Brand Equity Is a Line Item: Why Smart CMOs Prioritize Long-Term Value in Budgets

by Editorial Team November 28, 2025

One number for the next board meeting: Intangible assets such as brand, intellectual property, and goodwill reached approximately 92% of S&P 500 market capitalization by the end of 2025, up from 17% in 1975, according to Ocean Tomo's Intangible Asset Market Value Study. For a retail or consumer chief executive, the implication is direct: over fifty years the market has moved almost all of its valuation weight onto assets that a balance sheet reports last and a marketing budget funds first.

The 2026 brand valuation rankings put a figure on how much of that value carries a brand name. Kantar BrandZ valued its top 100 global brands at a combined $13.1 trillion in 2026, up 22% year over year, with Google first at $1.485 trillion after a 57% rise. Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2025 measured its top 100 at $3.6 trillion, an increase of $150 billion, or 4.4%, over 2024, led by Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. The two firms use different methodologies and arrive at different totals, and both point the same direction.

Inside those tables the movers are instructive. Interbrand recorded YouTube up 61%, Uber up 38%, Nintendo up 35%, Netflix up 42%, and Instagram up 27% into the top ten, while twelve brands entered the ranking for the first time, among them Uniqlo, Shopify, BYD, and Booking.com. Interbrand's global chief executive summarized the pattern by saying that brands innovating across industries, building cultural relevance, and investing in long-term brand strategy are the ones winning.

Brand equity, in other words, behaves like an asset that responds to funding. Treating it as a named line in the marketing budget is what makes that funding consistent enough to compound.

The market prices brand before it prices product

Ocean Tomo's fifty-year series traces the inversion precisely: intangibles at 17% of S&P 500 market value in 1975, 32% in 1985, 79% in 2005, and roughly 90% through the 2020s before reaching 92% at the end of 2025. Tangible assets now account for the remaining 8%.

That shift changes what a marketing budget is buying. Spend that raises recognition, trust, and preference is building the asset class the market weights most heavily. Reporting brand equity as a line item, alongside media and martech, puts the investment where a chief financial officer can see it and defend it.

The marketing lesson: Naming brand equity as its own budget line makes an intangible asset visible to the people who allocate capital, which is the first condition for funding it consistently.

A fixed envelope makes allocation the decision

Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, fielded from January to March 2026 among 401 chief marketing officers and marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, most at companies above $1 billion in revenue, found marketing budgets at 7.8% of company revenue, a small rise from 7.7% the year before. Organizations Gartner classifies as ready to scale artificial intelligence operate at 8.9%. Artificial intelligence now absorbs 15.3% of the average marketing budget, and 21.3% at the most AI-ready organizations. Fifty-six percent of the chief marketing officers surveyed said their budget matches a smaller ambition than their 2026 strategy.

A stable envelope makes the allocation question the strategic one. Every dollar routed to brand building is a dollar consciously chosen over another use, which is precisely why marketing leaders who can show what that dollar returns keep winning the argument year after year.

The marketing lesson: A flat budget raises the value of allocation discipline, because the leaders who can defend the split between brand and activation control where the growth comes from.

Meaningful difference is what the premium rests on

Kantar's analysis of its BrandZ global database identifies what converts brand investment into pricing power. Consumers who choose on brand report a willingness to pay 37% more than for other brands, and even price-focused consumers report paying 14% more for brands they see as meaningfully different. Brands with strong meaningful difference capture roughly three times the market share gain of brands with weak equity when they raise salience, and three quarters of the brands Kantar identified as global growth stories built on meaningful difference, with one quarter growing on salience alone.

Those multiples are the mechanism behind the valuation tables. A brand that means something specific to its buyers earns a higher price, holds volume through category pressure, and converts advertising into preference.

The marketing lesson: Brand differentiation is what turns awareness into pricing power, so budget aimed at making a brand distinctive returns more than budget aimed only at making it visible.

What sustained investment buys

The brands climbing fastest in both rankings share a pattern of continuous investment across identity, product storytelling, and cultural presence. Kantar recorded Google up 57% to $1.485 trillion and Nvidia up 60% in 2026. Interbrand's twelve new entrants arrived after years of consistent brand building.

Consistency is the operative variable. Brand consistency across every touchpoint compounds recognition, and recognition lowers the cost of every subsequent message. Companies that fund brand identity in strong quarters and weak ones alike are the ones whose valuations reflect it.

The marketing lesson: Brand value accrues to companies that fund it through the cycle, because consistency is what turns annual spend into an asset with a growing balance.

The line items that compound

Three categories carry most of the long-term return. Brand identity development keeps the visual and verbal system coherent as the company grows. Customer engagement programs convert attention into relationships and lift customer retention. Market research on brand perception supplies the evidence that the first two are working.

Each one produces value on a longer horizon than a performance campaign, and each one improves the efficiency of performance spending while it runs. A well-known brand converts paid media at a lower cost, which means brand investment quietly reduces the price of every acquisition dollar spent beside it.

The marketing lesson: Brand identity, engagement programs, and perception research are the three line items that make the rest of the marketing budget cheaper to run.

Accountability makes the line permanent

Brand equity holds its place in a budget when it reports like everything else in the budget. The measures that travel to a board are brand awareness scores, customer preference, price premium against the category, customer retention rate, and customer lifetime value, tracked on a fixed cadence so the picture is current whenever budget season arrives.

A measurement framework that connects those indicators to revenue turns a philosophical argument into a financial one. Partnering with the finance function on the model is what moves brand investment from a request into a plan the whole company owns.

The marketing lesson: Brand equity earns a permanent budget line when it is measured on a regular cadence, because a number that appears every quarter becomes a number the business manages.

The Broader Takeaway

The case for funding brand equity is now an arithmetic one. Ocean Tomo's fifty-year series says intangibles carry 92% of large-cap market value. Kantar and Interbrand say the brand share of that value is measured in trillions and growing at double digits. Kantar's own analysis says meaningful difference converts into a 37% price premium among brand-led buyers. Gartner says the budget available to build all of it sits at 7.8% of revenue, which makes allocation the highest-leverage decision a marketing leader makes each year.

The logic holds across categories. A consumer packaged goods brand defending shelf price, a business services firm shortening its sales cycle, and a retailer holding full-price sell-through are all drawing on the same asset. What distinguishes the companies that build it is a budget line with a name, a number, and a review date.

RSL News Inc. builds brand strategy, customer experience programs, and the measurement framework that connects brand equity to revenue, price premium, and customer lifetime value. If you are heading into a planning cycle and want the brand line defended with numbers, we would like to hear what you are working on.

References

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Yahoo Finance, "Ocean Tomo Releases 2025 Intangible Asset Market Value Study Results," https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ocean-tomo-releases-2025-intangible-131700957.html
Kantar, "Revealed: the world's most valuable global brands in 2026," https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/most-valuable-global-brands-2026
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Gartner, "Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey Finds CMOs Allocate 15.3% of Marketing Budgets to AI," https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-11-gartner-2026-cmo-spend-survey-finds-cmos-allocate-15-point-3-percent-of-marketing-budgets-to-ai-but-only-30-percent-are-ready-to-scale-ai-capabilities
Chief Marketer, "Gartner CMO Spend Survey: Budgets Reflect Increase in Consumption-Based Martech, Paid Media Spend," https://www.chiefmarketer.com/gartner-cmo-spend-survey-budgets-reflect-increase-in-consumption-based-martech-paid-media-spend/
Sword and the Script, "Gartner CMO spend survey shows marketing leaders have a third dilemma," https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/06/gartner-cmo-trilemma/
Kantar, "Get an equity booster: How Meaningful Difference supercharges growth," https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/get-an-equity-booster-how-meaningful-difference-supercharges-growth
Kantar, "Brand equity: why and how should you measure it?," https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/why-and-how-should-you-measure-brand-equity
Kantar, "Think Different: The DNA of breakthrough brand value growth," https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/advertising-media/think-different-the-dna-of-breakthrough-brand-value-growth

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