Freelancers and contract specialists are taking up a growing share of marketing work at Fortune 500 companies, as chief marketing officers seek more flexible ways to deliver campaigns while controlling costs and adapting to new technologies.
Freelancers now account for between 30 percent and 70 percent of many enterprise marketing organizations, according to new data from workforce platform Assemble, highlighting a sharp shift from before 2022, when they typically represented about 10 percent of teams and were used mainly for short-term assignments.
Large companies, including Delta, MassMutual, ServiceNow, and Colgate, are increasingly moving away from hiring individual contractors toward assembling teams of freelance specialists who work across multiple quarters, Assemble said.
The findings coincide with the company’s rebrand from Publicist to Assemble, reflecting what it describes as a broader shift toward modular marketing teams built from external expertise rather than permanent hires. Founded in 2020, Assemble maintains a network of more than 50,000 senior marketing freelancers working with Fortune 500 marketing departments and agencies.
Assemble’s revenue grew 400 percent in 2025 from a year earlier, founder Lara Vandenberg said, attributing the growth to rising demand for flexible staffing models.
“Marketing is in a productivity cycle, not a hiring cycle,” Vandenberg said. “CMOs are responsible for output, speed and efficiency simultaneously, and the traditional agency and permanent headcount model cannot consistently deliver all three.”
The shift reflects broader changes in the U.S. labour market, where freelancing has expanded rapidly in recent years. The freelance workforce has grown from about 38 million people in 2020 to 76.4 million, or roughly 40 percent of the workforce, according to Upwork data.
Professional services — including marketing, creative and communications — represent one of the fastest-growing segments of independent work, according to MBO Partners.
Marketing leaders are also turning to freelancers to address skills shortages. About 61 percent plan to increase their use of contract or freelance talent this year, particularly in areas such as AI-enabled workflows and marketing automation, according to Robert Half’s 2026 outlook.
Assemble said demand is rising for freelance specialists in process optimization and creative technology as companies adopt artificial intelligence tools, while traditional post-production roles are declining.
