“The marketing dashboard shows green, but the chief financial officer sees red.” That was the (somewhat) amusing opening of the new report of the results of a recent survey of marketing professionals—The 2026 State Of Performance Marketing.

One of the findings that caught my attention is that marketing professionals report that 25% of marketing budgets are spent on initiatives that fail to drive outcomes and only 26% of marketing investments convert to qualified opportunities. They also responded that 67% of their marketing performance dashboards show “success” with no related revenue.

How does this happen? Almost three-quarters (76%) of marketing content isn’t informed by customer data, and 81% of marketing professionals report that less than half of their content…