Marketing campaigns in 2024 were shaped by expanding digital investment, tighter budget pressure, creator-led social strategies, and rapidly rising AI adoption. The figures below bring together reported measurements from Nielsen, HubSpot, Gartner, and the IAB, with the geography and period stated wherever the source specifies them.
Contents
- Budget direction and marketing priorities
- Digital advertising and channel allocation
- U.S. internet advertising revenue
- Social media, creators, and community
- Social customer service
- AI adoption and marketing work
Budget direction and marketing priorities
Global marketers entered 2024 with a stronger expectation of increased advertising investment. According to the Nielsen 2024 Annual Marketing Report, 72% of global marketers expected bigger ad budgets in 2024. That was up from 64% year over year, indicating a 8-percentage-point increase in the share expecting budget growth. The figure describes expectations for 2024, not a final accounting of every organization’s actual spending.
The same Nielsen report found that 70% of respondents planned to prioritize performance marketing over brand building in 2024. This points to a campaign environment where measurable responses and attributable outcomes were a stated priority for a large majority of respondents. It does not mean that brand activity disappeared; the statistic only identifies which of the two priorities respondents planned to favor.
More than 63% of global media spending was planned for digital channels in 2024, according to Nielsen. Digital therefore represented more than half of planned global media spending in that measurement. Because the source uses “more than 63%,” the exact share is not specified in the supplied figure.
Budget availability remained a constraint in the Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey. Sixty-four percent of CMOs said they lacked the budget to execute their 2024 strategy. This creates a clear tension with the broader expectation of larger advertising budgets: planned growth and sufficient funding were not equivalent conditions.
Gartner also reported that average marketing budgets were 11% of company revenue in the four years before the pandemic, compared with 8.2% of company revenue in the four years since the pandemic began. These are multi-year averages, so they should not be read as a single-year budget benchmark. On the supplied figures, the post-pandemic-period average was lower than the pre-pandemic-period average.
Measurement confidence was high in the Nielsen 2024 Annual Marketing Report. Eighty-four percent of global marketers said they were extremely or very confident in their ROI measurement capabilities, up from 69% in 2023. Yet only 38% said they evaluated the holistic ROI of their marketing by measuring traditional and digital marketing together. The two measures describe different things: confidence in measurement capability and the specific practice of combining traditional and digital measurement.
Digital advertising and channel allocation
Gartner reported that paid media investments reached 27.9% of marketing budget in 2024. Within paid media, digital accounted for 57.1% of budgets, up from 54.9% in 2023. Digital’s share therefore rose by 2.2 percentage points in the Gartner measurement.
The largest named digital paid-media components in the Gartner figures were search, social advertising, and digital display advertising. Search represented 13.6% of paid media spend, social advertising represented 12.2%, and digital display advertising represented 10.7%.
Offline channel investment was distributed across several major categories. Event marketing represented 17.1% of offline channel investment, sponsorship represented 16.4%, and TV represented 16%.
| Channel or budget measure | Share or value | Measurement period and source |
|---|---|---|
| Paid media investment | 27.9% of marketing budget | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Digital share of paid media | 57.1% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Search share of paid media | 13.6% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Social advertising share of paid media | 12.2% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Digital display share of paid media | 10.7% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Event marketing share of offline investment | 17.1% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| Sponsorship share of offline investment | 16.4% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
| TV share of offline investment | 16% | 2024, Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey |
These percentages use different denominators. The paid-media figures describe shares of paid media spend, while the event, sponsorship, and TV figures describe shares of offline channel investment. They should not be added together or compared as though they were parts of one common budget base.
U.S. internet advertising revenue
The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report 2024 measured a large U.S. digital advertising market. U.S. internet advertising revenue reached $258.6 billion in 2024, and revenue grew 14.9% year over year. These are U.S. revenue figures for 2024, rather than global spending estimates or marketer budget intentions.
Several categories accounted for substantial portions of total digital ad revenue. Search revenue reached $102.9 billion and represented 39.8% of total digital ad revenue. Social revenue reached $88.8 billion and represented 34.3%. Digital video revenue reached $62.1 billion and represented 24.0%.
Retail media revenue reached $53.7 billion and represented 20.8% of total digital ad revenue. The supplied IAB figures use category revenue and category share measures; because categories can be reported through different market classifications, the listed shares should be read as the report’s stated measures rather than recombined into a new total.
The category figures show the scale of several campaign environments available to advertisers in the U.S. in 2024. Search had the largest reported revenue and share among the listed categories, followed by social, digital video, and retail media on the supplied measures. The data reports market revenue, not the return generated by an individual campaign.
Social media, creators, and community
Creator and influencer activity was widespread among the social media marketers surveyed by HubSpot for the State of Social Media 2024. Ninety-seven percent of social media marketers who worked with influencers worked with creators under 100,000 followers. This statistic describes the follower range of creators used by those respondents; it does not establish that smaller creators always delivered better results.
Eighty-four percent of social media marketers predicted that most companies would have a creator or influencer as the face of their brand in 2024. Fifty-five percent said they were increasing their influencer marketing investment in 2024. Both figures are forecasts or plans reported for 2024, not completed spending totals.
YouTube was prominent in the same HubSpot research. Twenty-five percent of social media marketers said YouTube delivered the highest ROI in the past year, while 27% said YouTube had the best audience-targeting tools for paid social ads. Forty-five percent planned to leverage YouTube for the first time in 2024, and 54% planned to increase their investment in YouTube.
Community building was also identified as a major social objective. Eighty-six percent of social media marketers said building an active online community was critical to a successful social strategy in 2024. Among surveyed community builders, 48% said Facebook was the most effective platform for building active communities, 46% said YouTube, and 40% said Instagram.
| Social media measure | Reported figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Influencer marketers using creators under 100K followers | 97% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Increasing influencer investment | 55% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| YouTube reported highest ROI in the past year | 25% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Planning first-time YouTube use | 45% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Planning to increase YouTube investment | 54% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Community building called critical | 86% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Community builders selecting Facebook | 48% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Community builders selecting YouTube | 46% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
| Community builders selecting Instagram | 40% | HubSpot State of Social Media 2024 |
The platform-preference figures are respondent selections, not an audience-size ranking. They indicate which platforms surveyed community builders considered most effective for active communities.
Social customer service
Social campaigns increasingly overlap with customer support. HubSpot’s State of Social Media 2024 found that 70% of social media marketers already offered customer service on social. Among companies that offered customer service through direct messages, 70% used a customer service representative to respond.
The same research found that 60% left direct-message responses to the marketer in charge of that platform, while 43% used automated tools such as chatbots for social customer service. These approaches can coexist: the figures describe reported methods, and the supplied data does not say that each company used only one response model.
AI adoption and marketing work
AI adoption was a major change in the HubSpot Marketers Double AI Usage 2024 research. Seventy-four percent of marketers were using at least one AI tool at work, up from 35% the previous year. Sixty-eight percent said AI improved the trajectory of their company, 69% said it helped personalize customer experiences, 70% said it enabled better cross-team collaboration, and 68% said it improved their personal career growth.
Among AI-using marketing leaders, 45% said AI tools made employees more productive. Thirty-nine percent said AI helped employees make data-driven decisions, another 39% said it helped employees share data more effectively, and 34% said it made employees more effective at their job.
Tool integration was also associated with usage. Seventy-four percent of marketers said adding AI capabilities to existing tools increased their AI usage. The figures describe marketers’ reported experiences and perceptions; they do not provide a controlled productivity comparison.
Content creation was the top AI use case for the second year in a row, with 43% of marketers using AI for content creation. Among marketers who used AI for written content, 86% edited it before publishing. In the supplied HubSpot research, 47% of AI content creation work involved image generation, 45% involved writing copy, and 44% involved content quality assurance.
The reported outputs were distributed across common campaign formats. Forty-seven percent of AI-generated outputs were emails and newsletters, 46% were social media posts, and 38% were blog posts. These output figures identify the formats represented in the research; they are not a measure of content performance, audience response, or revenue.