2026 Salary Snapshot - Marketing

2026 Salary Snapshot - Marketing

At Artemis Canada, we work with founders and executive teams across the country who are building ambitious technology companies. For more than a decade, we’ve been in the room for critical leadership hires, compensation conversations, and board-level decisions about how to structure teams for growth.

Because our work spans product, engineering, go-to-market, people, finance, and beyond, we see how compensation is shifting across the tech ecosystem in real time, not just in one company or one stage. These Salary Snapshots are our way of sharing that view back with you.

Each guide focuses on a single function and blends quantitative survey data with what we’re hearing every day from candidates and companies. If this is your first time encountering Artemis Canada, think of this as a practical, Canada-focused benchmark to help you answer three questions:

1. Where does my team sit in the market?

2. What kind of leader do we really need next?

3. And what will it take to attract and retain them?

This salary guide draws from our 2026 Salary Survey and our real-time conversations with Canada’s top marketing leaders, capturing compensation, work models, well-being, AI adoption, and market sentiment from marketing professionals across startups, scale-ups, and technology-led organizations.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing compensation is holding steady, with a median base salary of $154,000 and an average base salary of $161,665 across all respondents.
  
• Senior marketing leadership continues to command meaningful premiums. VP-level respondents reported a median base salary of $220,000, while C-level respondents reported a median base salary of $280,000.
  
• Variable compensation is still uneven. While 46% of respondents reported receiving a reliable bonus, participation and bonus size vary significantly by level.
  
• Equity remains concentrated. Only 19% of respondents reported having equity, but for those who do, the median value was $40,000 and the average was $116,167.
  
• Remote work is still the dominant model in marketing. 56% of respondents work fully remote, 36% are hybrid, and only 9% are fully in-office.
  
• AI is now part of the day-to-day marketing toolkit. 81% of respondents use AI tools every day, with the most common use cases being brainstorming, summarizing, writing, research, and productivity.

Compensation By Level

This data reflects base salary, excluding bonus and equity. All figures are in Canadian dollars.

But wait! Before you dig in and get to comparing (yup, we see you!), here is some helpful context:

• Our network, and therefore our respondents, are mostly gainfully employed at high-performing Canadian tech startups and scale-ups. As a result, these figures are likely to sit toward the upper end of the market.
• We know it’s not fair to compare compensation at a seed-stage startup to a series C scale up; it’s not apples to apples. So, we asked Dave Whiteside, PhD, who analyzed our data: “Are there trends or anomalies to note when looking at the different sizes or stages of companies when comparing compensation?” Here’s what he found:
  
  • At the Director level and up, Mid-Size/Growing orgs pay ~10% more on average than Emerging/Small orgs, and Large/Enterprise orgs pay ~20% more than Emerging/Small orgs.
  • At the Lead/Manager level, both Mid-Size/Growing and Large/Enterprise pay ~15% more than Emerging/Small. 
  • Mid-Size/Growing and Large/Enterprise are pretty even all things considered.
  • At the individual contributor level, the differences are not significant across the three groups.

With those caveats out of the way, let’s dig in.

On Target Earnings (OTE) By Role

Average On Target Earnings (OTE) By Level

Across all respondents, the median base salary was $154K and the average base salary was $162K.

The spread between levels shows a clear premium for senior marketing leadership. It also reinforces something we see often in search: title matters, but mandate matters more. A marketing leader responsible for revenue influence, company positioning, brand, team leadership, and customer growth will sit in a very different compensation range than a narrower functional lead.

Bonus By Level

Bonuses are part of the compensation picture, but they are not universal.

46% of respondents reported receiving a reliable bonus. As expected, bonus value generally increases with seniority.

For hiring teams, the best bonus structures are simple, credible, and tied to outcomes the leader can meaningfully influence. When a marketing leader is accountable for pipeline, demand, customer growth, or company-level performance, variable compensation can help align expectations, but only when the goals are clear.

Remote Work

Marketing remains one of the strongest functions for remote-first work.

56% of respondents are fully remote, 36% are hybrid, and only 9% are fully in-office.

Hybrid respondents reported the highest median base salary, but this likely reflects a mix of seniority, company location, and role scope rather than work model alone.

The bigger takeaway: flexibility continues to matter. Many marketing professionals have built their operating rhythm around distributed work, and companies hiring marketing talent should be clear on expectations early in the process.

AI In Marketing

AI is the clearest new theme in this year’s data. 81% of respondents use AI tools every day. Another 17% use them occasionally. Only 1% said they do not use AI. As for the use cases, respondents reported:

• Brainstorming ideas or thinking through problems — 84%
• Summarizing documents, articles, or meetings — 77%
• Writing and content generation — 76%
• Research and information gathering — 70%
• Personal productivity — 61%
• Automating routine or repetitive tasks — 60%
• Data analysis and interpretation — 56%
• Creating presentations and slide content — 43%
• Learning new skills or concepts — 33%
• Coding and technical problem solving — 16%
• Customer support or client communication — 14%

Workplace Sentiment

Compensation is only one part of how marketing professionals evaluate their roles.

• 53% of respondents said they are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their compensation. At the same time, the overall employer Net Promoter Score was -23, with 14% promoters, 49% passives, and 37% detractors.
• Well-being was also mixed. 49% of respondents rated their workplace well-being as a 4 or 5 out of 5, while 60% rated their personal well-being at home as a 4 or 5.

That gap is worth paying attention to. It suggests marketers may be doing reasonably well personally, but still feeling pressure inside the workplace.

For leaders, this is a reminder that retention is not only about pay. It is also about focus, clarity, workload, resourcing, manager support, and whether teams have the space to do thoughtful work well.

Qualitative Insights from our Team

• Marketing is adopting a sales-like mindset. As marketing becomes more directly tied to revenue, we’re seeing marketing leaders behave more like sales leaders in how they think about compensation, upside, and career moves. Turnover is increasing as roles become more tightly linked to pipeline and KPI performance; when targets aren’t met, leaders are often moved on more quickly, and many are more open to exploring new opportunities. We’ve also seen commentary around how many marketing activities aren’t given enough time to mature, creating a costly cycle where new leaders inherit half-built strategies, unsettled teams, and a mandate to “fix” work that was never given time to run.
• Shift toward performance and demand roles. Across searches, we’re seeing more growth, performance marketing, and demand generation mandates. Even in brand-heavy organizations, the expectation is that marketing can show clear contribution to pipeline, CAC, and revenue efficiency.
• Adversely, “Every company is a media company". Marketing is increasingly expected to operate like a media function. Many of the companies we work with are building internal media brands alongside their core products; newsletters, podcasts, content hubs, and always‑on editorial streams aimed at specific customer segments. In practice, that means modern marketing leaders are being asked to think like publishers: setting a clear editorial point of view, showing up consistently in the channels where their buyers actually spend time, and measuring the long‑term impact of audience, trust, and narrative, not just short‑term campaign performance.‍
• Leaner teams and “hands-on” expectations. Marketing teams are becoming significantly leaner. Many of the leaders we’re placing have previously managed much larger organizations, but recognize that career growth no longer necessarily means more headcount. Instead, it means learning how to scale impact with smaller teams, automation, AI, and smarter systems. At the same time, there is still real hesitation from senior leaders about stepping back into environments that feel closer to “team of one”, highly hands-on roles with fewer resources, even when AI tools are part of the pitch.

Interesting Callouts From The Data This Year

AI Is The Biggest New Story

Last year’s snapshot focused on remote work, equity, bonuses, and gender compensation. This year, AI is the standout theme. With 81% of marketers using AI every day, it is now a core part of how marketing work gets done.

Remote Work Has Increased

Last year, 47% of marketing professionals were fully remote. This year, that number increased to 56%. Fully in-office marketing roles remain rare.

Equity Appears Less Widespread This Year

Last year, 64% of executive marketers and 37.5% of ICs and managers reported receiving equity. This year, only 19% of total respondents reported having equity. This may reflect differences in respondent mix, company stage, or market conditions, but it is worth watching.

Bonuses Are Still Uneven

Last year’s guide showed bonuses increasing by level, with VP/C-level marketers receiving the highest bonus percentage. This year follows a similar pattern, though only 46% of respondents reported receiving a reliable bonus at all.

Compensation Is Not Solving Everything

The 2026 data shows a useful tension: more than half of respondents are satisfied with their compensation, but employer NPS is still negative. For companies, that is an important signal. Pay matters, but so do clarity, trust, workload, leadership, and flexibility.

Conclusion

Marketing compensation in 2026 reflects a function that is still evolving quickly.

The strongest marketers are being asked to balance creativity with commercial impact, brand with demand, and efficiency with growth. They are also navigating new expectations around AI, remote work, leaner teams, and clearer accountability.

For companies, the takeaway is simple: compensation is not just a number to benchmark. It is a signal. It tells candidates how you value the role, how clearly you understand the mandate, and how serious you are about building the right leadership foundation for growth.

A thoughtful offer does not always mean the highest offer. It means the right mix of base salary, bonus, equity, flexibility, scope, and trust — aligned to what you need this leader to help you achieve.

If you are hiring a marketing leader, reviewing your current compensation strategy, or trying to understand where your team sits in the market, we’re here to help you make sense of the data and apply it to your business. 

Great marketing leaders can (and should!) change the trajectory of a company. We’re here to help you get set up to attract and retain them.

Where The Data Comes From

This snapshot reflects data from our annual salary survey and one-on-one candidate conversations. Our network - and so, our respondents - are mostly gainfully employed at high-performing tech start ups and scale ups across Canada. Because of this, our figures may reflect the upper end of the market. 

Respondents include individual contributors, managers, directors, heads of function, VPs, and C-level marketing leaders. The respondent pool is heavily rooted in Canada, with 94% of respondents currently located in Canada.

Company headquarters varied:

• 70% work for Canadian-headquartered companies
• 21% work for US-headquartered companies
• 9% work for Europe-headquartered companies

As with all salary data, context matters. Company stage, mandate, team size, revenue expectations, geography, and scope of leadership can all influence compensation.

Why We Share This

Salary transparency supports better hiring, fairer compensation, and stronger negotiation on both sides of the table. That is why we created our Salary Snapshot Series.

We base this on the four Ts:

Targeted to Canadian tech companies and candidates
Timely with current market data
Trustworthy thanks to real survey responses and market conversations
Trim with clear insights and relevant context, without unnecessary noise

Great marketing leaders do more than build campaigns. They shape the market story, understand the customer, create demand, support revenue, and help companies grow with focus.

If you are hiring a marketing leader, planning your next stage of growth, or benchmarking your current team, we hope this snapshot helps you make clearer, more confident decisions.