Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Day 1 of the 2026 Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in Denver. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. 

On Day 1, we are highlighting sessions on how CMOs can use AI to drive real revenue growth, how to capture and sustain AI value and how genius digital marketing brands excel with AI. 

• Gartner Marketing Survey Finds Awareness and Conversion Account for 62.6% of Total Media Spend

By Jay Wilson, VP Analyst, Gartner, Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone, VP Analyst, Gartner

2026 marks an inflection point for marketing leaders navigating the rapid rise of AI. In the opening keynote, Gartner Marketing Practice VP Analysts, Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone and Jay Wilson, said most organizations have not yet realized AI’s full potential. They explained how CMOs can use AI to drive real revenue growth.

• “AI is no longer a marketing experiment. It is now a defining force shaping customer engagement, team performance and the role of the CMO.” 

• “Like any other big initiative, learning AI and turning it into a competitive advantage takes time. Shifting from AI curiosity to AI competence is how AI can enable marketers to better differentiate their brands.”

• “There are three stages to AI maturity:

  • Curious: when you are building foundational AI literacy and basic skills; 

  • AI competent: when you are doing and investing more in AI and facing higher business expectations as a result; 

  • AI confidence: when you begin adapting and linking skills together and implement agents into campaigns and budgets.”

• “The final stage of AI proficiency isn’t a final destination. It’s a state of being…and it’s the start of what’s next: using AI in marketing to drive real growth.”

• “AI demands a new kind of CMO. The leaders who win will not be the ones using AI only for personal productivity, but the ones using it to shape new relationships with the CIO, CFO, HR and to position marketing as a stronger strategic partner across the enterprise.” 

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Jay Wilson or Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

By Amy Abatangle, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

CMOs are facing a new “triple mandate”: drive growth, deliver AI transformation, and maintain cost discipline - all at once. In her session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Amy Abatangle, Vice President Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice, discussed how most marketing teams are still using AI to boost productivity, but the real opportunity is to move AI upstream into strategic decision support. 

• “The role of the CMO is about to change fast: 65% of CMOs say advances in AI will dramatically change their role in the next two years.”

• “Most marketing AI is still focused on productivity - time saved, cost efficiency, speed of delivery. That helps with cost pressure, but it doesn’t improve the decisions that drive growth.”

• “Strategy creates more value than tactics - so AI has to move upstream into decision support.”

• “Agentic AI changes the unit of work from task to decision. Marketing must evolve from a campaign factory into a learning system - one that makes decisions based on value, volume, lift, risk and signal readiness.”

• “AI creates value when it becomes a decision-support layer across marketing strategy, planning and execution - creating closed-loop learning where insights continuously inform decisions.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Amy Abatangle by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

Presented by Matt Moorut, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Digital marketing performance is becoming increasingly polarized: the leaders are increasingly cementing their positions while laggards fall further behind. In this Signature Series session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Matt Moorut, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, shared the findings of Gartner’s yearly analysis of 1,000+ brands across 11 industries.  

• “Every year we benchmark more than 1,000 brands on digital marketing performance, and the top 3% in each industry earn the title ‘Genius.’ Last year, only 33 brands made that cut.”

• “AI is magnifying the divide between leaders and laggards - driving up performance for those who are capable of using it, but making others fail faster.”

• “Across the class of 2025, Genius brands were searched for 12x more than peers on Google, and received 18.7x more site visitors.”

• “While most brands pulled back on hiring marketers in 2025, Genius brands stepped up— targeting new roles to close skill gaps that block AI adoption, not on ‘more hands for more tasks.’”

• “Genius brands hired 2.5x more dedicated marketing technology professionals than non‑Genius brands - and they’re prioritizing software and programming skills to increase digital dexterity.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Matt Moorut by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.