Marketing leaders are losing nearly a full month each year to technical wrangling with their martech stacks, with time meant for creative thinking instead spent resolving software issues, according to new research.
A study by marketing optimisation specialists Intermedia Global (IMG) found that Chief Marketing Officers are spending, on average, 13.3 hours each month troubleshooting their tech. That equates to more than 21 working days annually — and for nearly a third (31%) of CMOs, it rises to over five hours each week, or a staggering 34 days a year.
The findings, drawn from a survey of 250 UK-based C-suite professionals in companies with annual revenues between £100 million and £500 million, highlight the operational cost of complexity in today’s martech landscape. With more than 15,000 marketing tools and platforms on the market, the explosion in choice has left many leaders struggling with disconnected systems, legacy software limitations, and unclear responsibilities within their tech stack.
Crucially, the friction is not just a technical inconvenience — it’s undermining core marketing effectiveness. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of CMOs surveyed said they often lose time reserved for creativity due to having to deal with tech issues. Among those newer in their roles — one to two years in — that figure rose to 95%, suggesting that even once CMOs have started to orient themselves, their tools remain a recurring roadblock.
A third of respondents admitted they ‘very often’ lose creative time as a direct result of martech support issues, highlighting a structural problem that’s interfering with campaign design and broader strategic thinking.
Steve Kemish, CEO of IMG, said the findings were symptomatic of a broken approach to marketing infrastructure. “People who are spending all their time troubleshooting their tech because tool A doesn’t link with platform B, or because there’s a problem and they don’t know where the responsibility for the tech stack lies, or because their creaking legacy system can’t cope with brand-new AI functionality, aren’t able to be creative and design effective marketing campaigns,” he said.
“If CMOs want their martech to actually help them, they need to rationalise and rethink how they approach it.”
The psychological toll is also becoming harder to ignore. One in 12 CMOs admitted that the constant need to deal with martech and data makes marketing less enjoyable for them — a striking admission for senior professionals at the helm of brand and growth strategies. Moreover, 13% of respondents said their martech stack is having no positive impact on team morale or motivation, despite the tools ostensibly being introduced to increase productivity and efficiency.
Kemish warns that unchecked martech sprawl is damaging the very teams it’s meant to empower. “Martech was designed to make marketers’ lives easier, but all too often it’s having the opposite effect. It’s impossible for CMOs and their teams to focus on customer experience when their own experience is so poor.”
IMG says the issue has become so prevalent that it developed a Marketing Experience (MX) model to help teams reduce friction with their tech stacks and reclaim time for higher-value work. “Tech overload is something that hits businesses of all sizes and across all categories,” Kemish added. “And given the current economic climate, with scrutiny on budgets and headcount, it has never been more vital for CMOs to be able to make the most of their team’s valuable time and resources.”
As martech ecosystems continue to grow in scale and complexity, CMOs face a pivotal choice: consolidate and simplify, or risk creative paralysis in the name of digital optimisation.
