As we reach the midpoint of 2025, the marketing technology (MarTech) landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. For businesses, marketers, and sales leaders, understanding where Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are directing their technology budgets offers a valuable signal of broader strategic shifts. From the mainstreaming of Generative AI (GenAI) to the rise of secure data collaboration environments, investment patterns are revealing not just what’s trending, but what’s working.
Recent research from PwC, Dentsu, and Bloom Consulting highlights several key areas where CMOs are investing in technology to enhance efficiency, drive personalization, and future-proof their marketing organizations. This article synthesizes the latest data and provides actionable context for decision-makers evaluating their own Martech investments.
Table of Contents
The Strategic Imperatives Driving MarTech Spend
While 79% of marketing leaders anticipate budget increases in 2025, many acknowledge lagging adoption of modern tools, even as C-suite recognition of marketing’s value has dropped from 54% in 2023 to just 40% this year.
PwC
CMOs are under pressure to deliver measurable business outcomes, often within constrained or scrutinized budgets. While they expect budget increases, many admit they are behind in adopting modern tools. The gap that exists between the effectiveness of marketing and the increased costs is creating urgency. Investments must yield visible, scalable results.
The focus, therefore, is on high-leverage technologies that combine innovation with a strong return on investment (ROI). GenAI, CX platforms, and secure data collaboration systems are no longer experimental—they’re becoming foundational.
Where Martech Budgets Are Flowing
Generative AI: From Hype to Business Transformation
78% of CMOs plan to use Generative AI to transform business models—not just for content creation, but to rewire marketing operations.
PwC
GenAI is transitioning from tactical applications, such as blog writing and asset generation, into strategic roles, including campaign orchestration, predictive customer journey mapping, and product innovation support.
Some companies are even implementing Agentic AI systems, where AI tools function as semi-autonomous agents. These platforms enable research on competitors, analysis of market signals, generation of comprehensive campaign strategies, and execution of tasks across CRM, email, and paid channels—often without human intervention until final approval. This leap—from assistive AI to agentic execution—marks a significant evolution in how CMOs view technology as a co-pilot, not just a tool.
Customer Experience (CX) Platforms: Personalization at Scale
The customer experience remains a top investment area, with 51% of CMOs increasing budgets in this category.
PwC
These investments typically span:
- Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) that unify web, app, and mobile experiences under one personalization engine.
- Omnichannel orchestration tools that align messaging across touchpoints, from email to social to in-store.
- Behavioral analytics to anticipate and respond to customer intent in real-time.
The goal is not just satisfaction—it’s differentiation. In an era of product parity, experience becomes the brand.
Data Collaboration and Clean Rooms: Solving Privacy and Precision
Data is both an asset and a liability. With regulations tightening and consumer trust waning, CMOs are turning to data clean rooms to strike a balance between personalization and privacy. These secure environments allow marketers to match first-party data with partner datasets without revealing personally identifiable information (PII).
These tools are crucial for overcoming privacy hurdles while maintaining campaign effectiveness. This reflects a broader shift from third-party (3P) dependency to first-party (1P) intelligence, as cookies continue to lose relevance.
AI-Driven Analytics and Automation: Smarter, Not Just Faster
Beyond GenAI, CMOs are investing in AI-powered analytics platforms that unify and interpret vast streams of customer data. Tools that once required dedicated data science teams are now accessible through intuitive dashboards, enabling marketers to:
- Identify high-value segments.
- Predict customer churn or conversion.
- Optimize channel mix in real time.
Automation complements these insights by operationalizing them, using platforms to personalize experiences at scale dynamically.
What’s emerging is a closed-loop system where insights feed automation, which in turn creates new data, continuously refining outcomes.
Emerging Social Platforms and Experimental Interfaces
While not commanding the same level of investment as AI or data tools, emerging social platforms are still receiving exploratory attention. CMOs are experimenting with decentralized platforms, community-based networks, and next-gen influencer ecosystems.
As for metaverse-related tools, the early hype of a couple of years ago has cooled. The metaverse encompasses technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 3D avatars, digital twins, persistent virtual worlds, and spatial computing. Think of it as the next evolution of the internet—often described as the 3D internet or immersive web.
Some brands in sectors such as luxury, entertainment, and youth retail continue to explore immersive marketing, albeit more as pilot projects than core investments.
Takeaways
CMOs are shifting toward an AI-native marketing model that integrates intelligent systems across the funnel—from strategy and segmentation to execution and optimization. For sales leaders, revenue teams, and business executives, this technological evolution brings several key strategic considerations:
- Align Martech with the GTM strategy: Ensure that marketing technology investments directly contribute to pipeline acceleration, sales enablement, and customer lifecycle optimization.
- Prioritize data interoperability: The increasing use of clean rooms signals a broader movement toward collaborative, privacy-respecting data environments. Cross-functional alignment on data standards between sales, marketing, and IT is critical.
- Prepare for intelligent automation: As agentic AI systems mature, many manual workflows will be replaced or augmented by autonomous execution. Teams must shift their focus toward strategic oversight, exception handling, and AI governance.
- Leverage Generative and Agentic AI beyond content: These technologies are redefining marketing automation by moving into higher-order functions such as campaign strategy, real-time decision-making, and end-to-end orchestration.
- Double down on customer experience platforms: CX remains a top differentiator, with personalization at the center, driven by unified data, behavioral analytics, and dynamic engagement platforms.
- Adopt privacy-first data collaboration models: For brands that depend on external data sources, clean rooms and similar technologies are becoming essential to strike a balance between compliance and precision targeting.
- Recognize the convergence of AI and automation: Investment trends suggest a future where marketing systems are not only data-informed but also capable of self-optimizing execution loops.
- Approach emerging platforms and the metaverse with selectivity: While still part of exploratory budgets, these areas are not commanding the same investment as AI and data infrastructure. Prioritize experimental efforts where audience fit and ROI potential are clear.
As we move into the latter half of the year, the companies that will lead are not simply those with the most Martech, but those that use it to build more intelligent, more connected, and more adaptive customer experiences.
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