Top marketing roles are evolving, with only 40% of marketing leaders from Fortune 500 companies holding the CMO title, according to annual research from leadership advisory firm Spencer Stuart.

Of the Fortune 500, 33% of marketing leaders hold marketing-related leadership titles without “chief” – such as senior vice-president of marketing.

Meanwhile, 16% have a dual-function title, such as chief marketing and communications officer and 11% of marketing leaders do not have the word marketing in their title at all. The most common words that appear in those titles are commercial, growth, customer/consumer, brand and strategy.

The findings are from Spencer Stuart’s annual CMO Tenure Study, which tracks how CMO roles are evolving in the past year.

According to the study, 329 of the Fortune 500 companies (66%) had a C-suite marketing leader in 2024, a drop of nearly eight percentage points from 2023 (357) but still higher than 2022 (320).

At an industry level, industrial is the largest sector in the Fortune 500, and it is also the least likely to have a CMO. However, the study finds that the number of industrial companies with a marketing leader has increased five percentage points since 2022.

In consumer goods, the share of companies with a marketing lead has increased three percentage points, including a corresponding increase in the share with ‘chief’ in their title.

The overall figure tallies with Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey data, which finds nearly a quarter of brands (23.8%) are cutting senior marketing leader roles, such as CMO, and not replacing them.

‘Marketing won’t change’: Top marketers on the evolving CMO role

CMO tenure

Meanwhile, the average CMO tenure at Fortune 500 companies in 2024 was 4.3 years, a slight upward tick from 2023 (4.2 years). However, CMO tenure still trails the C-suite average of 4.9 years and is lower than the most common C-suite roles, yet higher than chief operating, chief sustainability and chief diversity officers.

That said, the data shows for the majority of CMOs, the next step after leaving the role is either lateral or upward. Almost two-thirds (65%) of exiting CMOs at Fortune 500 companies were either promoted within their companies or moved to lateral or step-up positions within new companies.

Notably, 10% of the CMOs who left their roles became CEOs and 37% of Fortune 500 CEOs have marketing experience.

Elsewhere, women now make up 53% of CMO positions, up from 41% in 2020 and 47% in 2022, signalling the CMO role now skews more female.

On the flip side, ethnic and racial diversity are stagnant at the highest level of CMO. Only 12% of marketing leaders come from historically underrepresented ethnic or racial groups, unchanged from 2023 and down from 14% in 2022.

Marketing Week revealed the industry’s gender pay gap last week, and will be digging into marketing’s ethnicity and socio-economic pay gaps in upcoming news stories and features based on Career & Salary Survey data.