Why the CMO’s next chapter is becoming a true business leader again

Sponsored by Zeta Global • September 10, 2026 •

The CMO was once a true partner to the CEO, grounded in a shared language of customers, margins and growth. That alignment ensured marketing had a permanent voice in the room where budgets were set and strategic bets were made. This was the era when figures like David Ogilvy were not just advertising leaders, but influential voices in business strategy, shaping how companies thought about growth, brand and the customer.

Over the past two decades, that relationship eroded as marketing expanded and became disconnected from the metrics that define business performance. Recent research from McKinsey & Co. found that while 70% of CEOs measure marketing on revenue growth and margin, only 35% of CMOs track those same metrics.

Marketing once owned the four Ps — product, price, place and promotion — but distribution, product and pricing migrated to other functions, leaving marketing focused on promotion. CMOs became stewards of activity rather than owners of outcomes, reshaping how the position was perceived at the highest levels of the organization.

The cost of misalignment between marketing and business

The misalignment between marketing responsibility and business ownership is also reflected in who advances to CEO. Historically, marketing was the primary path to the top job, particularly in consumer-packaged goods where more than half of CEOs came from marketing or commercial roles as recently as 2023, according to data from SpencerStuart.

By 2025, that number dropped to 19 out of 50, with most CEOs rising to the position through general management or chief operating officer roles, reflecting a clear preference for leaders with direct P&L accountability and operational ownership.

Businesses have also created new executive roles — chief growth officers, chief customer officers and chief revenue officers — to take ownership of growth across functions. According to McKinsey & Co., more than two-thirds of companies now have multiple executives who oversee growth.

That fragmentation spreads responsibility, blurs accountability and makes it harder to clearly assign credit or failure. It is exactly why tomorrow’s CMO must rebuild marketing around financial accountability rather than campaign execution.

Rebuilding the marketing foundation

For CMOs, closing the marketing and business gap begins by measuring the same outcomes CEOs already expect. If 70% of CEOs manage marketing against revenue and margin, then customer acquisition, retention and profitability become the operating metrics of the marketing organization, not campaign outputs. CMOs must return to the fundamentals, treating every customer as a measurable economic relationship — grounded in real behaviors, real value and a clear contribution to growth and profitability.

That accountability must ultimately show up in the P&L, with the CMO and CFO aligned around a shared set of metrics for revenue, margin and efficiency. The goal is to demonstrate control over the economics of creating profitable customers.

This is what CEOs are asking for when they say they want a general manager to run marketing. They are ultimately looking for a CMO who operates with full business accountability and can represent the customer across the enterprise with authority.

AI as an accountability multiplier

AI adds another layer of complexity for CMOs. A mandate to build a supply chain of profitable customers, increasingly means building an intelligence system that connects customer context, identity, measurement and AI into a continuous decision-making and learning loop.

The shift is not just technical; it is structural. AI depends on context and a continuous, real-time understanding of the customer that connects behavior, intent and identity across channels. Most organizations were not built this way, and most marketing functions did not own this layer. As a result, AI initiatives often stall because the underlying system cannot supply the context required to produce consistent, business-relevant outcomes.

At the same time, confidence in marketing measurement is weakening. Forrester projects that confidence in marketing measurement will fall again this year, dropping from 79% to 72% among B2C leaders. That decline is a clear signal that CMOs need intelligence systems that connect every marketing decision to business outcomes. CEOs and CFOs need to understand how marketing investments translate into profitable customers with the same rigor applied to the rest of the business.

When that system is in place, AI becomes an advantage rather than a risk, bringing marketing closer to real-time decisioning tied to revenue and margin. This enables CMOs to model outcomes, test scenarios and demonstrate impact with far greater confidence and precision.

Rebuilding credibility to earn a seat at the table

The title of CMO still carries responsibility for profitable growth. The task at hand now is rebuilding credibility to match that responsibility. The next generation of CMOs will earn influence by building a system of intelligence that continuously connects customer context, AI, measurement and financial performance to better business decisions. That is what will restore marketing as one of the most influential functions in the enterprise.

Partner insights from Zeta Global

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MARKETING USE ONLY: The CMO was once a true partner to the CEO, grounded in a shared language of customers, margins and growth. Over time, that relationship eroded as marketing became disconnected from the metrics that define business performance. The task at hand now is rebuilding marketing credibility to match business responsibility. Partner insights from Zeta Global.