While the current business climate is difficult, from a financial standpoint, 2025 was a good year to be a CMO. According to new data from The Conference Board and ESGAUGE, median total compensation for CMOs in the S&P 500 saw the largest increase of all executive titles, excluding CEO. Median CMO compensation hit $6.5 million, up 27% from 2024—surpassing median compensation for CFOs, COOs, CHROs and chief legal officers.

The Conference Board found that the rising pay likely reflects more emphasis on responsibilities under the CMO’s purview: brand resilience, pricing power, customer retention, data-driven demand generation, and integration of analytics and digital platforms. However, the nonprofit notes that the data doesn’t indicate CMOs are quickly getting rich. Changes in executive structures mean there are fewer people with the CMO title—just 29 in the S&P 500. Among companies in the Russell 3000, there are just 133 CMOs, and the number of people with that title dropped by a third between 2021 and 2025.

Regardless of what CMOs are called these days, their responsibilities are growing—but they also have opportunity to create different kinds of campaigns. With today’s media landscape, there’s no such thing as a brief moment. Streaming and social media allow important marketing moments—like the Super Bowl, the Oscars or the World Cup—to gain traction before, during and after they happen. I talked to Natalie Bastian, CMO of real-time marketing and measurement platform InMarket, about how to take advantage of the opportunity. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

This is the published version of Forbes’ CMO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief marketing officers and other messaging-focused leaders. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

Today is a big day for Disney. It’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro’s first day on the job, succeeding longtime CEO Bob Iger. Bringing new leadership into any of the large media and entertainment companies is always a significant moment, but considering that Disney has only had three CEOs in the last four decades—and one was Iger’s previous short-term successor Bob Chapek—new blood at the Mouse House is seismic. All together, Iger was Disney’s CEO for about 19 years—from 2005 to 2020, then a brief retirement before returning again in 2022. The mouse ears will formally be passed on at a shareholder meeting this afternoon.

Iger leaves behind a long legacy of growth through acquisitions, technology, entertainment and branded experiences. Forbes senior contributor David Bloom goes through some of the highlights of Iger’s tenure, including the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and the Star Wars franchise through LucasFilm; getting into streaming with Disney+ and building on the market through ESPN and Hulu; as well as large expansions to Disney parks, cruise ships and resorts worldwide—including a licensed park in Abu Dhabi (which Forbes senior contributor Caroline Reid writes is still moving ahead, despite the nearby war in Iran). Iger also moved Disney into video games, purchasing a majority stake in Epic Games, and into generative AI through a character licensing deal with OpenAI’s Sora video generator.

D’Amaro, a 28-year company veteran and the former head of Disney Experiences—which manages the company’s theme parks, hotels, cruise line, and Imagineering and consumer products divisions—was tapped as Iger’s successor in February, following a search that took more than a year. He has a lot to live up to—Reid suggested in February D’Amaro would have to boost Disney’s valuation more than four-fold to match Iger’s performance—as well as many challenges in front of him.

The media landscape is changing rapidly as streaming continues to grow and big entertainment company mergers—including the potential joining of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery—create larger competitors in the space. Sports streaming especially is becoming a contentious business, with leagues and event owners negotiating ever more lucrative contracts with a variety of providers. And entertainment in general is shifting. Though Disney has had a good streak at the box office lately with the current top movie Hoppers and the holiday season’s hit Avatar: Fire and Ash, recent box office bombs including the live-action Snow White demonstrate there is no automatic success. And Disney’s contract with OpenAI could lead to a wildly successful partnership—or a cautionary tale about working with AI.

D’Amaro hasn’t spoken much publicly since being tapped as Iger’s replacement, though he is expected to at today’s shareholders’ meeting. On a conference call last month with bloggers who write about Disney theme parks, Bloomberg reports D’Amaro spoke of “a vision for unification of a very large company,” often repeating the word “boundless” to describe his vision.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

More consumers are using AI to do research and make purchase decisions, but only 13% completely trust it, according to recent research from Klaviyo. The e-commerce marketing platform surveyed roughly 8,000 consumers about their AI usage and found that there are four distinct AI user personas based on their use and levels of trust: enthusiasts, evaluators, skeptics and holdouts. The largest group—43%—are evaluators who believe in AI’s potential and use it occasionally, but have a tepid degree of trust. Just over a quarter are AI enthusiasts who use the technology often and typically don’t second guess its output, while just over a fifth are holdouts who rarely or never use AI—and a majority of whom say they will lose trust in brands that regularly use AI-generated content in their marketing.

Trust in AI is highest among younger consumers—Gen Zers and Millennials are 75% more likely to trust AI than Baby Boomers—and men—who are 60% more likely to trust AI than women, Klaviyo found.

Even so, use of AI is increasing by all of these personas, Klaviyo found. Six in 10 people use AI at least weekly, while 41% of people across all personas have purchased an AI-recommended product in the last six months. And those who use AI the most said they find the most low-quality AI-generated content. About 40% see AI slop several times a week, while close to one in five see it once a week.

Influencers have been a vital part of brand marketing for years, and brands invested a record $33 billion in influencer marketing last year. And while influencers’ recommendations can help win over new customers, they can also spread toxic misinformation, writes Forbes senior contributor Emma Woollacott.

A recent study found the ecosystem in which influencers operate makes this possible. A regular social media user is likely to get called out and confronted for a TikTok post hyping their new luxury brand bag and falsely claiming other companies’ products are made in China. But influencers’ profits increase with engagement, meaning more controversial posts are likely to boost their pay. Influencers also have built a trust relationship with the people who follow them.

“The unique parasocial bond influencers have with their communities means these groups are much more likely to get behind an idea without interrogating its veracity,” report author Giandomenico Di Domenico told Woollacott.

While the aim of marketing is to convince people to buy your product or services over those of competitors, brands don’t want to be inadvertently putting out blatantly incorrect information through their influencers. The study recommends keeping a close watch on what influencers are saying about all the brands in your space, encouraging them to be more factual and transparent in their posts. The authors also recommend calm clarifications from the brand to clear the record about anything that isn’t accurate.

How Marketers Can Capture The Moment—Before And After It Happens

The days of missing an important moment on TV because of a short distraction are over. Social media and streaming make those moments last, giving marketers more of an opportunity to build and stretch the timeline of key moments—both planned, like Super Bowl LX, and unexpected, like the wedding that took place during Bad Bunny’s halftime show.

Days before the Super Bowl, I talked to Natalie Bastian, who recently became CMO of real-time marketing and measurement platform InMarket, about how to take advantage of the timeline around touchstone moments. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.

How have streaming and social media changed the traditional marketing playbook?

Bastian: The most obvious is that planning is no longer linear. It’s not just singular spikes, it’s maximizing the recurring waves that are happening. And so [you’re responding to] the progression of the marketing planning cycle and the fluidity of it, too. Being able to really maximize the attention moments—and it’s not just going to be for one moment in time. It’s being able to capture that attention and continue to capture it, then ultimately being able to tie that attention to the outcome of that media, which is where measurement is absolutely crucial.

Social is a huge component of that. When someone is on their phone, they’re either scrolling to capture content that is relevant to what they’re watching on the screen, or they’re looking to shop [for] something that they saw on the screen. There’s all these different non-linear behaviors that happen between the dual screens.

From a planning perspective, it’s not just about the reach. A lot of brands, especially during these huge moments, [are thinking about] capturing 200 million people planning around reach curves. But it’s really behavioral curves, and being able to understand the impact that’s happening through the entire cycle.

Then you layer on these multi-moments [like the] Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Cup. [With] the different time zones—with the Olympics being in Milan—that’s where streaming is so important. People are not going to be watching some of the biggest events in real time; you’d be catching up the next day, watching the clips on social to understand what happened, but then being able to catch it in real time or on demand.

Really, the tech from streaming and social are enabling the behavior too, and so marketers need to lean into that. It’s not just about the reach. It’s really about understanding the what: What is this person doing while you’re reaching them? How do you capture that? And then, how do you continue your own story as a brand across different touchpoints during these moments?

But as you mentioned, today it’s not like there’s just one moment and that’s it. There’s the buildup, there’s the moment, and then there’s the time after it. How do marketers prepare?

It’s looking at different media channels. Now streaming is very much about reach, similar to how traditional TV was, but the demand and expectation of CTV is going beyond just a branding moment to be able to help understand the conversion behind it. That’s where the data and tech really come into play—and being able to understand the data that you can leverage to be able to continue to optimize that campaign beyond just that CTV.

If you think about the Super Bowl, some of the biggest ads we’ve already seen. They are previewing and teasing them, using them as promotable moments with their spokespeople. Some of them have been promoted for at least a month ahead of time. And they’re already tracking the implications from a lower conversion standpoint because there’s definitely other media at play.

[To promote] the Uber Eats one with Matthew McConaughey, they’re doing a sit down interview on the Today show. There’s teasers leading into the big reveal that we’ve already seen on social, but I think there’ll be extended or multiple versions of that on the big day. It’s interesting how they’re using and stretching their dollar, which is really smart because you think about the cost of creative, and you want to make that one big moment work a lot harder for you. It’s the tease factor.

But at the end of the day, the big moment is: Once you get that full exposure, that 200 million view, being able to have the right measurement and tracking to be able to watch how things waterfall after. That’s where, nine times out of 10, social comes into play.

What advice do you have for marketers who are trying to navigate how to capitalize on the moments—as well as before and after they happen?

It all comes down to the systems that you have, the less sexy stuff of how are you understanding what’s successful or not? At the end of the day, they have to be plugged in so you know if a signal is positive [or] negative, how it’s trending, and then being able to have the agility to be able to act and optimize throughout.

It’s really the underpinning, making sure that under your media investment, what is that measurement framework and infrastructure that you have in place—especially because this is where measurement matters so much. You’re spending a high amount on media in a short amount of time, and you’re going to need to answer [about] what worked to the CFO. It’s not just a one-stop, and you won’t know what worked until you continue to optimize and test. It elongates that feedback loop.

And a big piece of that is knowing where your data’s coming from, what you can use to leverage, and investing with platforms that can optimize it for you.

Everyone knows stress is bad, but modern neuroscience indicates that it can actually cause brain damage. Here are six tips to lower your stress level and protect your brain—while continuing to be an effective leader.

In the current politically polarized environment, many corporate leaders are staying quiet as they make decisions so they won’t become targeted by people who disagree with them. While this can be an effective strategy, it can also be self-defeating: Your employees and business partners really may need to hear from you. Here’s how to decide when to be quiet and what’s worth saying out loud.

Many movies and TV shows are adapted from books, and are usually governed by pretty open licensing agreements: Authors negotiate a deal for the adaptation, and the producers more or less have free rein to modify the story. Which author created a production company in order to have more creative control over her adaptations?

See if you got it right here.

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