For the inaugural The State of Performance Marketing report, the Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) surveyed more than 380 senior marketers across North America, EMEA, and JAPAC. The findings bring into sharp focus a longstanding duality at the heart of modern marketing: the need to balance short-term spending with long-term growth outcomes. Performance marketing was once defined by speed and automation. Now, it’s a precision-driven growth strategy that ties marketing investment directly to measurable business outcomes. In today’s climate of increased accountability and digital acceleration, it offers a unique strategic advantage — one anchored in data, focused on results, and built to deliver impact under pressure.
Performance marketing often uses most of the marketing budget, absorbing nearly 60% of total spend. But strikingly, few companies are laying the strategic foundation needed to realize its full potential. This paradox reveals a deeper tension in how marketing is managed today. Eight in ten marketers claim to aim for a balanced marketing approach across brand, performance, and customer experience rather than being driven solely by performance. Yet in practice, performance spending continues to grow, as short-term pressures from the C-suite and quarterly reviews lead to reactive budget shifts.
While performance marketing is becoming more sophisticated — driven by data-led targeting, agile activation, and a focus on measurable outcomes — it’s also becoming far more complex. Marketers now deploy an average of four audience-targeting approaches and manage martech stacks consisting of eight different tools to launch and measure a single campaign, adding operational strain to already stretched teams.
Join us on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, from 12:00 - 1:00 PM EST, for a webinar to discuss these findings and the recommendations. Register here.
