The 2026 State of Creative Marketing in Tech
How marketing leaders are turning creative into trust, distribution, and pipeline impact. Survey of 230+ B2B tech marketing leaders.
Trusted by 800+ brands including TikTok, Spotify, Square, Doordash, Hubspot.
Budgets are up. Output is up. Getting attention is harder anyway.
This year's SOCM surveyed 230+ marketing and creative leaders at B2B tech companies to find out what's actually working — and where teams are stuck. The findings are more specific than most creative reports.
What's inside?
Proof gap data:
Why 93% of teams have
proof they can't activate
Production
system findings:
The bottlenecks slowing
creative teams at scale
AI governance:
Where teams trust AI and
where they draw the line
Format benchmarks:
The content mix that's driving
business impact in 2026
Where is spend being reallocated?
Creative is no longer just ad production.
Budget is shifting into the full conversion layer: paid social, website, sales enablement, proof, and operational tooling. Teams are building infrastructure, beyond just campaigns.
Key stats preview
76%
of respondents say their creative budget is growing — but 42% say getting attention is harder
93%
have proof assets. Only 38% have a system to activate them
65%
run structured creative experiments monthly, but media and creative teams aren't aligned in 38% of cases
Only 29%
have a governance policy despite AI being embedded
