than in brand marketing (29%).  

However, balancing performance marketing with brand building can lead to more sustainable returns and help advertisers avoid the ‘doom loop’ – the negative cycle that arises from a mix of faulty metrics, wasted spend and diminishing returns. 

More than half of marketers (55%) recognise short-termism as a major industry concern, up 30pp from a quarter of marketers (25%) surveyed in 2022. 

• Marketers are already feeling the effects of US trade policies: Three-fifths (61%) of marketers are concerned by the impact of economic conditions on their marketing strategies for 2026. 

Marketers are most concerned about economic conditions for 2026, heightened by US trade tariffs and policies. Effects include uncertainty and slowed investment, supply chain disruptions, lower demand for products, and reduced profit margins, with North American marketers being the most affected. These concerns outweigh privacy, brand safety, or societal issues.  

Four in ten marketers are using scenario planning, a tool that enables marketers to model multiple economic scenarios in advance, and stress-test different decisions, as well as restructuring teams to be more agile and responsive to macro changes. 

Alex Craddock, Chief Marketing and Content Officer, Citi, says: “We’ve had a lot of uncertainty this year, which has caused volatility… Markets have proven to be pretty resilient up until now; at some stage, that resilience will start to wane.” 

• AI disruption is a top concern: Three in five (59%) marketers are worried about AI disruption – more than double (28%) of those who were concerned in 2023. 

Marketers have moved beyond experimenting with AI and are now using it with more purpose. The most popular tasks for AI include summarising large texts (76%), competitor and category analysis (74%) and customer insights (60%). 

However, growing concerns reflect a general mood of uncertainty around AI: its potential benefits and limitations, its impact on existing workflows, creative processes, and changes in employment. Over a third (35%) of marketers are worried that AI will replace several human functions in marketing over the next three years.  

More agencies (40%) feel threatened by AI than brand marketers (30%), which are leaning into AI to scale faster, cheaper and become more independent as budgets tighten. In response, agencies are building their own AI capabilities to defend their value, particularly amidst competition from AI-powered tech platforms.  

Lex Bradshaw-Zanger, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer of SAPMENA Zone for L’Oréal Groupe, says: “The new rule of engagement is strategic orchestration: knowing when to deploy AI, how to combine it with human insight, and maintaining control over your data and brand integrity while scaling at unprecedented levels.”   

• Digital channels are driving media investment: Nine in ten dollars (90.3%) go to online-only platforms. 

WARC Media projects the global ad market to grow by 7.4% to $1.17trn this year, of which nine in ten dollars (90.3%) will go to online-only platforms. Most marketers plan to increase their spending on online video, influencer/creator marketing, and social media.  

Paid search remains an important channel, with WARC Media forecasting ad spend to reach $274bn in 2026, but its growth is expected to slow due to fragmentation as consumers shift from traditional search engines to platforms like Amazon and TikTok for information.  

Marketers should transition away from relying solely on SEO and plan around a more holistic search experience and optimise earned and owned media to enhance visibility within LLM-based search environments. 

A third of marketers expect to increase ad investment in retail media. Notably, the proportion who do not spend on retail media remains at 28-29%. 

The full Voice of the Marketer report is available to WARC members.  

It follows the recent release of the WARC Marketer’s Toolkit , a report analysing the five key trends that will disrupt global marketing strategies in the coming year: The vanishing middle, the creator gamble, the great escape, the zero-click customer journey and the reset of consumer milestones. 

Both reports are part of WARC Strategy’s The Evolution of Marketing programme, designed to help marketers address major industry shifts and drive effective marketing. A third report, The Future of Media, will be released in January. 

Complementing the reports are a series of podcasts.