The ROI reckoning and why CMOs need marketing intelligence in 2026

Budgets are shrinking, and the old measurement playback no longer works. Not to mention, board pressure is intensifying. According to The CMO Survey (Spring 2025), marketing leaders say that pressure from the board rose 21% from 2023 to 2025. C-suite pressure is just as intense, with a 52% increase from the CFO and a 20% increase from the CEO.

Boards want proof that marketing efforts are worth it. That means measuring ROI and proving that your campaigns generate revenue is now one of the (if not the most) important agenda items of the modern CMO. Marketing teams who can navigate these challenges and demonstrate return on investment in the current climate will make their brands industry giants. 

But you can’t steer performance if you can’t see what’s driving it. This is where marketing intelligence becomes a CMO’s edge. It unifies data, reporting, measurement, activation and decision-making. A marketing intelligence platform enables you to answer what, why and how much value with confidence. 

What is ROI in marketing, and why is it so hard to prove?

Proving marketing ROI used to be easier because marketers had access to better and more accurate data, giving them a more complete understanding of the customer journey. They could use tools like Google Analytics and UTM tags to capture data and gain a reasonable understanding of attribution.

But as privacy laws tightened from 2018 onward, tracking performance data became more difficult, making it harder to demonstrate ROI. Mix that with AI black-box algorithms and data fragmentation from an increasing number of marketing tools, and you end up with a less reliable attribution model on a very good day. On a normal day, it’s data chaos.

But even before these challenges, attributing revenue growth to the right marketing channels wasn’t exactly a perfect science. Platforms like GA oversimplify their attribution models. For example, if a user visits your site before purchasing a product on a desktop but purchases on mobile, they would very likely be seen as two separate people. That’s two conversions for one purchase, which means you have bad data.

As a result of attribution issues, measuring marketing ROI isn’t straightforward. Attribution is broken, and marketing campaigns suffer because marketing spend is cut when CMOs cannot prove their return on investment.

2026 will be the year CMOs are forced to prove marketing’s true contribution — not just clicks and conversions, but revenue impact.

If you can’t make sense of the data chaos and fragmentation, the C-suite loses faith, budgets lose support and your brand loses its edge. A shrinking budget reduces capacity for innovation and experimentation, which is often a driving force behind revenue growth. According to Bain & Company, marketing experimentation has helped global companies like Allianz achieve business growth with ROI increases of 20% or more in past campaigns. 

So what challenges need to be overcome to prove marketing ROI?

Here are four of the most common issues CMOs encounter when measuring impact and how they contribute to the ROI reckoning.

1. Privacy regulations/cookie depreciation 

Data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA have fundamentally changed the way companies collect and use consumer data to inform marketing campaigns. Marketers can no longer fully rely on third-party cookies to track users without consent. Instead, these are being replaced by first-party data strategies that prioritize transparency and permissioned data collection.

According to Jentis, Google will continue to support third-party cookies, but Chrome users can opt in or out of cookie tracking. Privacy Sandbox APIs remain available to enable privacy-focused advertising, but the combination of these methods, paired with the shift toward first-party data, adds further complexity in ad targeting, measurement and optimization.

This transition is forcing marketers to rethink how they collect data and how it connects to meaningful analytics. This privacy-first landscape creates reduced visibility into customer journeys. Traditional attribution models that heavily relied on third-party cookies no longer paint a useful picture of marketing performance. And, with first-party data, information is siloed across websites, CRMs and other channels, making it challenging to track attribution and prove ROI without a way to centralize data. 

2. AI-driven ad platforms using algorithms that aren’t transparent to optimize 

AI-driven ad platforms are good at determining who to show your ads to if the goal is to increase clicks. But there’s no way to know how the algorithms work. Marketers don’t know how the algorithms make optimization decisions.

The lack of transparency is a problem because it makes it difficult to replicate marketing campaign results or to ensure ad platforms are focused on driving business value. CMOs need predictability and clarity to understand what gets results and to steer ad campaign optimization in a way that leads to sustainable business growth.

Marketing teams are combating signal loss by engineering the right data signals and feeding them back to the ad platforms so they’re optimizing for the metrics that impact the bottom line, like customer lifetime value. Funnel’s Activate feature feeds high-quality conversion data directly into ad platforms using server-side APIs, making campaign performance more predictable and ad spend more value-focused. 

3. Data is fragmented

The average marketing team runs 19 tools for point solutions across the stack, according to Airtable’s 2024 Marketing trends report. These tools span analytics, CRMs, ad platforms, email and marketing automation, dashboards, spreadsheets and more.

Because systems label and record data differently, you can’t reliably compare data across platforms. Duplicated data, inconsistent naming, data errors, mismatched cost fields and time lags create errors and fragmentation, making it incredibly difficult to build an accurate picture of marketing campaign effectiveness, let alone prove ROI with confidence.

Funnel addresses these challenges with data unification. It automatically collects, normalizes and centralizes data from all your marketing sources. It standardizes naming conventions and metrics, removes duplicates and creates a single source of truth for more accurate and reliable measurement and analysis.

4. Stagnant budgets

CMOs are under increasing pressure, but budgets are stagnant, remaining flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2025, the same percentage as last year, reports Gartner. They also mention that budgets are failing to grow year-on-year, with 59% of CMOs reporting they have an insufficient budget to execute their 2025 strategy.

This is causing marketers to use AI-driven tools to try and reduce labor costs, but without a strong data foundation, even new AI technologies can’t deliver the growth they promise.

Overall, less budget means less room to innovate, invest and grow marketing’s impact. Marketing leaders have a harder time justifying investing in the things that they know are necessary for growth, like the right tools to take control of fragmented data, generate trustworthy insights and tie marketing efforts to business growth. 

That’s why being able to prove marketing ROI is so important. When the board can see marketing’s value, the budget goes up.

Why ROI is important for measuring marketing?

ROI is what turns marketing from a cost center to a growth driver. When marketers measure it correctly, you can link campaigns to business outcomes, like customer acquisition and revenue lift. 

You can shift the conversation from justifying spending to showing first-hand, direct business impact and growth opportunities. With less pressure and greater marketing insights, you can focus on high-impact ROI activities to get the most out of your marketing efforts. 

ROI isn’t just about proving marketing’s worth. It’s about earning the right to invest. CMOs who can quantify impact gain leverage in every boardroom conversation.

Why marketing intelligence improves marketing effectiveness and ROI

Marketing intelligence turns disconnected data into direction. It’s how CMOs move from proving marketing strategy impact to predicting it.

Most tools claiming to deliver marketing intelligence stop at dashboards — they provide basic measurement capabilities and are often difficult to use, making it tricky to prove marketing’s impact or demonstrate ROI to the board or C-suite.

Data integration and marketing analytics tools are retrofitting themselves into “intelligence platforms,” but they lack advanced measurement and ease of use. When you compare Funnel vs. Supermetrics vs. Adverity, Funnel stands out because it goes beyond basic dashboards and reporting. Its unified data foundation, advanced measurement, activation and no-code reporting help you take control of your marketing data and prove your ROI. Data is accurate, privacy-compliant and allows you to understand, measure and track campaign performance. 

Without marketing intelligence, marketing ROI remains a guessing game. With it, you can prove and improve it with confidence.

How marketing intelligence can help prove ROI in marketing

Marketing intelligence that moves beyond basic measurement capabilities helps CMOs prove their ROI of marketing by defending marketing investments in an environment of rising costs, fragmented channels and board-level scrutiny.

Growth-oriented CMOs can leverage marketing intelligence to bridge the gap between marketing and data teams. Marketers who wait to adopt marketing intelligence in 2026 risk playing catch-up while competitors make smarter budget allocation decisions in real time.

Here’s how CMOs can use marketing intelligence to improve data collection, analysis and reporting, to make confident decisions and defend marketing investments in the age of ROI reckoning. 

Unified, privacy-first data foundation 

Marketing intelligence starts with a unified foundation, one place where all your performance data stays clean and consistent. 

With Funnel, you can consolidate data from 500+ sources, maintain visibility and prepare your datasets for accurate measurement and reporting. Funnel only stores non-personally identifiable information (non-PII), helping you stay compliant with privacy laws.

All data is automatically transformed, allowing for accurate analysis, reporting and activation. Funnel also manages API connections and updates, so platform updates don’t break dashboards and lead to data loss or discrepancies. Historical datasets are preserved without limits to enable trend analysis and advanced modeling.

Funnel’s platform is built with privacy and compliance in mind, with built-in governance features, including granular access controls and the highest security standards, including GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 and ISO 27001. It enables marketing teams to generate insights confidently. 

Accurate, actionable measurement 

Accurate measurement starts with reliable data. Funnel’s measurement suite combines MMM, attribution and incrementality testing, powered by Funnel’s Data Hub, which ensures all models are fed clean and reliable data, for a holistic view of what marketing mix drives ROI.

Smaller teams can use data-driven multi-touch attribution to identify which channels are performing, and more sophisticated teams can layer on advanced models to determine the best ways to optimize the media mix. Funnel lets you report on unbiased attribution data for online and offline channels and dive into any channel to see incremental lift and understand key metrics for measuring ROI, like ROAS and marginal cost per acquisition.

Funnel also offers AI-supported media optimization recommendations, showing you where there are opportunities to increase or decrease spend.

And with server-side tracking through Funnel’s connections for conversion APIs to all the top ad platforms, including Meta, TikTok and Google Ads, you can combat signal loss from browser restrictions, cookie depreciation and ad blockers for higher-quality conversion data.

Funnel’s unified data foundation means no more guessing how your marketing cost and budget translates to business value. You can move beyond surface-level metrics, which are difficult to translate into actionable insights. Funnel’s advanced measurement layer enables you to tie marketing activity to key metrics, like return on ad spend, incremental revenue, or customer LTV, so you can clearly demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts. 

Confident, data-driven decisions 

When your data foundation and measurement systems work together, decisions stop being reactive. Funnel connects insights to action, giving CMOs a daily pulse on performance and the confidence to optimize spend, forecast results and defend every dollar with data.

With real-time reporting and activation, marketers can see what’s working across numerous channels, adjust campaigns as needed, assign media spend and innovate. 

Get the marketing intelligence you need to power better marketing ROI

Every CMO is facing the same challenge: prove impact, earn trust and make smarter bets. The pressure to show ROI is real, but it’s also an opportunity to build stronger, data-driven organizations. Marketing intelligence is how leaders turn that pressure into progress.

Funnel enables you to turn disconnected and unreliable data into clear, actionable insights by understanding and optimizing what drives growth. You move from fragmented data to a unified view that transforms complexity into clarity. Learn more about how Funnel can help marketing become a growth driver at your organization.