Chief advertising and marketing officers are on the transfer—and never at all times in a great way.
A new report from analysis agency Forrester discovered the typical time CMOs at Fortune 500 corporations remained within the position decreased from 4.1 years in 2024 to three.9 years in 2025.
Tenure varies by trade. High entrepreneurs who work in healthcare, for instance, now common 4.3 years on the job, whereas their friends in power and mining are likely to final for 3.2 years.
Forrester’s analysis uncovered one other downward pattern: Over the previous yr, the share of Fortune 500 corporations that make use of a advertising and marketing govt who both experiences to the CEO or belongs to the management group dropped from 63% to 58%.
Ian Bruce, a vp and principal analyst at Forrester, believes the declines in CMO tenure and presence is going on for 2 causes.
The primary is financial uncertainty amid ongoing commerce wars and price range restraints.
“When the financial system will get powerful, CMOs typically discover themselves on the defensive,” Bruce stated. “Advertising is commonly the primary place to really feel cuts and the final place to see reinvestments.”
Separate figures from Forrester reveal 51% of B2B CMOs and 43% of their B2C counterparts anticipate a recession within the coming yr.
The second motive is that many organizations are rethinking what they need from a CMO. As shoppers change how they store and the kinds of media they eat, manufacturers are underneath stress to maintain tempo and ensure their advert {dollars} are producing a return on funding.
“The remit of the trendy CMO has develop into a transferring goal—stretched between model and demand, product and pipeline, digital and bodily,” Bruce stated.
The place has reworked to the purpose the place solely 49% of prime entrepreneurs at Fortune 500 corporations nonetheless go by “chief advertising and marketing officer,” in line with Forrester. That’s down from 55% final yr. The job titles changing it embrace chief income officer, chief business officer, and chief gross sales officer, amongst others.
Bruce famous this shift doesn’t should be unfavorable for advertising and marketing leaders. Moderately, he stated, it’s a chance for CMOs who can “clearly reveal how advertising and marketing drives enterprise development.”
