There is an architectural conflict sitting inside most live video products, and it usually surfaces late, around the time somebody in legal asks how sessions are monitored.

The short version: if media flows directly between two browsers, your servers never see it. That is the entire selling point of peer-to-peer WebRTC, and it is also the reason server-side moderation cannot work on it. You cannot scan what does not arrive.

Most teams discover this after they have built the fast, cheap version.

What Actually Happens On the Wire

The Baseline Case

For two participants, plain WebRTC is close to ideal. Signaling goes through your server, a session description gets exchanged, ICE candidates get gathered, and then the media stream establishes directly between the peers. STUN handles NAT traversal for most connections. TURN relays the ones that fail, which is typically somewhere between 8 and 20 percent depending on your user base and how many are behind symmetric NAT or corporate firewalls.

Your bandwidth cost for a successful P2P session is roughly zero. Your latency is the best you will ever get, because the packets are not making a detour.

Where It Stops Scaling

Add participants and mesh topology gets expensive fast. Each peer maintains a connection to every other peer, so upload requirements scale linearly per client and connection count scales quadratically overall. Four participants is usually fine. Six is where laptops start getting warm. Eight is where you begin fielding support tickets about fans.

This is the point where teams move to an SFU, a Selective Forwarding Unit. Each client sends one stream up, the server forwards what each participant needs. Server bandwidth cost appears, latency increases slightly, CPU stays reasonable because the SFU forwards rather than transcodes.

The Option Nobody Picks Twice

An MCU mixes all incoming streams server-side into a single composited output. Bandwidth to each client drops to one stream, which is genuinely useful on poor connections. The cost is transcoding, which means CPU per room rather than bandwidth per room, and CPU is the more expensive resource by a wide margin.

That “media visible to server” column is the one that turns into a policy problem.

The Moderation Problem This Creates

You Cannot Moderate What You Never Receive

Post moderation is a solved shape. Content arrives, sits in storage, gets classified, and a decision happens before or shortly after publication. The latency budget is generous. You can queue, retry, and escalate to a human.

Live video has none of that. There is no artifact at rest, the harm happens during transmission rather than after it, and on a P2P connection the media never enters your infrastructure at all. Your options collapse to two.

Route the Media, or Run Inference on the Client

Routing through an SFU gives you frames to classify. It also means accepting bandwidth cost per session, adding a hop of latency, and abandoning the claim that media is not touched by your servers, which is a real cost if privacy was part of your positioning.

Client-side inference keeps the P2P path intact. A model runs locally, flags frames, and reports metadata rather than content. It preserves the privacy story and adds no server bandwidth. It is also running on hardware you do not control, in an environment a determined user can tamper with, and the model has to be small enough to run in a browser tab without destroying frame rate.

Neither option is clean, and choosing between them is a product decision dressed as an infrastructure one.

Why This Is Becoming Urgent

Regulators have started treating live conversation platforms as in scope rather than adjacent. Ofcom’s June 2026 online safety bulletin recorded £2.17 million in penalties and five new investigations, two of them into chat services, examined over grooming risk and exposure to minors. One fine, £540,000 against 4chan, was specifically for failing to conduct an adequate illegal content risk assessment.

The relevant detail for engineers is that a risk assessment requires you to describe your moderation capability. “Media is end-to-end between peers and therefore unmonitored” is an accurate description of a P2P architecture and an unhelpful answer to a regulator.

Which means the architecture choice now carries compliance weight it did not carry three years ago. Consumer platforms in the one-to-one space, from language tutoring to a video call random girl service, sit in exactly this bracket, because their default session is two people and P2P is the obvious build.

What A Workable Design Looks Like

What tends to hold up combines both approaches rather than choosing.

Keep P2P as the default path for the media itself, since it is cheapest and fastest and there is no reason to give that up. Run lightweight client-side classification on sampled frames, not every frame, reporting scores rather than images. Set a threshold that promotes a session to SFU relay when the client-side signal crosses it, so that server-side review only costs bandwidth on sessions that warranted it.

Then design the pre-session layer properly, because that is where most of the actual risk reduction happens and it costs nothing in latency. Age assurance before access. Video off or blurred until both parties act. Blocking that takes effect immediately rather than after a queue. None of that requires seeing a single frame.

The engineering instinct is to treat safety as something layered on after the media pipeline works. On live video that ordering does not survive contact with the problem, because the pipeline you build determines which safety options remain available to you. Deciding to relay media later means rebuilding the transport layer, and nobody has budget for that in the quarter a regulator asks.

Worth working out which topology you are committing to before the first user session, rather than after the first risk assessment.

Unlike traditional PCs, the RTX Spark uses a single System-on-Chip based on the Grace Blackwell architecture. This means that all the CPUs, GPUs, neural processors, and shared memory operate within one power budget.

According to official specifications, NVIDIA RTX Spark consumes 240 W for the entire system. At the same time, the GB10 Grace Blackwell chip itself requires a TDP of 140 watts. The 100-watt difference is used for SSDs, networks, USB-C, and other components powered as required by the platform design. Therefore, NVIDIA recommends using the included power adapter.

How to calculate the required PSU wattage and power headroom

To get the accurate figure on how many watts the chosen PSU must deliver to the system, start with defining the maximum power consumption of every PC component. Include everything it contains – CPU, GPU, motherboard, fans, peripherals, and others. Then, sum them up and add an extra 20-30% power headroom to easily upgrade your build in the future or replace some components without losing the PSU power. Keep in mind that the noted 20-30% is a guideline, not a strict rule, as every configuration may require specific headroom volume.

Also remember that headroom doesn’t mean that your PC will take these extra watts all the time. This figure simply provides the power supply with a reserve for peak loads and also allows it to operate within the range of highest efficiency.

Supporting peak loads and rapid power consumption changes

Since modern GPUs can consume significantly more watts in just seconds, the PSU should keep up with not only the average loads but also peak system loads. The ATX 3.1 standard includes requirements for handling short-term power spikes for exactly this reason.

Transient power spikes last for a very short time, but even a few seconds is enough to exceed the typical GPU power consumption. If the power supply doesn’t have sufficient headroom or doesn’t meet current standards, this may cause various system issues, reboots, or trigger a protection mechanism. That’s why Seasonic engineers advise looking for those PSU that has enough power headroom specifically for such power-jump cases, and ATX 3.1 support for new NVIDIA RTX Spark systems.

Power efficiency, voltage stability, and low-ripple performance

The power supply unit for the NVIDIA RTX Spark system should deliver a stable 240 W, according to the official technical specification. For this type of power source, a more efficient PSU wastes less power while converting AC to DC. This is especially important for a compact system.

RTX Spark can dynamically adjust its power consumption based on CPU, GPU, and AI computing loads. A well-designed PSU must keep the output voltage within the required limits during load changes.

Low ripple is also important for the RTX Spark as part of its overall power quality. That’s why: a stable DC voltage without significant ripple gives the sensitive GB10 electronics a more stable power environment. In ATX 3.1, the maximum ripple for +12 V is 120 mV peak-to-peak, and for +5 V and +3.3 V, it is 50 mV.

Required connectors, cable capacity, and power delivery compatibility

The PSU specs for NVIDIA RTX Spark builds should align with concrete output power and connection specifications:

– Output voltage of 48 V DC is a key requirement for powering the DGX Spark. A standard ATX +12 V output cannot be connected directly to the system.

– Maximum current is 5 A. Combined with 48 V, this results in a rated power of 240 W, which corresponds to the DGX Spark’s stock power adapter.

– The cable must be rated to handle the required 48 V / 5 A and physically match the system’s connector. There’s a warning from NVIDIA about using adapters or cables not approved for the DGX Spark.

– The RTX Spark has four USB-C ports, but only one of them supports Power Delivery. The total power available via USB-C is limited to 30 W.

Electrical protection and thermal management for continuous AI workloads

The power supply unit should have a built-in set of protection mechanisms – against overloads, overvoltage, overcurrent, short circuits, and overheating. This helps prevent damage to core system components and unexpected PSU shutdowns.

During intensive use when working with AI models, the PSU may operate near its rated load for extended periods. Therefore, it should deliver 240 W of power output and provide thermal headroom. NVIDIA recommends using the RTX Spark and its adapter in a well-ventilated environment with a temperature of 5–30°C.

How to select a reliable power supply for an RTX Spark desktop in 2026

Follow this step-by-step guide:

– Match the exact power requirements: a stable 240 W the PSU should deliver.

– Use an NVIDIA-approved adapter for optimal performance.

– Check connector and cable compatibility.

– Consider thermal conditions, as NVIDIA specifies an operating temperature range of 5–30°C for RTX Spark.

– For GB10 partner systems, check the OEM specification.

Conclusion

Choosing a PSU for the NVIDIA RTX Spark should be considered from all sides. Don’t look only at the rated PSU power, but also at its stability, efficiency, compatibility, and the ability to operate reliably under sustained load. A properly selected PSU provides a stable foundation for the productive and long-lasting operation of the entire system.

This page breaks down the numbers marketers need for planning budgets and content in 2026: user counts, ad spend, platform-level data, and where engagement is actually happening.

Social Media Marketing Statistics: Users and Time Spent

User counts vary more than most other stats in this space because providers measure differently. Some count monthly active users per platform and add them up. Others count unique global identities. Neither method is wrong, but they produce different headline numbers.

Source: Sprout Social, “120+ Social Media Marketing Statistics for 2026,” and related 2026 industry compilations.

The range exists because platforms overlap. Someone active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok counts as one identity in a global estimate but three separate monthly active users when platforms report their own numbers. For planning purposes, the more useful figure is usually time spent and platform-by-platform reach rather than a single global user count.

Social Media Advertising Spend in 2026

Ad spend data is more consistent across sources than user counts, since most trace back to the same handful of forecasting firms. Statista’s advertising market outlook projects worldwide social media ad spending will reach $338.75 billion in 2026, growing at an annual rate of roughly 11.86% through 2030, when it is expected to hit $530.34 billion.

The United States accounts for the largest single share of that spend, projected at $126 billion in 2026 according to the same Statista forecast. Mobile is where nearly all of that money goes. Statista projects mobile will account for 82.9% of total social ad spending by 2030, up from an already high base today.

Social commerce is a growing slice of this spend rather than a separate category. US social commerce sales are on track to pass $100 billion in 2026, according to eMarketer estimates cited across multiple 2026 industry reports, as platforms like Instagram and TikTok continue building out in-app checkout.

Platform-by-Platform Data

Platform self-reported numbers are the most reliable figures available, since they come from company earnings releases rather than third-party estimates.

Meta’s own Q1 2026 results, reported by CNBC, showed Family daily active people at 3.56 billion for March 2026, up 4% year over year. That quarter also marked Meta’s first sequential decline in daily active people, which the company attributed to internet disruptions in Iran and a WhatsApp access restriction in Russia rather than a broader drop in usage. It is a reminder that even the largest platforms are not immune to regional disruptions, and that quarter-over-quarter dips do not always signal a structural decline.

Which Platforms Marketers Use Most

Adoption among marketers does not always mirror user counts. Facebook remains the most-used platform among marketers at roughly 83%, followed closely by Instagram at 78%, even though both platforms have shed some of the growth momentum they had a decade ago. YouTube trails close behind at around 69% to 70% adoption among marketing teams.

This gap between user growth and marketer adoption makes sense. Facebook and Instagram carry mature ad infrastructure, detailed targeting options, and large established audiences, which keeps them the default starting point for most budgets even as attention shifts toward newer formats on other platforms.

Engagement Rates by Platform

Reach and engagement are not the same thing, and the gap between platforms is significant. TikTok posts the highest average engagement rate among major platforms at roughly 5.38%, well ahead of Instagram at around 1.41%, LinkedIn at 1.84%, and Facebook and X both under 0.1%.

This matters for content planning. A platform with a large audience but a low engagement rate, like Facebook organic reach, generally needs paid support to move the needle, while a platform like TikTok can still generate meaningful organic engagement without the same ad spend behind it. Instagram Reels specifically outperform standard Instagram posts by a wide margin, generating roughly 2.6 times the engagement of static content.

Measuring Social Media ROI

Tracking social media’s business impact remains harder than tracking most other channels, largely because attribution spans discovery, consideration, and purchase across multiple platforms. When marketing teams do track ROI, they focus primarily on engagement, cited by around 68% of teams, followed by conversions at 65% and direct revenue impact at 57%.

Paid performance data offers a clearer signal than organic reach alone. Average return on ad spend on Facebook reached 2.79 during peak fourth-quarter periods, an improvement of roughly 11.6% year over year, showing that paid social continues to get more efficient even as organic reach on the same platforms keeps shrinking.

Customer expectations add pressure to treat social as more than a broadcast channel. Roughly 73% of consumers say they will switch to a competitor if a brand fails to respond to them on social media, which pushes response time and community management into the same performance conversation as ad spend and content strategy.

Social Media Marketing Trends for 2026

A few patterns are consistent across 2026 reporting:

• Social commerce keeps growing as a share of overall ad spend, not just as a standalone category, with in-app checkout now standard on the largest platforms.
• Short-form video continues to outperform static content on engagement, most clearly on TikTok and Instagram Reels.
• Mobile now accounts for the large majority of both usage and ad spend, and that share keeps climbing year over year.
• AI-assisted content creation is becoming standard practice, with a large majority of marketers now saying they plan to use AI tools for at least part of their content production.

Conclusion

The social media marketing statistics for 2026 point to a channel that keeps absorbing more ad budget even as user growth slows on the largest platforms. Meta’s own numbers show that scale does not make a platform immune to disruption, while TikTok’s engagement rate shows that reach and engagement are two different problems that need two different strategies.

For anyone planning a 2026 program, the practical takeaway is to treat platform choice as an engagement question first and a reach question second. The platforms with the biggest user counts are not always the ones producing the strongest engagement per post, and budget allocation should reflect that difference rather than defaulting to whichever platform has the largest audience.

FAQ

How many people use social media in 2026?

Estimates range from about 5.2 billion to 5.8 billion people worldwide, depending on whether a report counts unique global identities or adds up monthly active users across platforms. Most reports agree the figure represents 64% to 70% of the global population.

How much do businesses spend on social media advertising?

Global social media ad spending is projected to reach $338.75 billion in 2026, according to Statista’s advertising market outlook, with the United States accounting for the largest single share at roughly $126 billion.

Which social media platform has the highest engagement rate?

TikTok leads with an average engagement rate of around 5.38%, well ahead of LinkedIn (1.84%), Instagram (1.41%), and Facebook and X, which both sit under 0.1%.

Which platforms do marketers use most?

Facebook remains the most-used platform among marketers at roughly 83%, with Instagram close behind at 78% and YouTube around 69% to 70%.

Is Meta’s Family daily active people count still growing?

Yes, but growth has slowed. Meta reported 3.56 billion Family daily active people for March 2026, up 4% year over year, though that figure also marked the company’s first sequential quarterly decline, which it attributed to regional disruptions in Iran and Russia rather than a broader usage drop.

Sources

• https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/social-media-advertising/worldwide
• https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/29/meta-q1-earnings-report-2026.html
• https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/
• https://amworldgroup.com/statistics/social-media-marketing-statistics
• https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-First-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx

Marketing Automation Statistics

• 86.4% — Marketing teams using AI in at least a few workflow areas in 2026, up from 41% in 2024.
• 92% — Marketers who use automation for data analysis and reporting.
• 19.2% — Marketers already using AI agents to automate campaigns end-to-end.
• $8 billion+ — Global marketing automation industry revenue in 2024, on track for $21.7 billion by 2032.
• 58% — Marketers who primarily apply automation to email marketing.
• 33% — Marketers who name measuring marketing ROI as their top 2026 challenge.

How Many Marketers Use Marketing Automation?

Automation adoption has climbed fast. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report found 86.4% of marketing teams now use AI in at least a few workflow areas, up from 67% in 2025 and just 41% in 2024. That is a 45-point jump in two years.

Reporting and analysis lead the way. HubSpot found 92% of marketers now use automation for data analysis and reporting, the single most common use case in the report. Content creation and media production follow, at 80% and 75%.

Source: HubSpot, 2026 State of Marketing report.

Only 1.7% of marketers report no AI use and no plans to adopt it, which puts holdouts firmly in the minority. Adoption at this scale is no longer a signal of a forward-leaning team. It is close to the baseline.

Company size still shapes how far that automation goes. Larger marketing teams tend to run more channels through automation at once, email plus social plus paid plus reporting, while smaller teams typically start with one channel, usually email, and expand only once that workflow is proven.

The 92% figure for reporting automation likely reflects this too: dashboards and reports are the easiest workflow to automate regardless of team size, which is why they lead every other use case.

The Marketing Automation Market Is Still Growing Fast

Category revenue keeps climbing. Data from Statista shows global marketing automation industry revenue rose an estimated 12.6% to over $8 billion in 2024, with the market expected to grow more than 160% by 2032 to reach $21.7 billion. The marketing automation software segment alone brought in more than $5.9 billion in 2024.

Third-party market forecasts for this category vary widely, sometimes by a factor of five or more depending on how the researcher defines “marketing automation” and which adjacent categories, like AI agents or CRM, get folded in. Treat any single market-size figure as one estimate among several rather than a settled number.

The category itself is not new. Marketing automation as a defined software category dates to the mid-2000s, built to consolidate email, lead scoring, and campaign management into a single system. What has changed in 2026 is not the core idea, but how much of the execution now runs without a person triggering each step.

It also helps to separate two terms that get used interchangeably. Marketing automation, in its original sense, means scheduled or rule-based workflows: a welcome email sequence, a lead-scoring trigger, a drip campaign.

AI adds a layer on top of that: systems that adapt content, timing, or targeting based on what they learn, rather than following a fixed rule. Most of the growth in this category over the past two years has come from that second layer, not from more rules-based automation.

Where Are Marketers Actually Using Automation?

Email remains the anchor use case. Research from Ascend2’s State of Marketing Automation survey found 58% of marketers primarily use automation for email marketing, followed by 49% for social media management and 33% for content management.

Growth areas look different from current use. 29% of surveyed marketers are planning to add automation for social media management and paid ads over the next year, which suggests those categories are still catching up to email in maturity rather than replacing it.

• 58% — Email marketing.
• 49% — Social media management.
• 33% — Content management.
• 29% — Planning to add automation for social media and paid ads.

Source: Ascend2, State of Marketing Automation.

This pattern makes sense given how automation platforms developed. Email was the first channel most tools automated well, and it remains the channel with the clearest, most measurable output, which keeps it at the center of most programs even as newer channels get added.

AI Agents Are The Next Wave Of Marketing Automation

Automation is shifting from scheduled workflows to agents that act on their own. HubSpot’s 2026 data shows 19.2% of marketers are already using AI agents to automate marketing initiatives end-to-end, a small but fast-growing slice of the market.

Customer expectations are part of what is pushing this shift. Research from Salesforce’s State of Marketing report found 83% of marketers say customers now expect two-way, real-time conversations with brands, a bar that scheduled, one-way automation was never built to clear.

The gap between traditional workflow automation and full agentic automation is still wide. Most marketers today are running rules-based sequences, not autonomous agents, even as the 19.2% figure signals where investment is heading next. Expect that number to be one of the fastest-moving figures in this category over the next year.

Trust is the current bottleneck, not capability. Salesforce’s research found 81% of marketers say they would trust AI to respond to customers at scale, but most are blocked by disconnected data rather than a lack of confidence in the technology itself. That points to a data and integration problem sitting underneath the adoption numbers, not a willingness problem.

What’s Holding Marketing Automation Back?

Measurement is the biggest blocker. HubSpot’s 2026 survey found measuring marketing ROI is the top challenge marketers report, cited by 33%, ahead of keeping up with platform changes at 29.8%.

Productivity gains are real but uneven. 26.5% of marketers say AI has significantly increased their productivity, while another 66.2% say it has increased productivity slightly or moderately. That means almost everyone reports some benefit, but only about a quarter call it transformational.

Data quality sits underneath both problems. The trust gap in the AI agents section above and the measurement gap here trace back to the same root cause: disconnected customer data across email, CRM, and ad platforms makes both hard to fix without first getting the underlying data pipeline in order.

The pattern across this data is consistent: tools are installed faster than teams can prove what they are worth. Fixing measurement, not adding more automation, is what closes that gap for most teams.

Conclusion

The marketing automation statistics for 2026 describe a category that has moved past the adoption question. With 86.4% of teams using AI in some workflow and 92% automating reporting, the tools are everywhere. What is not settled is proof of value: only 33% of marketers say they can reliably measure the ROI of what they have built, and AI agents, the next stage of automation, still sit at 19.2% adoption.

For planning purposes, treat this year’s data as a case for investing in measurement before adding more tools. Email remains the highest-maturity automation channel, agents are the fastest-growing one, and the gap between installing automation and proving it works is where most programs are currently losing ground.

FAQ

What percentage of marketers use marketing automation in 2026?

86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least a few workflow areas in 2026, according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing report, up from 67% in 2025 and 41% in 2024.

How big is the marketing automation market?

Global marketing automation industry revenue reached over $8 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow more than 160% by 2032 to reach $21.7 billion, according to Statista. Third-party estimates vary widely, so treat any single figure as one estimate among several.

What is marketing automation mostly used for?

Email marketing is the leading use case, cited by 58% of marketers, followed by social media management at 49% and content management at 33%, according to Ascend2’s State of Marketing Automation survey.

Reddit threads keep saying marketing automation ROI is impossible to prove. Is that true?

Not impossible, but it is the industry’s biggest current weak point. 33% of marketers name measuring marketing ROI as their top challenge in 2026, according to HubSpot, ahead of every other obstacle including keeping up with platform changes.

Reddit users often ask whether AI agents have replaced traditional marketing automation. What do the numbers say?

No, not yet. Only 19.2% of marketers currently use AI agents to automate campaigns end-to-end, according to HubSpot, meaning most automation in 2026 still runs on rules-based workflows rather than autonomous agents.

Sources

https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report https://www.statista.com/topics/10768/marketing-automation/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_automation https://backlinko.com/marketing-automation-stats

This page collects the latest verified numbers on influencer budgets, creator pay, ROI, platform performance, AI use, and consumer trust. Most figures come from Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2026 Benchmark Report, a survey of 600+ marketing professionals, along with named data from CreatorIQ, Linqia, Aspire, IAB, and Forbes.

Influencer Marketing Statistics: Market Size and Growth

The industry has nearly doubled in three years.

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 35 Influencer Marketing Statistics, 2026, and IAB.

US creator ad spend grew 26% year over year, close to four times the growth rate of the wider media industry. Nearly half of creator ad buyers, 48%, now consider creators a “must buy” channel, placing influencer spend just behind paid search and social media in the budget conversation.

Influencer Marketing Budgets in 2026

Confidence in the channel is running high, and the planned increases are large.

• 87.49% of marketers expect their influencer budgets to increase in 2026
• Only 5.55% expect a decrease
• 72.22% of marketers expect an increase of 50% or more
• Average creator marketing budgets rose 171% year over year, per CreatorIQ
• 71% of surveyed organizations said they increased influencer investment

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, and CreatorIQ.

A jump of 50% or more changes what a program needs to function. Brands cannot add that much spend on the same informal creator lists and spreadsheet tracking they used at a smaller scale. Rising creator costs are the top reported challenge, cited by 35.4% of marketers, ahead of every other single issue.

In-House vs Agency: How Brands Run Influencer Programs

Most influencer work now happens inside the marketing team, not at an agency.

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report.

When brands do bring in outside help, they outsource the labor-intensive parts first. Creator discovery and vetting is the most commonly outsourced function at 19.44%, followed by content production at 15.28%. Reporting and analytics is the least outsourced task, at just 6.9%, which shows brands want to keep visibility into results even when they hand off the legwork.

Creator Tiers: Nano, Micro and UGC Creators

Budgets are shifting toward smaller creators, not away from them.

• 51.43% of marketers plan to increase or start using nano creators (1,000 to 10,000 followers)
• 52.83% plan to increase or start using micro creators
• 50% plan to increase or start using UGC creators
• Only 10% or fewer plan to reduce spending in any of these three tiers

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report.

Cost explains part of the shift. Around 80% of UGC creator rates fall under $500, along with about 55% of nano creator rates and 45.5% of micro creator rates. Macro and celebrity tiers show close to flat demand, with expansion and contraction intent nearly canceling out, which suggests most brands treat big-name creators as a selective layer rather than the daily production engine.

Creator Pay and Compensation Statistics

Rising budgets have not translated into even pay across the creator base.

Average creator earnings reached $11,400 in 2025, but the median was only $3,000, according to Forbes, which tracks the industry’s biggest names separately in its annual Top Creators ranking. The top 10% of creators receive 62% of all creator payments, and the top 1% alone receive 21%.

Total creator payments grew 59% year over year. The number of creators participating in campaigns grew 183% in the same period, which means supply is expanding faster than the money paid out. Two other numbers matter for anyone negotiating a rate: 99% of creators say creative control is important when working with brands, and 77% of brands now repurpose creator content in paid advertising, with 67% including usage rights directly in the original contract.

ROI and Measurement Challenges

Influencer marketing earns a strong headline return, but proving it stays hard.

• Average reported ROI: $5.78 for every $1 spent
• 79% of enterprise marketers say they struggle to measure influencer ROI
• 48% name attribution as their single biggest measurement gap
• 65.9% expect campaigns to pay back within one month, including 48.4% within two weeks

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, and Linqia.

Promo codes remain the most common tracking method, used by 45.9% of marketers, ahead of affiliate links at 26% and native shopping features at 25%. Each method has blind spots. Codes can be shared outside the creator’s own audience, and links can miss purchases that happen on a different device or days later.

AI in Influencer Marketing

AI now touches most influencer programs, but marketers still limit where it operates.

95% of surveyed brands use AI somewhere in their creator workflow, according to CreatorIQ. The leading applications are caption generation at 45%, research at 44%, and video or graphic editing at 41%. Inside the influencer-specific workflow measured by Influencer Marketing Hub, creator discovery leads AI use at 36.67%, followed by content generation at 21.11% and brief development at 13.89%.

Trust drops sharply once AI moves into judgment calls. 89% of enterprise marketers avoid virtual influencers entirely, and fraud detection is one of the least automated tasks in the workflow, at just 7.22% adoption. Investor interest in virtual creator platforms keeps growing even so, as reported by TechCrunch, which points to a gap between where brands say they are comfortable and where the technology is heading.

Platform Statistics: TikTok vs Instagram

The two platforms lead in different ways.

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, CreatorIQ, and an analysis of more than 5 million creator accounts by The Influencer Marketing Factory.

Video leads every other content format on effectiveness. 83% of marketers rank long-form video among their three most effective formats, and 80% say the same for short-form video. Social commerce is also concentrated on one platform: 32% of brands already sell through TikTok Shop, and another 25% plan to start.

Consumer Trust in Influencer Marketing

Purchase influence and trust do not move together.

• 55.5% of consumers have bought a product because of an influencer endorsement
• 35% report making four to six purchases based on influencer content
• Only 5% completely trust influencer content
• 74% trust it at least somewhat
• 70% feel deceived when they learn a brand relationship went undisclosed
• 79% say authentic reviews, even ones that include something negative, increase their trust

Source: BBB National Programs, Influencer Trust Index study, cited by Influencer Marketing Hub.

The pattern here is consistent. Consumers do not expect sponsorships to disappear. They expect the sponsorship to be disclosed and the opinion inside it to sound genuine rather than scripted.

Conclusion

The influencer marketing statistics for 2026 point to a channel that has matured past the experimental stage. Budgets are expanding fast, most programs run in-house, and spending is shifting toward nano, micro, and UGC creators rather than a handful of expensive names. AI has taken over the repetitive parts of the workflow, but marketers are still keeping judgment calls, fraud checks, and virtual creator decisions close to human review.

The open challenge is proving return at the pace budgets are growing. Attribution gaps and rising creator costs mean the next phase of influencer marketing will be decided less by who spends the most and more by who can measure results well enough to defend the spend.

FAQ

How big is the influencer marketing industry in 2026?

The global influencer marketing industry reached an estimated $32.55 billion in 2025, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. In the US alone, creator ad spend is forecast to hit $44 billion in 2026.

What is the average ROI of influencer marketing?

Brands report an average return of $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Despite that strong headline number, 79% of enterprise marketers say they still struggle to measure ROI accurately.

Are brands increasing influencer marketing budgets in 2026?

Yes. 87.49% of marketers expect their influencer budgets to increase this year, and 72.22% expect that increase to be 50% or more. Only 5.55% expect a decrease.

Do brands prefer nano and micro influencers or celebrities?

Brands are shifting toward smaller creators. Over half of marketers plan to increase or start using nano and micro influencers, while demand for macro and celebrity creators has stayed close to flat.

How much do influencers actually get paid?

Average creator earnings were $11,400 in 2025, but the median was only $3,000. The top 10% of creators receive 62% of all creator payments, which shows pay is heavily concentrated at the top.

Is AI replacing human influencers?

Not yet, in most cases. 95% of brands use AI somewhere in their creator workflow, mainly for discovery, captions, and editing, but 89% of enterprise marketers still avoid virtual influencers for brand-facing campaigns.

Do consumers trust influencer content?

Trust is limited but purchase influence is real. Only 5% of consumers completely trust influencer content, yet 55.5% have bought a product because of an influencer endorsement, and disclosed partnerships build more trust than hidden ones.

Sources

https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-statistics https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report https://www.forbes.com/sites/pr/2026/06/23/forbes-unveils-2026-top-creators-list-as-collective-earnings-surpass-1-billion-for-the-first-time/ https://www.iab.com/news/creator-economy-ad-spend-to-reach-37-billion-in-2025-growing-4x-faster-than-total-media-industry-according-to-iab/

This page pulls together the numbers that matter for planning an email program in 2026: revenue and ROI, open and click benchmarks by industry, automation performance, and where the channel is headed next.

Email Marketing Statistics: ROI and Revenue in 2026

Email marketing ROI is usually reported one of two ways: as a single point estimate, or as a range self-reported by marketing teams. Both show the same pattern. Email consistently outperforms paid search, paid social, and display.

Source: Litmus, State of Email 2026 report, self-reported survey of marketing leaders, United States and global.

Litmus asks marketers to self-report their ROI in bands rather than a single number, which is why its data looks different from platform-specific figures. Its 2026 survey found teams reporting returns anywhere from 1:1 up past 45:1, with a meaningful share landing between 20:1 and 45:1. Litmus also found that advanced AI adopters were 75% more likely to land above 45:1, which lines up with the wider trend of AI-assisted personalization pushing returns higher.

Platform-reported figures tend to run higher than the industry average. Omnisend reported that its merchants on paid plans averaged $76 to $79 per $1 spent in 2025, well above the general benchmark. Read platform-specific numbers with some caution, since they reflect only that platform’s customer base, not the market as a whole.

How Many People Use Email

Email is not shrinking. Around 4.6 billion people worldwide used email in 2025, and that figure is projected to climb toward 4.8 billion by 2028, according to Radicati Group data published through Statista. That is more than half the global population.

Volume is climbing alongside the user count. Global daily email traffic is estimated in the range of 376 to 392 billion messages a year over year, and the growth rate has held at roughly 3% to 4% annually for several years running. For marketers, this means the inbox is more crowded than ever, which raises the bar for subject lines, timing, and relevance.

Email Open and Click Rates by Industry

Benchmark reports disagree on exact numbers because each provider measures a different pool of senders. Two of the most cited sources, Mailchimp and Klaviyo, land in different places.

Source: Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmarks; Klaviyo 2026 Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry; MailerLite Email Marketing Benchmarks 2026.

MailerLite’s industry breakdown shows the widest spread. Religion, hobby, and non-profit senders post the highest open rates, all above 52%, while travel and ecommerce sit near the bottom at 30% to 33%. This pattern holds across most benchmark reports: subscribers who signed up out of personal interest open more than subscribers who signed up for a discount code.

One caveat applies across every open rate figure here. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection preloads tracking pixels for a share of Apple Mail users, which inflates reported opens regardless of whether a human actually read the message. Click rate and revenue per email are more reliable signals of real engagement than open rate alone.

Automation and Segmentation Performance

Automated emails punch far above their weight. Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmark data found that automated flows generate about 41% of total email revenue while accounting for only around 5% of total sends. Flow click rates also run higher than campaign click rates, at 5.58% versus 1.69%.

This gap exists because automated flows, such as welcome series, cart abandonment, and post-purchase follow-ups, reach people at a moment of clear intent. Automation tools, according to research from Wikipedia, let marketers schedule and send messages based on specific user actions rather than a fixed calendar, which is part of why these emails convert at a higher rate than one-off campaigns.

The practical takeaway is straightforward. A program built mostly around scheduled newsletters is leaving revenue on the table if it has not built out welcome, abandonment, and post-purchase flows. These automations require setup once and then keep generating a disproportionate share of revenue with little ongoing effort.

Deliverability and Mobile Behavior

Getting an email opened depends on more than subject lines. Deliverability benchmarks from GetResponse’s dataset of 4.4 billion messages found an average bounce rate of 2.33% and a spam complaint rate under 0.01%, figures worth checking against before assuming a drop in opens is a content problem.

Mobile now dominates how people read email. Roughly six in ten email users check their inbox mainly on a mobile device, which affects everything from subject line length to how emails render. A message that looks fine on desktop but breaks on a phone screen loses the reader before the content ever gets read.

Unsubscribe rates offer a useful health check separate from opens and clicks. Benchmark reports generally put a healthy unsubscribe rate at 0.1% to 0.3% per campaign, with anything above 0.5% signaling a mismatch between send frequency and what subscribers actually signed up for.

Email Marketing Trends for 2026

A few patterns show up consistently across 2026 reporting:

• AI adoption is now a measurable factor in ROI. Litmus found advanced AI adopters are 75% more likely to hit ROI above 45:1.
• Automation keeps outperforming one-off campaigns, both in click rate and in share of total revenue.
• Email production cycles are getting faster. Litmus found teams that once took two weeks or more to send a single email now deploy within three days.
• Measurement is shifting away from open rate, which Apple’s privacy changes have made less reliable, toward click rate, revenue per email, and multi-touch attribution.

Conclusion

The email marketing statistics for 2026 point to a channel that keeps earning its place in the budget. ROI remains far ahead of paid search and paid social, the user base keeps growing, and automation continues to deliver outsized returns relative to the effort required to set it up.

The gap between top and average performers comes down to a few specific choices: building out automated flows instead of relying only on scheduled sends, tracking click and revenue metrics instead of open rate alone, and applying AI tools to personalization and send timing rather than content alone. Programs that make those choices are the ones showing up in the higher ROI bands in every 2026 benchmark report.

FAQ

How many people use email in 2026?

Around 4.6 billion people worldwide used email as of 2025, a figure projected to grow to roughly 4.8 billion by 2028, according to Radicati Group data published through Statista. That is more than half the global population.

What is the average ROI of email marketing?

Most industry sources place the average return between $36 and $42 for every $1 spent. Retail and ecommerce brands tend to do better, averaging around $45 per $1, while some platform-specific cohorts report even higher returns.

What is a good email open rate in 2026?

A good open rate typically falls between 30% and 40%, though this varies widely by industry, from around 30% for travel and ecommerce senders up to 55% or more for religion and non-profit senders. Apple’s privacy changes have made open rate a less reliable metric than click rate or revenue per email.

Do automated emails perform better than regular campaigns?

Yes. Automated flows generate a disproportionate share of email revenue, around 41% from just 5% of total sends according to Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmark data, and they post higher click rates than one-off campaigns because they reach people at a specific moment of intent.

Is email marketing still worth investing in for 2026?

Yes, based on ROI data. Email consistently outperforms paid search and paid social by a wide margin, and teams using AI for personalization and send-time optimization report even stronger returns than the industry average.

Sources

• https://www.litmus.com/landing-page/state-of-email-2026
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/
• https://konabayev.com/blog/email-marketing-benchmarks-2026/
• https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/compare-your-email-performance-metrics-industry-benchmarks
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing

Content Marketing Statistics

• 97% — B2B marketers who run from a documented or informal content strategy, per CMI.
• 59% — B2B marketers who rate their content marketing as somewhat or highly effective; only 12% call it highly effective.
• 95% — B2B marketers who now use AI-powered marketing tools.
• 45% — B2B marketers planning to increase AI tool spending in 2026, the top investment priority.
• 91% — Businesses using video as a marketing tool in 2026, per Wyzowl.
• 2.5 billion — Monthly users of Google’s AI Overviews as of May 2026.

How Many Marketers Use Content Marketing?

Content marketing adoption among B2B teams is close to universal. The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs surveyed 1,015 B2B marketers, drawn from a global pool of 1,229 respondents, between June and August 2025 for their 16th annual B2B Content and Marketing Trends report. Ninety-seven percent said they run from some kind of content strategy, documented or informal, the highest rate recorded in the survey’s history.

Adoption is not the same as commitment. A documented, written strategy still separates the teams that plan from the teams that just publish, and CMI’s own data shows that gap drives most of the difference in results below.

Source: Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2026 (fielded June 24–August 14, 2025, n=1,015); Wyzowl, State of Video Marketing 2026.

Content Marketing Budgets Are Rising In 2026

Investment intent is strong for 2026, even with budgets tight everywhere else in marketing. CMI’s data shows AI tools as the top planned investment area, with 45% of B2B marketers planning to spend more there. Events and experiential marketing follow at 33%, and owned media sits at 32%.

Human talent tells a different story. Only 9% of B2B marketers plan to increase investment in human resources, covering salaries, training, and development, making it the lowest-ranked category in the survey. Budgets are moving toward tools faster than they are moving toward the people who operate them.

• 45% — Planning to increase AI tool spending in 2026 (top priority).
• 33% — Planning to increase spending on events and experiential marketing.
• 32% — Planning to increase spending on owned media.
• 9% — Planning to increase human-resources investment (lowest priority).

Source: Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2026.

This spending pattern only makes sense next to the effectiveness numbers below. Betting on tools while starving the team that runs them is a bet that AI can substitute for headcount, not just support it.

Why Do Most Content Marketing Programs Underperform?

Effectiveness has not kept pace with adoption. CMI found 59% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing as somewhat or highly effective, but only 12% call it highly effective. That means most programs are getting partial credit, not full marks.

Among marketers who do call their program effective, content relevance and quality is the leading reason, cited by 65%. Team skills and capabilities rank second at 53%, followed by sales alignment at 45% and technology and tools at 43%. Sixty-one percent of marketers with a content strategy said their strategy’s effectiveness improved over the prior 12 months, which suggests the gap is closing, just slowly.

The pattern is consistent: quality and people outrank tools as drivers of success, even in a year when tool spending is rising fastest. Teams chasing effectiveness gains through software alone, without matching investment in strategy and skills, are working against what the data shows actually moves the needle.

AI Is Now Standard In Content Marketing

AI tool use among B2B marketers reached 95% in CMI’s 2026 survey, up sharply from prior years and now effectively universal. That scale of adoption makes AI use a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator on its own.

Results have not caught up to adoption. Fewer than 40% of B2B marketers say AI tools are actually improving their performance, based on CMI’s 2026 data. Adoption is easy. Turning that adoption into measurable output is where most teams are still stuck.

Personalization shows the same lopsided pattern. Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers who use personalization apply it in email, the most common channel by far, while only 33% apply it on websites and landing pages. Account-based marketing tells a more positive story for the marketers who commit to it: 65% of B2B marketers using ABM say their campaigns outperform traditional marketing, even though most B2B marketers still operate without ABM at all.

How Is AI Search Changing Content Distribution?

Search itself has changed shape. Google’s AI Overviews reached more than 2.5 billion monthly active users as of its May 2026 I/O keynote, according to CNBC, putting AI-generated summaries in front of a majority of search users before they ever reach a traditional list of links. That shift is a big part of why content teams are rethinking what “ranking” even means this year.

Enterprises are leaning further into AI heading into 2026, according to TechCrunch, which surveyed enterprise-focused investors who expect this to be the year AI adoption moves from pilot projects to measurable business value. Content teams are part of that wider shift, not separate from it.

Distribution is spreading across more channels than it used to. CMI’s data shows in-person events (52%), webinars (51%), social media (42%), and company blogs (41%) as the most effective B2B distribution channels in 2025. Events and webinars now outperform blogs, a shift from the blog-first playbook most teams built their strategy around a few years ago.

Video keeps taking a bigger share of that mix. Wyzowl’s 2026 State of Video Marketing report found 91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, matching an all-time high, with 93% of those calling it an important part of their strategy. Reported ROI dipped slightly to 82% from 93% the year before, which points to more teams producing video of uneven quality rather than video itself losing effectiveness.

Conclusion

The content marketing statistics for 2026 point to a channel that has finished proving itself and is now sorting into winners and laggards. Adoption is close to universal, at 97% for having any kind of strategy and 95% for using AI tools, but effectiveness sits at just 59%, and only 12% of teams call their program highly effective.

Budgets are chasing AI tools faster than they are chasing skills, even though quality and team capability, not software, are what marketers who succeed actually credit. For planning purposes, treat this year’s data as a signal to invest in strategy and people alongside any new tool, not instead of them. The gap between adoption and results is where most programs are currently losing ground, and it is unlikely to close on its own.

FAQ

What percentage of B2B marketers use content marketing?

97% of B2B marketers run from some kind of content strategy, documented or informal, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2026 survey of 1,015 B2B marketers. That is the highest adoption rate recorded in the survey’s 16-year history.

Is content marketing actually effective?

Yes, for most teams, though results are uneven. 59% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing as somewhat or highly effective, but only 12% call it highly effective, according to CMI’s 2026 data.

How much are marketers investing in AI for content marketing in 2026?

AI tools are the single biggest planned investment area for B2B marketers in 2026, with 45% planning to increase spending there, more than any other category including events, owned media, or headcount.

Reddit threads keep saying blogging is dead because of AI search. Is that true?

No, blogging is down in relative importance but not dead. CMI’s data still ranks company blogs among the top distribution channels at 41%, behind events and webinars, while Google’s AI Overviews now reach 2.5 billion monthly users, which is reshaping how blog content needs to be structured rather than replacing it outright.

Reddit users often ask whether video is replacing written content entirely. What do the numbers say?

No, video is growing but running alongside written content, not replacing it. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool per Wyzowl, while CMI’s data shows blogs and written formats still hold a meaningful share of B2B distribution at 41%.

Sources

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research https://stats.conversationalgeek.com/analysis/content-marketing-institute-2025-b2b-marketing https://stats.conversationalgeek.com/analysis/content-marketing-institute-2025-marketing-effectiveness https://www.marketscale.com/industries/marketing-tech/b2b-content-marketing-in-2026-ai-adoption-is-near-universal-but-performance-gains-are-not https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/ https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/sundar-pichai-io-2026/ https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/05/19/google-ceo-pichai-ai-overviews-now-has-over-2-point-5-billion-monthly-users.html https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/29/vcs-predict-strong-enterprise-ai-adoption-next-year-again/

This page pulls together the latest verified numbers on video adoption, ROI, platform performance, AI use, and consumer behavior. Every figure below comes from the organization that published it, mainly Wyzowl’s 2026 State of Video Marketing report and HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report.

Video Marketing Statistics: Usage and Adoption in 2026

Adoption has climbed back to an all-time high after a small dip in 2025.

Source: Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026, surveyed 266 respondents in late 2025.

The 9% of businesses still not using video mostly cite cost or time, not doubt about results. Both “not needed” and “too expensive” tie at 24% as the top reasons for skipping video. Only 10% say they are unclear on video’s ROI.

Adoption has grown steadily for a decade. It went from 61% in 2016 to 91% today. That is a near 50% increase in nine years.

Types of Video Content Marketers Create

Live action video remains the most common format, but the mix is broader than most people expect.

Source: Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026.

Social media video is the single most common use case, cited by 69% of video marketers, just ahead of explainer video at 68%. Testimonial video follows at 57%, then presentation video and video ads tied at 48%. Product demos, sales videos, and training videos each sit in the 20% to 40% range, which shows most teams are producing several video types at once rather than betting on one format.

Production has shifted in-house. 59% of marketers create their video content themselves, without an outside vendor. Only 10% rely exclusively on external production, and the remaining 32% use a mix of internal teams and agencies depending on the project. Cheaper cameras, editing software, and AI tools have made in-house production realistic for teams that once needed an agency for every video.

ROI: Is Video Marketing Still Worth It?

Yes, according to marketers who use it. 82% report a good return on their video investment in 2026. That is down from an all-time high of 93% the year before, but it still shows a strong majority getting results.

Video also drives measurable outcomes across the funnel:

• 93% say video increased brand awareness
• 85% say video helped generate leads
• 83% say video directly increased sales
• 82% say video increased web traffic
• 82% say video increased time spent on their site
• 57% say video reduced support queries

Source: Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026.

Marketers track ROI in different ways. Views lead at 67%, followed by engagement metrics like likes and shares at 63%, then leads and clicks at 52%. Only 32% tie ROI directly to bottom-line sales, which suggests many teams still measure video by attention rather than revenue.

Video Marketing Statistics on Platforms and Channels

YouTube remains the platform marketers use most and rate as most effective.

Source: Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026.

TikTok sits low on both usage and effectiveness compared to the older platforms. Snapchat, X, VR, and 360 video round out the least-used and least-effective list. These platforms have large audiences but have not converted that scale into strong marketer results yet.

Short-Form vs Long-Form Video Statistics

Short-form video is the format marketers reach for most.

HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report found short-form video is the most used content format among marketers, cited by 60% of respondents. It also drives the highest ROI of any format. Short-form, long-form, and live-streaming video rank as the top three ROI-driving content formats overall, at 49%, 29%, and 25%.

Length still matters. 71% of marketers say videos between 30 seconds and two minutes work best.

Video length changes engagement too, according to Wistia’s analysis of videos hosted on its platform:

• Videos under 1 minute: around 50% average engagement rate
• Videos over 60 minutes: around 17% average engagement rate

Shorter is not automatically better for every goal. Longer videos still hold viewers for more total minutes, which matters for training or in-depth product content.

AI and Video Marketing in 2026

AI tools have moved from experiment to standard practice in video production, as reported by TechCrunch.

63% of video marketers say they have used AI tools to help create or edit marketing video in 2026. That is up sharply from 51% just one year earlier. Wyzowl expects this share to keep climbing as AI video tools mature.

Separately, HubSpot found close to 75% of marketers use AI for media creation broadly, including video and images. The most common AI video use cases are smart video and audio editing (42%) and dedicated video or animation generators (44%).

Video Ad Spend and Budgets

Budgets are holding steady or growing, even as marketers debate whether production costs are rising.

• 92% of marketers plan to spend the same or more on video in 2026
• 41% of marketers spent money on video ads in 2025, up from 36% in 2024
• Global video ad spending is projected to pass $236 billion in 2026 and reach more than $268 billion by 2029, data from Statista shows

Source: Wyzowl 2026 and Statista, cited in HubSpot’s 2026 Marketing Statistics report.

On the cost question, opinion is split. 38% of marketers say video production costs are rising, 32% see no change, and 30% say costs are actually falling as tools get more accessible.

Most marketers keep video spend modest relative to total budget. 46% put a third or less of their marketing budget toward video content, and 17% admit they are not tracking video spend closely enough to know.

How Video Influences Buying Decisions

Consumer behavior backs up what marketers report on their end.

• 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service
• 85% have been convinced to buy a product after watching a video
• 80% have downloaded an app after watching a demo video
• 84% of consumers want to see more video from brands in 2026
• 89% say video quality directly affects how much they trust a brand

Source: Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026.

When consumers were asked how they would prefer to learn about a product, 63% chose a short video over every other option. Text articles came in a distant second at 12%.

Conclusion

The video marketing statistics for 2026 tell a consistent story. Adoption sits at an all-time high of 91%, ROI remains strong even after a slight dip, and consumers keep rewarding brands that invest in quality video. Short-form content and AI-assisted production are now standard parts of the workflow, not experiments.

For any team weighing video against other formats, the data points one way. Video drives awareness, leads, and sales at a higher rate than marketers report for most other content types. The open question is not whether to use video, but how to keep quality high as more competitors flood the same platforms with content.

Meta description: Video marketing statistics for 2026: adoption, ROI, platform data, AI use, ad spend, and how video shapes buying decisions.

FAQ

What percentage of businesses use video marketing?

91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2026, according to Wyzowl’s annual survey. This ties the highest adoption rate the report has recorded in 12 years of tracking.

Does video marketing actually work?

Yes. 82% of marketers report a good ROI from video, and most say it has increased brand awareness, leads, sales, or website traffic. Results vary by execution quality, so consistent, well-targeted video performs better than occasional, unplanned content.

What is the best video length for marketing?

Most marketers, 71%, say videos between 30 seconds and two minutes perform best. Shorter videos under one minute get the highest average engagement rate, around 50%, but longer formats still suit training or in-depth product walkthroughs.

Which platform is best for video marketing?

YouTube is both the most used platform, at 82% of marketers, and the one most marketers rate as effective, at 69%. Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn also rank highly for both usage and results.

Are marketers using AI to make videos now?

Yes, 63% of video marketers used AI tools to help create or edit video in 2026, up from 51% the year before. AI is most commonly used for editing and for generating short animated or promotional clips.

How much are businesses spending on video ads?

41% of marketers spent money on video ads in 2025, and global video ad spend is projected to top $236 billion in 2026. Most marketers, 92%, plan to keep spending the same or more on video through the rest of the year.

Sources

https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/ https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/video-marketing-statistics https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/video-advertising/worldwide

Globally, estimates for the industry’s size range from about $18 billion to $28 billion, depending on whether a report counts affiliate ad spend alone or the wider software and platform market around it.

This page collects the numbers worth knowing if you are planning, running, or writing about an affiliate program in 2026: market size, adoption, earnings, publisher mix, and the trends shaping where budgets go next.

Affiliate Marketing Statistics: Market Size and Spend

US affiliate spend has grown every year since eMarketer began tracking it, and the pace has not slowed. Global figures are messier because different firms measure different things. Some track only what advertisers pay affiliates. Others fold in the software layer that runs tracking, attribution, and payouts.

Source: eMarketer, “Coupons surge as key sales driver in affiliate marketing” and “5 charts on affiliate marketing,” 2025-2026 reporting, United States.

Two things stand out in the eMarketer data. Affiliate spend growth is outpacing overall US retail ecommerce growth, even though ecommerce itself is still expanding. And earlier 2025 forecasts, per data from Statista, pegged 2026 US spend closer to $13.20 billion, a reminder that these are projections and get revised as new quarterly data comes in.

Global market size numbers vary more widely because they mix affiliate ad spend with adjacent categories like partner software platforms. When you see a global figure anywhere from $18 billion to $28 billion for 2026, check the fine print on what is actually being counted before comparing it to a different report’s number.

How Many Businesses Use Affiliate Marketing

Adoption is close to universal among brands that sell online. A Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Awin found that 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers already run affiliate programs, putting the channel on par with search and email as a standard part of the marketing mix.

Despite that adoption, affiliate marketing is not always a budget priority. The same Forrester Consulting survey found marketers worldwide rank affiliate and partner marketing as the third most effective channel, behind only content marketing and pay-per-click. Yet just 7% of marketers call affiliate a top budget priority. The gap between effectiveness and investment is one of the more consistent findings across 2026 affiliate marketing statistics.

How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Earn

Earnings data comes mostly from Authority Hacker’s affiliate marketing survey, which polled 2,270 affiliate marketers and remains the largest publicly available income study in the space. Across all experience levels, the average affiliate marketer earns just over $8,000 a month, or roughly $96,000 a year.

Income tracks experience closely, not luck:

Source: Authority Hacker, Affiliate Marketing Survey, 2,270 respondents, published November 2024.

Earnings also vary a lot by niche. Authority Hacker’s survey places e-learning affiliates at the top with average monthly income near $15,551, followed by travel and beauty affiliates. These are averages for established affiliates who have already built an audience, not typical income for someone just starting out, so treat them as a ceiling rather than a starting point.

Income is also concentrated at the top. In the same survey, only a small share of respondents cleared six figures a year, while the largest single group earned under $20,000 annually. Getting consistent traffic was the challenge cited most often by high earners, ahead of managing a team or adapting to search algorithm changes.

Which Affiliate Publishers Get the Most Revenue

Not all affiliate traffic looks the same. A June 2025 report from the Performance Marketing Association found cash back, loyalty, and rewards publishers captured the largest share of affiliate ad spend at 35%, with content publishers a distant second at 16%.

Coupon-driven publishers are gaining ground fastest. Awin data shared with eMarketer showed 7 of the top 10 affiliate publisher types increased their use of coupons in the first half of 2025, and email was the leader, with 50.1% of affiliate sales through that channel including a coupon.

This matters for planning. A program built only around content and review sites is leaving the fastest-growing part of the channel, coupon and cash back partners, mostly untouched.

Where Affiliate Traffic Comes From

SEO is still the dominant traffic source for affiliates. Authority Hacker’s survey found that organic search is the top traffic source for about 69% of affiliate marketers, ahead of paid search, social media, and email combined. That result tracks with the publisher revenue data above: most affiliate sales still start with someone searching for a review, a comparison, or a coupon code rather than clicking a paid ad.

This has practical implications for anyone planning a program. A publisher mix weighted toward SEO-driven content and coupon sites will behave very differently from one built around paid social influencers, both in traffic volume and in how sales get attributed. Programs that only track last-click paid channels risk undercounting the SEO-driven affiliate traffic that Authority Hacker’s data suggests carries the bulk of the volume.

Mobile devices also account for a growing share of affiliate clicks and conversions, following the same shift seen across ecommerce generally. For publishers building a new site or reworking an existing one, mobile page speed and on-page structure now matter as much as the content itself, since a slow mobile page can undo the traffic gains from ranking well in search.

Affiliate Marketing Trends for 2026

A few patterns show up consistently across 2026 reporting:

• Coupon and cash back partnerships are growing faster than content-only affiliate relationships, based on the Awin publisher-type data above.
• Affiliate spend keeps outpacing overall retail ecommerce growth, per eMarketer, which means the channel is taking a larger slice of a market that is already expanding.
• The gap between how effective marketers rate affiliate marketing and how much budget they give it has not closed, based on the Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Awin.
• Tracking accuracy and fraud prevention are getting more attention from networks, reflected in initiatives like Awin’s Conversion Protection Initiative, which the company says has recovered more than $250 million in previously misattributed revenue for advertisers since its 2025 launch.

Conclusion

The affiliate marketing statistics for 2026 tell a consistent story. Spend is rising faster than the broader ecommerce market it feeds, adoption among brands is close to universal, and marketers rate the channel highly even when their budgets do not fully reflect that. The gap sits mostly in measurement and attribution, which is why tracking accuracy has become a bigger theme this year than in past cycles.

For affiliates themselves, the numbers show a channel where results depend heavily on time invested and niche choice rather than one where quick wins are common. Whether you are launching a new program or evaluating an existing one, these affiliate marketing statistics are a reasonable baseline for setting expectations before you commit budget or time.

FAQ

How big is the affiliate marketing industry in 2026?

US affiliate spend is projected to reach $13.81 billion in 2026, per eMarketer. Global estimates for the industry range from about $18 billion to $28 billion depending on whether a report measures affiliate ad spend alone or includes the software and platform market around it.

How much do affiliate marketers make?

The average affiliate marketer earns just over $8,000 a month, according to Authority Hacker’s survey of 2,270 affiliate marketers. Earnings rise sharply with experience, from around $636 a month for beginners to several times that after a few years, and income is concentrated among a small share of top earners.

What percentage of ecommerce sales come from affiliate marketing?

eMarketer estimates affiliate marketing will influence about $241 billion in US ecommerce sales in 2026. That figure reflects sales tied to an affiliate touchpoint, not sales generated exclusively by affiliate links.

Is affiliate marketing still worth it in 2026?

Yes, based on adoption and effectiveness data. 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers already run affiliate programs, and marketers rank affiliate as the third most effective channel behind content marketing and PPC, according to a Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Awin.

What is a typical affiliate marketing commission rate?

Commission rates commonly range from 5% to 30% of a sale, per research from Wikipedia, though the exact rate depends heavily on the industry, with categories like finance and software typically paying more than physical retail products.

Sources

• https://www.emarketer.com/content/coupons-surge-key-sales-driver-affiliate-marketing
• https://emarketer.com/content/5-charts-affiliate-marketing
• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251202329813/en
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/
• https://www.authorityhacker.com/affiliate-marketing-survey/

Marketing Statistics

• 7.8% — Average marketing budget as a share of company revenue in 2026, per Gartner.
• $1 trillion+ — Global advertising spend forecast to cross this mark for the first time in 2026, per Dentsu.
• 97% — B2B marketers who say they run from a documented content strategy, per Content Marketing Institute.
• $36–$42 — Average return for every $1 spent on email marketing, per Litmus.
• 11.3% — Share of marketing budgets US CMOs allocate to social media, per The CMO Survey.
• 15.3% — Share of marketing budgets CMOs now allocate to AI, per Gartner’s 2026 survey.

How Much Do Companies Spend On Marketing?

Marketing budgets have stayed close to flat for three years running. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders puts the average budget at 7.8% of company revenue, up only slightly from 7.7% in 2025 and 2024.

That average hides a wide spread. Half of CMOs report budgets of 6% or less, while consumer packaged goods companies often spend closer to 18% and energy companies spend around 3%.

A separate survey tells a different story. The CMO Survey, run by Deloitte, Duke University, and the American Marketing Association, found marketing budgets at 9.0% of revenue in its Spring 2026 edition. The gap comes from different samples: Gartner surveys mostly large companies above $1 billion in revenue, while The CMO Survey covers a broader mix of company sizes.

Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey; The CMO Survey, Spring 2026 edition.

If your company sits well below these ranges, that is not automatically a problem. It depends on your growth stage and how well you can measure returns. Startups and challenger brands often need to spend more, since they lack the brand recognition that lets bigger players spend less to get noticed.

Company type changes the number more than the averages suggest. B2C product companies tend to spend around 2.5 times more of their revenue on marketing than B2B product companies, based on benchmarking data compiled from SBA guidance and industry surveys. Startups in their first two years often run at 12% to 20% of revenue, since they are building recognition from zero rather than defending an existing position.

Spending through a downturn tends to pay off later. Research cited by Harvard Business Review found that companies which held or increased marketing spend during past recessions grew about 17% faster than competitors once the recession ended. Cutting the budget saves money now, but it can cost market share later.

Digital Ad Spend Is Driving Ad Spend Growth

Global advertising spend is forecast to grow 5.1% in 2026, according to Dentsu’s Global Ad Spend Forecast, pushing the total past $1 trillion for the first time. Digital channels will account for close to 69% of that spend, data from Statista shows.

Retail media is the fastest-growing digital category, expanding faster than search or social as retailers turn their websites and apps into ad platforms. Connected TV and online video are also growing quickly, while spending on print and other traditional formats is flat or declining.

AI-related ad spending, including sponsored placements inside AI search results, will reach about $32 billion in the US in 2026, according to Forbes, with most of that running through paid search listings next to AI Overviews rather than ads inside chatbots.

• The Americas region is expected to grow ad spend around 5.2% in 2026, with the US benefiting from World Cup and midterm election spending.

This growth outpaces the wider global economy, which the IMF expects to grow around 3% in 2026. Advertising is expanding faster than GDP mainly because digital formats keep opening new places to put an ad: retail apps, streaming platforms, and now AI search results.

Content Marketing Statistics And AI Adoption

Content marketing has near-universal adoption among B2B teams, but execution still lags. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2026 B2B Benchmarks survey of 1,015 marketers found 97% operate from some kind of content strategy, the highest rate in the survey’s 16-year history.

Effectiveness is a separate question. Only 59% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing as somewhat or highly effective, and just 12% call it highly effective. The gap between having a strategy and running one well is the biggest theme in this year’s data.

AI use has jumped fast. CMI found 95% of B2B marketers now use AI-powered marketing tools, up sharply from prior years. Despite that, only 9% of B2B marketers plan to grow their human-resources investment in 2026, which points to AI replacing headcount growth rather than adding to it.

• 97% of B2B marketers run from a documented or informal content strategy.
• 59% rate their content marketing as somewhat or highly effective; 12% call it highly effective.
• 95% use AI-powered marketing applications, and AI tops the list of planned 2026 investments.
• 65% of marketers who call their content effective credit content relevance and quality as the top reason.

Source: Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends 2026 (fielded June–August 2025, n=1,015).

Distribution is spreading across more channels than a few years ago. CMI’s data shows in-person events (52%), webinars (51%), social media (42%), and company blogs (41%) as the most effective distribution channels for B2B teams in 2025. Events and webinars now outperform blogs, a shift from the blog-first playbook most teams built their strategy around.

Video is pulling budget away from text. Wyzowl’s 2026 research found 92% of businesses plan to keep or increase video marketing spend compared with 2025, and 91% now use video as a marketing tool in some form. Video is no longer a separate line item for most teams; it is folded into the standard content mix.

The pattern here matters for planning. Adding AI tools without a documented strategy behind them tends to produce more content, not better results. CMI’s data shows quality and relevance beat volume as the driver of effectiveness.

CMOs Are Pouring Budget Into AI

AI has moved from a side project to a line item. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found marketing budgets allocated to AI climbed to 15.3% of the total marketing budget this year.

Ambition is running ahead of readiness. Seventy percent of CMOs told Gartner that becoming an AI leader is a critical goal for 2026, but only 30% say their organization is actually ready to scale AI capabilities. That 40-point gap between goal and readiness is the clearest tension in this year’s data.

The prior year’s survey showed why CMOs keep investing anyway. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey found GenAI investments were already paying off on productivity: 49% of CMOs reported improved time efficiency, 40% reported improved cost efficiency, and 27% reported a greater capacity to produce content or handle more business without adding headcount.

• 15.3% — Share of marketing budget CMOs allocate to AI in 2026.
• 70% — CMOs who call becoming an AI leader a critical 2026 goal.
• 30% — CMOs who say they are ready to scale AI capabilities.
• 49% — CMOs who saw improved time efficiency from GenAI investment in 2025.

Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey; Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey.

This gap explains a pattern from the content marketing numbers above: 95% of B2B marketers use AI tools, yet only 9% plan to grow their human-resources investment. Budgets are moving toward AI tools faster than teams are building the skills and workflows to use them well.

Does Email Marketing Still Deliver The Best ROI?

Yes. Email marketing returns $36 to $42 for every $1 spent on average, according to Litmus, the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel tracked. That compares with roughly $2 for paid search and $2.80 for social advertising.

Returns vary by industry and by how automated the program is. Retail and ecommerce brands average around $45 per $1 spent, and the top 18% of companies clear $70 or more. Automated, behavior-triggered emails account for 37% of all email-generated sales despite making up only 2% of total sends.

Source: Litmus State of Email 2026; DMA; Omnisend.

Measurement is the weak point industry-wide. Only about 12.5% of companies say they measure email ROI accurately, and brands that use dedicated email analytics tools see 43% higher reported ROI than those that don’t. If your email numbers look mediocre, checking whether you are tracking revenue correctly is often the first fix, not changing the campaigns themselves.

Social Media Marketing Budgets Are Shifting

US marketing leaders allocate an average of 11.3% of their budgets to social media, according to The CMO Survey’s spring 2026 edition, down slightly from 12.1% in fall 2024. That drop follows a pullback in TikTok investment, while Meta’s share of social budgets recovered to about 60%.

Despite the smaller budget share, most marketers say social delivers results. Sprout Social and other trackers report that a majority of marketing leaders plan to shift budget toward social from other channels this year, and most expect their paid social spend to increase.

• 11.3% — Average share of US marketing budgets going to social media, spring 2026.
• ~60% — Share of social ad budgets going to Meta platforms.
• 71% — Marketers who say social media delivers measurable ROI, up from 63% in 2023.

Source: The CMO Survey, 35th edition; Keen Decision Systems 2026 Marketing Benchmarks Report.

Reach keeps growing even as budget share shrinks. Global social media user identities reached 5.66 billion as of October 2025, close to 69% of everyone on Earth, and the average person now spends 18 hours and 36 minutes on social platforms every week, according to data compiled by DataReportal and cited across recent industry benchmark reports. That is more than one full waking day, spread across close to seven different platforms a month.

Budget share and effectiveness are not moving in the same direction here. Social’s slice of the pie has shrunk slightly even as more marketers report it working, which suggests some of that growth is coming from efficiency gains rather than new money.

Conclusion

A few patterns run through this year’s marketing statistics. Budgets are essentially flat, holding near 7.7% to 9% of revenue depending on the survey. Digital spend keeps taking share from every other format, on track to push total ad spend past $1 trillion. AI adoption has moved from experiment to default, with 95% of B2B marketers now using AI tools and 15.3% of budgets flowing to AI, even though only 30% of CMOs say they are actually ready to scale it.

For planning purposes, treat averages as a starting point, not a target. Company size, industry, and growth stage all move these numbers more than the averages suggest, and different surveys use different samples, so a 2-point gap between two sources is normal rather than a red flag. The bigger risk is using stale figures: several of these numbers, especially ad spend forecasts and AI budget shares, get revised within six months as new surveys come out.

FAQ

What percentage of revenue should a company spend on marketing?

Most established companies spend between 7% and 9% of revenue on marketing, based on Gartner’s 2026 figure of 7.8% and The CMO Survey’s 9.0%. Startups and newer brands often need more, sometimes 12% to 20%, since they lack existing brand recognition.

How big is the global advertising market in 2026?

Global ad spending is forecast to cross $1 trillion for the first time in 2026, growing about 5.1% year over year according to Dentsu. Digital channels will make up close to 69% of that total.

What is the average ROI of email marketing?

Email marketing returns $36 to $42 for every $1 spent on average, according to Litmus, making it the highest-ROI digital channel tracked. Retail and ecommerce brands tend to do better than average, closer to $45 per $1.

Reddit threads keep saying content marketing budgets are shrinking. Is that true?

No, the data shows the opposite trend for 2026. Nearly half of B2B marketers (46%) expect their content budget to increase this year, and only 8% expect a decrease, per the Content Marketing Institute.

Reddit users often ask whether social media ad spend is worth it anymore given rising costs. What do the numbers say?

Most marketers still say yes. 71% report that social media delivers measurable ROI, up from 63% in 2023, and brands allocating more than 20% of their budget to social report meaningfully higher ROI than those spending less.

Sources

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 https://whitehat-seo.co.uk/blog/how-much-should-i-spend-on-marketing https://www.dentsu.com/news-releases/global-ad-spend-set-to-surpass-one-trillion-for-the-first-time-in-2026-as-the-algorithmic-era-redefines-growth https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/advertising/worldwide/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielalinzainescu/2026/07/14/ai-ad-spending-will-reach-32-billion-in-2026-and-paid-search-teams-are-already-running-it/ https://peakdigital.online/reports/b2b-content-marketing-2026-cmi-benchmarks/ https://www.omnisend.com/blog/email-marketing-roi/ https://christopholivierconsulting.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/