‘The conversation has shifted’: The CFO moved upstream. Now agencies have to as well

At independent, full-service brand commerce marketing agency Blue Chip, that shift has been more gradual. Execs there aren’t sitting down with CFOs directly, but they are helping their clients get ready for those conversations. “A lot of our day to day right now is helping CMOs prepare for board conversations where finance is in the room and the questions are sharper,” said Sarah VanHeirseele, chief growth officer at Blue Chip.

“Marketing is still largely treated as an expense, not an asset. Inventory or capital investments can be amortized. Brand building cannot,” said VanHeirseele. “So it carries a higher internal hurdle rate. That’s why many organizations default to performance spend. It’s easier to match the expense to a result in the same budget cycle.”

Vaynerchuk’s point — that marketers have spent years hiding behind metrics that flatter the work while the business declines — is indicative of a wider wave of finance logic reshaping how CMOs have to show up. And it’s as much a structural problem as a perception one. Most companies treat marketing as an operating cost, expensed immediately and never capitalized, which means boards instinctively view it as something to be minimized rather than invested in. Technology spend sits on the balance sheet as an asset. Brand building doesn’t. That’s the deeper reason CFOs hold the leverage they do: marketing has always had to justify itself in ways that other long-term investments don’t.

“The brief comes in through marketing, but the real qualifier in the room is often finance,” said Liz Yoselowitz, global CMO at Brainlabs. 

CFOs have always cast a long shadow over these conversations. But when they show up and what they’re asking for is changing. Previously, according to Yoselowitz, CFOs would enter the process at the contract stage, mainly to pressure-test the fee structure. Now, they’re arriving at the planning stage, sometimes before annual budgets are even locked. And the questions have changed with them. Where CFOs once focused on cost and proof — what is this spend, what does this metric prove — they’re now zeroing in on contribution margin, LTV to CAC, payback period and whether media spending actually caused revenue growth or merely correlated to it.

“The conversation has shifted pretty firmly now from growth at all costs to capital efficiency, and marketing is being evaluated as a financial lever, not just a brand function,” said Markacy’s president and chief operating officer Ryan Mason.

For Mason, that shift is showing up daily. CFO involvement in marketing decisions is arriving earlier than it used to — often during the planning stage, sometimes before channel strategy is even finalized. Conversations that once centered on reach and engagement now move to payback periods, contributed margin, working capital impact and how spend ladders into EBITDA.

Moreover, Mason and his team are expected to model scenarios, from understanding what happens to cash flow if they increase spend 20% to knowing what the incremental return looks like by channel, and even forecasting how quickly dollars recycle back into the business.

“In several cases, the CMO will proactively bring finance into the room at the outset, or we’re introduced directly to the CFO as a key stakeholder from day one,” he said, noting that traditionally, those conversations were more centred on channel mix, creative strategy and growth targets.

The shift is clear. Even when the primary contact remains the CMO, Zeno Group’s SVP of paid media Shamsul Chowdhury said his team is meeting with CFOs when it’s relevant to show how their plans will improve the business financially.

“Progress has come in the form of justifying our media plans based on tangible budget scenarios,” he said. “We’ve used previous ROI numbers to justify investment in our media mix to the CFO, showing them that this investment will get us that output based on historical data.”

Chowdhury added that CMOs have, in some ways, had to become more financially savvy and attuned to business metrics and bottom-line impact.

“In the past it was a game of telephone having to rely on the CMO to articulate what the business impacts were, which wasn’t always beneficial as some were more focused on brand than performance,” Chowdhury said.

Execs at ad agency Brave Bison are seeing the same pattern. CMO Hannah Baker said her team has noticed a sharp increase in scrutiny during the planning stage — a shift from a time when a strong strategic idea was enough to demonstrate value.

“Clients are asking sharper questions — that perhaps feel CFO in origin — about expected returns, operational metrics such as headcount, hours, team shape and commercial model required, as well as whether their agencies are set up for efficiency in an AI-accelerated world,” she said.

That scrutiny doesn’t stop at strategy, It’s reshaping procurement too. The commercial conversation — team structure, efficiency model, cost and so on — has always preceded a formal engagement but agencies could once rely on the strength of their strategic thinking to carry them through it. Now, the financial questions arrive often before there’s even a brief to respond to. 

“It’s more at pitch stage that I’m alluding to, but it used to feel like that value was easier to demonstrate through a strong strategic idea,” said Baker. “Now that value is definitely being scrutinized in more detail through a number of mechanics, be that explicitly asking for projected outcomes — i.e. actual hard numbers of what we can achieve, or scrutinizing us based on operational metrics, from headcount and hours to team shape and the commercial model needed to deliver a certain scope.”

It’s a natural consequence of this shift. CFOs are piling budget conversations earlier, then procurement follows, because procurement is how CFOs operationalize financial scrutiny.

“We see ourselves involved in procurement more so than ever,” said NewGen’s co-founder and CEO Mike Craddock. “Typically, we would negotiate directly with the influencer director, marketing director or social director depending on the situation… now, we typically find ourselves pitching to those personnel — however negotiating rates or deliverables with procurement simultaneously or after a pitch.”