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Creative budgets got cut. Media budgets didn’t.
B2B marketing budgets keep shrinking. Gartner says the average fell to 7.7% of company revenue, down from 11% before the pandemic. But paid media’s share of that budget keeps growing. The money to RUN ads is still there. The money to MAKE good ads is what got cut. freeB2Bads.com was built for exactly that gap.
What happened to marketing budgets?
They got smaller. Then they got smaller again.
Gartner surveys hundreds of CMOs every year. In 2023, the average marketing budget was 9.1% of company revenue. In 2024 it dropped to 7.7%. In 2025 it stayed stuck there. Half of all CMOs now run on 6% or less.
And if you’re in tech? It’s worse. IT and business services marketing budgets fell from 9% of revenue to 5.8% in one year.
Nobody reading this is surprised. You lived it. 64% of CMOs told Gartner they don’t have the budget to actually execute their strategy. You wrote a plan. Then someone took away the money to do it.
So where did the money go?
Here’s the part almost nobody talks about.
Inside those shrinking budgets, paid media’s share went UP. From 25.6% of the budget, to 27.9%, to almost 31%. Media is the protected line item. It’s the thing the CFO understands. Impressions. Reach. A number goes in, a report comes out.
What got cut to pay for it? Everything that makes the ads worth watching. Agency budgets — 39% of CMOs said they’re cutting those. Labor. Martech spending hit a ten-year low.
So that’s the picture. Real money to run ads. A rounding error to make anything worth running. And all of it aimed at the same overcrowded bottom of the funnel. Bottom-funnel is saturated
Why that’s a trap
Running paid media behind weak creative is like buying a bigger speaker for a bad song.
The research on this is brutal. Creative quality drives about half of an ad’s sales impact — more than reach, targeting, and everything else. And dull ads need 2 to 2.6 times MORE media spend to get the same result as interesting ones. (We go deep on this on It’s not your media company. It’s your content )
So the “safe” move, protect media and cut creative, quietly makes your media more expensive. You pay a dull tax on every impression. Show that math to the CFO who protected the media line. Watch their face.
The way out (and why we exist)
You can’t magically get your creative budget back. We tried asking nicely. Didn’t work.
So we changed where creative gets paid from.
freeB2Bads.com is a partnership between Video Brothers, a B2B creative studio, and Elite Media Group, a B2B media agency. The model is simple: the creative gets bundled into the media budget you already have. The budget line your CFO already protects. You don’t fight for a new line item. The ads get made, the ads get run. And when they work, you keep running them, and we keep making more.
Your media budget survived the cuts. We just made it do both jobs.
See how one roof works See our process
Frequently asked questions
Are marketing budgets really still shrinking in 2026?
They’re stuck at the bottom. Gartner’s 2025 survey showed budgets flat at 7.7% of revenue, and half of CMOs are at 6% or below. The pre-pandemic average was 11%.
Why do companies cut creative before media?
Media spend produces reports — impressions, clicks, reach. Creative quality is harder to put on a dashboard, so it looks safer to cut. The research says it’s the opposite: creative drives about half of an ad’s sales impact.
What is freeB2Bads.com?
A partnership between Video Brothers (creative) and Elite Media Group (media) that bundles ad production into your existing media budget. You get real, memorable creative without fighting for a new budget line.
Doesn’t bundling creative into media just hide the cost?
No — it moves the cost to where the money actually is. Your total spend doesn’t have to go up. The share of it that produces something memorable does.