Managing marketing spend across multiple markets is hard enough. Knowing whether what you spent was actually the right amount is harder.
How can benchmarking give global Marketing Procurement teams the visibility they need to negotiate with confidence?
Marketing Procurement professionals, especially those working across multiple markets, are tasked with budget control that goes beyond simply tracking what has been spent.
The complexity of buying marketing means the real challenge is in understanding whether what was spent was appropriate, relative to the market, the agency type, the deliverable, and the region in which the work was produced. Plus, add to this the more subjective element of measuring the value.
It’s no wonder that many are falling short.
Marketing budgets are still commonly set according to historical spend levels and internal priorities rather than external market evidence. According to Marketing Week, 34.2% of marketers ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ measure the return on their marketing investment.
And our research confirms that around a third of global brands are not comparing their marketing investments against any benchmarks.
These statistics mean a substantial portion of global marketing spend is being managed in the dark. A concerning thought when global marketing spend is predicted to exceed $1 trillion in 2026.
Without an external reference point, marketing spend management becomes reactive rather than strategic. Whilst Procurement can track what has been spent, they aren’t confidently assessing whether it was the right amount.
The first thing benchmarking gives you is visibility
Internal benchmarking data tends to be limited. It’s based on one sector, limited deliverables, and rate card information rather than actual negotiated fees. It is only reflecting a narrow band of insight. When you are managing spend across dozens of markets and hundreds of agency relationships, that narrow view means you are only seeing the trees, not the forest.
External benchmarking, through platforms like RightSpend, address this by aggregating anonymized data across a wide range of industries, markets, agency types, and deliverables. The deep dataset is built on negotiated rates, which gives Procurement a real-life picture of what brands are actually paying.
For global brands, the country-specific dimension of that data is particularly valuable. It provides a clear picture of investment into each market and enables Procurement teams to identify where spend aligns with regional norms and where it does not.
Not all benchmarking data does the same job
The depth and granularity of benchmarking data directly determines how useful it is for global budget control. Only comparing headline fees is limiting, you need to have access to data that breaks down costs across multiple dimensions.
What matters most for Marketing Procurement:
- Agency type and scale, because network agencies and independent boutiques carry entirely different cost structures.
- Deliverables, because production costs, staffing rates, and asset costs vary significantly by output.
- Geography and market, because rates in different regions reflect local talent costs, competitive dynamics, and economic conditions that cannot simply be averaged together.
This granularity is what separates genuinely useful benchmarking data from a simple rate comparison and enables contextually accurate comparisons.
Many believe that know what their industry sector is paying is a useful benchmark. However, this can be misleading as there are industries that have traditionally been charged a premium (Financial Services, Gambling, Luxury Brands for example). But the reality is that the teams doing the work are industry agnostic, so actually you want your benchmark data to represent a true average.
Benchmarking is a governance tool, not a negotiation weapon
A common misconception, particularly among those new to Marketing Procurement, is that benchmarking data is primarily a negotiation tactic deployed only at contract renewal time to push back on agency fees. When the reality is that the value is much broader and, arguably, more important than that.
When benchmarking is embedded into the Marketing Procurement process, it creates a consistent framework for a continuous evaluation of marketing spend. Onboarding new agencies gets assessed against verified benchmarks rather than subjective judgment, as standard. Contract renewals are reviewed against real-time market rates rather than a historical precedent. Cross-market campaigns are evaluated for cost consistency, identifying where one market is paying significantly more than another for comparable work. And, when Finance and senior stakeholders receive spend data that has been contextualized against external standards, the credibility of reporting improves considerably.
A governance overview is particularly valuable for multinational brands where local Marketing Procurement teams are operating with autonomy. A single-source of truth from an independent benchmarking platform, like RightSpend, creates that common standard to work from, ensuring that marketing spend is not dependent on the knowledge or negotiating confidence of each regional team.
A technology layer makes benchmarking more accessible
The scale of global marketing spend, spanning dozens of markets, hundreds of agency relationships, and thousands of individual deliverables, means that benchmarking cannot be managed manually. The technology infrastructure behind a benchmarking platform ensures it operates at the speed and scale global Marketing Procurement teamsrequire.
The capabilities that really matter for Marketing Procurement teams are:
- on-demand access to live benchmarking data, so they can interrogate marketing spend as agency proposals arrive rather than waiting for a periodic review.
- centralized scope of work and pricing data across all agency relationships.
- multi-market, multi-discipline coverage that spans the full geographic footprint of the brand.
- consistent data standards that enable meaningful comparison rather than fragmented datasets
The ability to respond to market changes, agency cost shifts, or campaign performance in real time is only possible when the underlying data infrastructure is robust and continuously updated.
What does effective Marketing Procurement benchmarking actually unlock?
Cost savings are the obvious benefit, but they are only a part of what good benchmarking infrastructure can deliver for Marketing Procurement teams.
Agency relationships improve in quality when both brand and agency operate with a shared understanding of rates. Conversations can shift from adversarial negotiation to transparent partnership, because there is a clear foundation for a discussion on fees rather than two parties working from their own assumptions.
Budget reallocation becomes genuinely strategic. Savings identified through benchmarking do not have to simply return to the bottom line. They can be redeployed into higher-performing campaigns, additional creative investment, or markets where the brand is under-resourced relative to its competitive position.
Procurement’s credibility with Finance and Marketing increases significantly when budget recommendations are grounded in verified external market data rather than internal opinion. That credibility matters when it comes to influencing decisions, defending budget allocations, and demonstrating measurable return on investment.
And for multinational brands specifically, global consistency becomes achievable. Benchmarking ensures that spend decisions in one market are made with the same rigor and evidence as decisions in any other, eliminating the inconsistency that erodes overall budget control.
What to look for when evaluating benchmarking data?
If you are assessing benchmarking data for your Marketing Procurement team, here’s the five criteria that matter most:
- Data source quality: is the benchmark built on actually negotiated rates or published rate cards? Is the depth of data deep enough to make it credible? The answer to that question determines the commercial defensibility of everything that follows.
- Geographic & Discipline coverage: does the data cover the markets and agency disciplines relevant to your brand, not just the major markets where data happens to be abundant?
- Granularity: can the service benchmark at the level of staffing costs, overheads, asset costs, and individual deliverables, not just headline fees?
- Technology and accessibility: can your teams access insights on demand as commercial decisions arise, or is the service structured as a periodic consultancy engagement?
- Independence: is the data provider genuinely independent of the agencies being benchmarked? Any conflict of interest, however indirect, undermines the objectivity of the data.
Marketing Procurement benchmarking is not achievable through internal data and periodic reviews alone. The complexity of multi-market agency relationships, shifting regional cost dynamics, and the volume of spend involved demands benchmarking data that is rich, technology-enabled, and continuously updated.
Brands that invest in the right benchmarking infrastructure do not just reduce overspend. They build a Marketing Procurement function that operates with genuine strategic authority, across every market in which they work.
