Where Marketing Leaders Are Investing Their Digital Marketing Budgets in 2026

Marketing budgets are getting squeezed. Costs are up, AI is changing how people search, and every pound has to prove its worth.

To understand how teams are adapting, I reached out to sixteen marketing leaders from a mix of fast-growing companies and household names. Contributors include senior marketers from organisations such as Chester Zoo, Macmillan Cancer Support, Land of Beds and YouGarden and several well-known digital brands.

I asked them where they’re putting their digital marketing budgets in 2026, which channels they’re stepping back from, and how AI is influencing their thinking for the year ahead.

This post brings their answers together, highlights the main trends, and breaks down how they’re approaching SEO, PPC, social, content, PR and AI going into 2026.

Meet the contributors

Ali Carter

Founder, Mediate UK 

Andy Adams

Senior Digital Manager, Chester Zoo

Andrew Akesson

E-commerce Manager, Heamar

Chloie Brandrick

Marketing Manager, Star International

Daniel Jones

Director, On Top Marketing

Dean Signori

Director, UK WEB GEEKZ

Josh Peacock

CEO, SEO For Hire / Paid Media Jobs / SalaryGuide.com

Judith Ackers

Head of Digital Marketing, Land of Beds

Kasra Dash

Founder / CEO, The Masterminders

Lily Nguyen

Event Manager, The MasterMinders

Mads Singers

CEO, Mads Singers Management

Michael Melen

Managing Partner, SmartSites

Rachel Morgan

Marketing Manager, YouGarden

Sam Scott

Marketing Executive, ModuleCo Healthcare

Sean Barber

SEO Manager / Host Of Podcast, Macmillan Cancer Support / Search With Sean

Yash Singh

CEO, HVAC10x

The channels leaders are prioritising in 2026

SEO, content and link building as long-term drivers

SEO is still a core growth channel across the group, often backed up by content and digital PR.

• Ali Carter at Mediate UK is very clear on where his focus is going:
  

  “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Content Marketing. Video Content.”

• Andrew Akesson at Heamar is prioritising link building and site infrastructure. He sees links as essential in competitive niches and stresses that getting the basics right still matters, even while everyone talks about AI.
• Daniel Jones is treating SEO as his main channel because it consistently brings in leads and sales for both his agency and client campaigns. At the same time, he is preparing for how search is evolving by thinking about visibility in AI-driven results.
• Josh Peacock is leaning on SEO and digital PR, which have been the channels he has seen most success with.
• Mads Singers is focusing on SEO and YouTube. SEO is currently generating results for him at low cost and effort, while YouTube is seen as a longer-term opportunity.
• Chloie Brandrick is prioritising her website, with plans to put more into SEO and conversion rate work over the next twelve months.

Performance media, PPC and marketplaces where they can scale

Performance media and paid search are still important, but they have to show a clear return.

• Andy Adams at Chester Zoo is investing in performance media across search and social, with the focus on how those campaigns support core aims such as conservation, projects and ticket sales.
• Michael Melen is prioritising PPC because he sees it as predictable and scalable. He expects to allocate more budget into PPC and less into marketplaces as traffic shifts.
• Yash Singh is concentrating on local SEO and PPC. In the home service space, his view is that people still mainly turn to Google when they need a provider, so that is where budget goes.
• Rachel Morgan is putting budget into marketplaces because they are showing steady growth and are relatively easy to manage. Looking ahead, she expects to invest more in marketplaces and PPC.
• Dean Signori is backing Google SEO, what he calls GEO, YouTube, Meta ads and Google PPC. For him, paid search and social back up the organic work and help his clients stay visible as search interfaces change.

Brand, events and personal brand

Brand and personal brand are becoming direct budget lines rather than side projects.

• Kasra Dash is focusing on branding and personal branding. He looks at the return of each campaign and reinvests where he sees results, for example attendee growth and sponsor conversions from his events, and increased reach with the audiences he wants.
• Lily Nguyen is prioritising Instagram due to its large audience for her events. She has moved spend from Facebook to Instagram to match where she is seeing better engagement.
• Sam Scott is putting budget into paid and social media alongside editorial and PR. He is also planning to attend new exhibitions and events that attract the right healthcare audience so the team can show how their solutions support financial and clinical outcomes.
• Sean Barber expects more of his budget to go into digital PR and YouTube, and is also interested in specific podcasts and social channels like TikTok where they can reach the right people.

Where spend is being reduced or rebalanced

Moving away from weaker channels

Several leaders have actively reduced spend in areas that are no longer pulling their weight.

• Judith Ackers has pulled back on some affiliate marketing. It still has a place in the mix, but she feels the money can have a bigger impact in other channels.
• Rachel Morgan has shifted budget away from offline channels. She mentions struggling to make certain offline activity work and that recruitment is not delivering as it did previously.
• Ali Carter has reduced spend on social media advertising where it has been less effective than organic search and content.
• Michael Melen has moved budget away from directories and marketplaces where traffic has declined, including platforms that are closing.
• Dean Signori has shifted some budget away from Google Ads in cases where the return has not justified the cost. He is seeing Meta ads provide extra reach and a more favourable return in some niches.
• Lily Nguyen has diverted budget from Facebook to Instagram as her audience has been more active there.

Changing how work is done

Other changes are more about how work is resourced than dropping a channel.

• Sam Scott has taken SEO away from an external agency and brought it in house, or at least attempted to. That is more a change in delivery model than a change in belief about SEO as a channel.
• Yash Singh notes that his company has started spending a lot more on PPC, reflecting a rebalancing towards channels they see working for home services.
• Andrew Akesson and Mads Singers both say they have not shifted spend away from specific channels recently, but they are constantly reviewing performance.

How budgets are split between SEO, PPC, social and other channels

ROI led decisions, not rigid formulas

Most of the contributors are not working to fixed percentages. They look at performance and decide from there.

• Kasra Dash reviews the return on each campaign and then chooses how to reinvest marketing budget.
• Judith Ackers looks at how each channel contributes to key performance indicators and where the business sees the most value.
• Andy Adams points out that as a charity every ad spend has to drive one of two core aims. That mission lens shapes how he balances spend between search, social and other activity.
• Yash Singh takes cues from the market and what is working for other home service companies.
• Daniel Jones adjusts allocation by client and industry. Some clients perform best when SEO is the main focus, others see stronger returns from PPC or email.
• Josh Peacock sets aside a portion of budget for experimentation and then reallocates based on performance. He is not locking in fixed percentages up front and prefers to keep his mix flexible.
• Andrew Akesson looks at what has worked in the past, how much can be repeated, and which new opportunities might appear over the next year when planning his split.

Simple rules where they work

A couple of people do use simple benchmarks.

• Ali Carter currently works on roughly 80 percent of budget going into SEO and 20 percent into other activity, based on a policy of creating permanent content that ranks in search results and large language models.
• Lily Nguyen has a defined breakdown for her own mix: 40 percent SEO, 30 percent PPC, 20 percent social and 10 percent LinkedIn.
• Dean Signori uses a guideline split of 50 percent SEO, 25 percent PPC, 10 percent GEO and 15 percent Meta, while still adjusting for each client’s goals and budget.

Some, like Chloie Brandrick, are only just receiving their own budget to control, so have less historic structure to lean on yet.

How AI is influencing digital marketing budgets

More focus on brand and visibility in an AI first world

For some, AI has been a direct reason to lean harder into brand and authority.

• Kasra Dash says that without AI he would not be investing as much into branding and personal branding. AI has pushed him to put more money into brand building, his personal brand and being seen in relevant lists.
• Yash Singh is putting more attention on SEO activity that affects how his business appears in AI influenced results.
• Daniel Jones is not putting a large budget directly into AI at the moment, but he is deliberately planning for how search is changing and making sure clients stay visible as AI continues to roll out.

Tools, efficiency and how work gets done

Many of the experts are adding AI tools into their stack, though not always changing channel budgets because of them.

• Sean Barber is closely watching the tools they use and what they offer in relation to AI. He is comparing newer AI driven tools with legacy SEO software, and that comparison is starting to influence tool choices.
• Judith Ackers has started exploring AI tools mainly to make campaigns more efficient, and expects AI to play a bigger role in how they plan and optimise.
• Sam Scott is at the early stages of exploring AI tools. At the moment this is more of a board level topic than something that is actively moving spend between channels.
• Andrew Akesson has invested in ChatGPT and chatbots to do some of the heavy lifting but stresses that these tools only work well when good input and data go in.
• Ali Carter has invested in a set of AI tools and treats AI as part of his SEO budget.
• Lily Nguyen is using AI to reduce the cost of content creation and plans to invest more directly into AI tools while reducing labour costs.
• Chloie Brandrick is using AI for content and planning but not yet for budget decisions.
• Mads Singers has not changed his budget because of AI yet.
• Dean Signori is wary of chasing every new AI trend. He has reduced some budget for writers and redirected that money towards GEO work, but is careful to avoid what he calls shiny object syndrome.
• Andy Adams is watching developments around AI for conversion tracking, search result changes and brand mentions being cited on other sites instead of his own, and is thinking about how that affects his mix over time.
• Josh Peacock says AI has already shifted how he allocates spend. Instead of pouring more money into top of funnel paid acquisition, he is using AI to extract more value from existing traffic and relationships and putting more into things like thought leadership, relationship based channels and nurture sequences.

What secures buy in for these budgets

Results and clear links to outcomes

Almost everyone pointed to results and clarity as the main way to get buy in.

• Kasra Dash talks about measurable outcomes such as attendee growth, sponsor conversions and international reach as key for securing support.
• Josh Peacock focuses on clear return on investment. He ties campaigns to measurable outcomes like leads, revenue and profit so that decisions are driven by data.
• Yash Singh and Michael Melen both reduce the argument down to ROI and return on ad spend.
• Sam Scott highlights results that generate information and opportunities the sales team can follow up on.
• Rachel Morgan is still getting to grips with some of the internal language around budget sign off, but now has a budget she can manage herself.
• Ali Carter says buy in is helped by the fact that the founder already understands and values SEO and can see the benefit it brings.
• Daniel Jones and Mads Singers make their own decisions, so for them it simply comes down to whether the activity keeps bringing in leads and sales.
• Andrew Akesson points to customer satisfaction and financial return as the main factors.
• Andy Adams links digital marketing to conservation, projects and ticket revenue. Once people see how digital supports those aims, it becomes easier to get everyone involved.
• Dean Signori has found that explaining how search and AI are evolving, and how that affects visibility, helps him reason with decision makers.
• Chloie Brandrick currently has the freedom to make her own decisions around budget without needing heavy sign off, at least for now.
• Judith Ackers sums up her experience as:
  

  “Honestly, the biggest thing has been showing a clear link between what we do and business outcomes… Keeping it simple and data-driven works best.”

   

Where budgets are heading over the next 12 months

Looking ahead, a few patterns stand out from the answers.

More into SEO, content, PR and CRO

• Judith Ackers plans to keep investing heavily in digital PR, SEO and paid media, while reviewing results to keep spend in the right places.
• Andrew Akesson expects to invest more time and budget into on site expert content that helps guide customers.
• Daniel Jones expects most of his budget to remain in SEO unless there are major changes in the market.
• Ali Carter intends to put more into SEO and less into PPC.
• Chloie Brandrick is planning to invest more into SEO and conversion work on her website.
• Josh Peacock wants to put more behind content and digital PR that supports both search and AI visibility, rather than relying only on traditional rankings.

PR, mentions, AI tools and new demand

• Yash Singh plans to allocate more to PR and mentions, and is testing Facebook ads so he is not completely dependent on Google.
• Lily Nguyen expects to put more budget into AI tools and less into labour.
• Sam Scott is planning more spend on exhibitions and events to get in front of the right healthcare audiences and then support that with digital follow up.
• Andy Adams wants to put more into testing and diversifying platforms and channels so Chester Zoo is present wherever audiences choose to spend time.

Refining paid and marketplaces

• Rachel Morgan expects to allocate more spend into growing marketplaces and PPC.
• Michael Melen expects more PPC, less on marketplaces and a steady level of SEO spend.
• Dean Signori is expecting to put more into generative engine optimisation, given how important he believes it will be inside Google and major AI tools.
• Mads Singers does not expect AI to change his budget in the short term, but he will continue to move money into the channels that give him the best return.

Final thoughts

Across all of these perspectives, a few things are clear:

• SEO, content and digital PR are still central, but there is more focus on quality, authority and long-term assets.
• PPC, performance media and marketplaces are under more scrutiny, yet remain essential where they can scale profitably.
• Brand and personal brand now have real budget behind them, especially as AI makes generic content easier to produce.
• AI is shaping tools, workflows and how teams think about channels, but most leaders are using it to support proven strategies rather than replace them.

If you are planning your own 2026 budget, this is a useful sense check. Look at where these leaders are putting their money, compare it to your own mix, and ask whether your spending reflects where you are really seeing return.