Alphabet disclosed for the first time in February 2026 that YouTube’s annual revenue passed $60 billion across ads and subscriptions in 2025 (Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings, February 4, 2026). Netflix says its ad-supported tier now reaches more than 250 million monthly active viewers worldwide, up from 190 million six months earlier (Netflix Upfront 2026, May 13, 2026). Both figures use the same measure, which matters, because Netflix redefined that measure in November 2025 and most roundups chain the old number to the new one anyway.
80+ Video Marketing Statistics for 2026 (Verified)
Most video marketing roundups are still quoting a Cisco traffic forecast that stopped being published in 2020, and a conversion-lift number from a single A/B test run over a decade ago.
I went back to the filings, the survey PDFs and the measurement panels. I checked every figure against the document it came from and cut the ones that wouldn’t hold up.
Every statistic below carries its source and, where the publisher gives one, its date and sample size, so you can tell a company earnings disclosure from a vendor survey before you put it in a deck.
Key Takeaways
- Video is the fastest-growing channel in US digital advertising. Video revenue reached $78.0 billion in 2025, up 25.4%, the strongest growth of any format IAB and PwC track.
- Adoption is at a ceiling, satisfaction is not. 91% of businesses use video, a joint all-time high, but the share of marketers reporting good ROI fell from 93% to 82% in one year.
- AI adoption depends entirely on how you ask. Two 2026 surveys land within a point of each other at 63% and 62%, while a video platform’s own customers report more than a third, and each is correct under its own definition.
- Streaming crossed 47.5% of US TV viewing in December 2025, an all-time high. On Nielsen’s separate distributor ranking, YouTube held 12.5% of TV in January 2026, ahead of every individual streaming service.
- Short-form still wins attention, long-form is where the growth is. Videos under a minute hold the highest engagement rate, while B2B videos over 20 minutes grew 420% in a year.
- Two of the most-quoted video stats are dead. Cisco retired the forecast behind “82% of internet traffic will be video,” and the “86% conversion lift” traces to a single test from the early 2010s.
Top Video Marketing Statistics for 2026
If you take four numbers into your next planning meeting, take these.
The Four Numbers That Set the 2026 Baseline
1. YouTube’s annual revenue surpassed $60 billion across ads and subscriptions in 2025, the first time Alphabet has disclosed a full-year YouTube total (Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings call, February 4, 2026; company-reported).
2. US digital video advertising revenue reached $78.0 billion in 2025, up 25.4% year over year and an increase of $15.8 billion in a single year (IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2025, April 2026; US only, a voluntary survey of ad sellers with estimated coverage for non-respondents, unaudited by PwC).
3. Streaming accounted for 47.5% of total US TV viewing in December 2025, an all-time high (Nielsen The Gauge, released January 2026; TV screens only).
4. 63% of video marketers say they have used AI tools to help create or edit marketing videos, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl State of Video Marketing 2026, n=266, fielded late 2025).
Why These Four Statistics Matter Most
Each one comes from a different kind of evidence. One is a company earnings disclosure, one is a PwC-run survey of ad sellers, one is a metered panel, and one is a vendor survey.
When four unrelated methods all point at video absorbing more money and more attention, that’s a planning assumption you can defend. The vendor survey is the weakest of the four, which is exactly why it sits last.
Video Marketing Adoption Statistics
Adoption has effectively stopped being the interesting question. What marketers report getting back is where the 2026 data gets uncomfortable.
How Many Businesses Use Video
5. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2026, back to a joint all-time high (Wyzowl 2026, n=266). Wyzowl’s 2020 wave put the same figure at 85%, so adoption has moved six points in six years.
6. 93% of video marketers consider video an important part of their overall marketing strategy, a slight dip from the prior wave (Wyzowl 2026). Wyzowl’s 2020 wave put the same measure at 92%, after 91% in 2019 and 85% in 2018, so this one has sat in a narrow band for eight years.
7. 76% of teams now produce at least one video per month (Wistia State of Video 2026, published April 2026; 900+ professionals surveyed plus 13M+ videos analyzed).
8. 57% of teams spend more time creating videos than promoting them. Only 20% spend more time promoting, and 23% split their time evenly (Wistia 2026).
That last one is the most actionable number on this page. Production capacity is no longer the constraint for most teams. Distribution is, and most teams are still spending against the wrong side of it.
Video Budgets and Ad Spending
9. 92% of marketers plan to spend the same or more on video in 2026 (Wyzowl 2026).
10. 41% of marketers spent money on video ads in the past year, up from 36% in the prior wave (Wyzowl 2026).
11. 48% of teams plan to increase their video promotion budgets, and fewer than 10% are cutting (Wistia 2026).
What Marketers Report Getting Back
12. 82% of marketers say video has given them good ROI, down sharply from an all-time high of 93% in the prior wave (Wyzowl 2026). The 92% to 93% figure that circulated for years was real when it was published; it just isn’t current. Satisfaction fell about eleven points in twelve months while adoption stayed flat.
13. 93% of revenue leaders using video report positive results, including revenue impact (Vidyard, Future of Revenue, n=656 sales and marketing professionals, surveyed April 2025).
14. 35% report higher win rates, 28% report increased pipeline volume, and 27% report shorter deal cycles (Vidyard, Future of Revenue, n=656).
15. 90% of teams take at least one accessibility step on their videos, most often captions (Wistia 2026).
Treat 12 and 13 as measuring different things. Wyzowl asks marketers whether video felt worth it. Vidyard asks revenue leaders who already bought a video platform. Neither is validated against booked revenue.
Video Ad Spend and Connected TV Statistics
This is the best-instrumented data on the page. One strand is a PwC-run survey of what ad sellers report booking; the other is Guideline’s estimate of total digital video ad spend, published alongside IAB’s annual survey of large video ad buyers. Where the two disagree, the section says so rather than picking a favourite.
US Digital Video Ad Spend
16. US digital video ad spend reached $73.6 billion in 2025 and is projected at $81.9 billion in 2026, growth of 11% and roughly 20% faster than the total ad market (IAB 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, Part One; the dollar figures are Guideline’s estimates of total digital video ad spend, not a survey total).
17. In 2024, US digital video ad spend hit $63.8 billion, up 18%, the first year digital video outspent linear TV (IAB, 2026 report). The full run is $39.0 billion in 2021, $47.2 billion in 2022, $54.0 billion in 2023, $63.8 billion in 2024 and $73.6 billion in 2025.
18. Digital video took 58% of total US TV and video ad spend in 2025 and is projected to pass 60% for the first time in 2026, at 61% (IAB, 2026 report). It was 38% in 2021, so the format has taken 20 points of share from linear TV in four years.
Note the gap between statistic 2 and statistic 16. For the same year, 2025, the IAB/PwC census puts US digital video at $78.0 billion while the IAB buyer survey puts it at $73.6 billion.
They aren’t contradicting each other. One counts revenue reported by ad sellers; the other is built from what buyers say they spent, plus Guideline’s billing data.
Quote whichever fits your question, name the method, and never average the two.
Connected TV and Social Video
19. Connected TV ad spend reached $26.5 billion in 2025 and is projected at $29.3 billion in 2026, up 11% (IAB, 2026 report).
20. Social video is now the larger line, at $28.2 billion in 2025 against CTV’s $26.5 billion, and it is projected to reach $31.9 billion in 2026 against CTV’s $29.3 billion (IAB, 2026 report). Online video is third, at $18.9 billion in 2025.
21. Among buyers increasing CTV spend in 2026, 54% fund it out of linear TV, 40% out of other traditional media such as print and radio, 38% out of social, 38% from genuinely incremental budget and 21% out of paid search (IAB, 2026 report, n=149 buyers increasing CTV spend).
22. The share of small spenders putting money into CTV rose from 60% in 2024 to 85% in 2026 as self-serve platforms lowered the entry barrier (IAB, 2026 report).
Statistic 21 is the one that should change a media plan. CTV growth is mostly not new money: only 38% of buyers increasing CTV spend are funding it from incremental budget, while 54% are pulling it out of linear TV and 38% out of social. If you own the social line, that is the budget being raided.
Creator Advertising
23. US creator-economy advertising spend was projected to reach $37 billion in 2025 (IAB 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report, published November 2025).
24. Creator advertising is expected to reach $44 billion in 2026 (IAB 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report).
Platform Statistics for YouTube, Meta, TikTok and Streaming
YouTube Revenue and Reach
25. Q4 2025 YouTube ad revenue was $11.38 billion against $10.47 billion a year earlier, up 8.7% (Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings slides; company-reported). Alphabet rounds this to “9% to $11.4 billion” on the call itself.
26. YouTube ad revenue grew 13% year over year in Q2 2026, the most recent quarter Alphabet has reported (Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings, July 2026; company-reported).
27. Alphabet reported over 325 million paid consumer subscriptions across Google One, YouTube and other services as of Q4 2025, and said the number had reached 350 million by Q1 2026 (Alphabet Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 earnings; company-reported).
28. YouTube Shorts averages more than 200 billion daily views (Philipp Schindler, Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings call, repeating the figure Neal Mohan first gave at Cannes Lions in June 2025).
29. More than 1 billion hours of YouTube are watched on TV screens every day, and 1 billion viewers watch podcasts on YouTube every month (Mohan, Cannes Lions, June 2025; self-reported, no third-party audit).
30. YouTube has been the number one streamer in the US by Nielsen living-room watch time for nearly three years (Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Q4 2025 call).
If you want the platform-level detail behind these, I keep a separate breakdown in the YouTube statistics roundup, and a practical companion on promoting a YouTube channel.
How YouTube Counts a View and Why It Matters
The 200 billion number gets quoted next to a 70 billion baseline from March 2024, which reads as a 186% jump. Part of that jump is a definition change, and anyone building a trend line needs to know it.
31. As of March 31, 2025, YouTube counts a Shorts view the moment the video starts to play or replay, with no minimum watch time (TeamYouTube announcement, posted March 26, 2025). The stricter prior metric survives as “engaged views,” which is what YouTube Analytics still reports.
32. A second counting change takes effect August 24, 2026, extending that same start-of-playback rule to long-form videos and live streams, not just Shorts (YouTube Help). Monetization eligibility still runs on engaged views.
Any Shorts view comparison that straddles March 2025 is measuring two different things. From late August 2026 onward, the same caveat applies to long-form view counts.
Meta, Reels and Facebook Video
33. Instagram Reels watch time grew more than 30% year over year in the US in Q4 2025 (Susan Li, Meta CFO, Q4 2025 earnings call, January 29, 2026).
34. Facebook video time grew at a double-digit rate year over year in the US in the same quarter (Meta Q4 2025 call).
35. Meta’s Family daily active people reached 3.58 billion on average in December 2025, up 7%, and 3.60 billion in June 2026, up 3% (Meta Q4 2025 and Q2 2026 results; DAP is Meta’s own defined metric, not a headcount of individuals).
Meta doesn’t break out Reels ad revenue, Reels daily users or global Reels watch time. The 30% figure is US-only and has no published baseline, so it tells you the direction and nothing about the size.
TikTok and ByteDance
36. ByteDance FY2024 revenue was roughly $155 billion, up 29%, with international revenue, mostly TikTok, at about $39 billion, up 63% (Bloomberg, April 2025; journalist-reported from leaked figures behind a paywall, never confirmed by ByteDance).
37. ByteDance’s overseas revenue grew nearly 50% in 2025 and domestic revenue about 20%, lifting the overseas share from roughly 25% to more than 30% of the total, while net profit fell more than 70% on AI infrastructure spending (Chinese business press, April 2026; journalist-reported). Sacra puts FY2025 revenue at roughly $186 billion (Sacra; third-party estimate, not a company disclosure).
38. Marketers rate YouTube the most effective video platform at 69%, then Instagram at 56%, Facebook at 55%, LinkedIn at 50% and webinars at 42%. TikTok ranks below all of them at 29% (Wyzowl 2026). Wyzowl files TikTok under “least effective,” alongside interactive video at 20%, X at 16%, 360 video at 10%, VR at 9% and Snapchat at 8%.
ByteDance still publishes nothing. Every TikTok financial figure in circulation is a leak reported by journalists, and there’s no 2025 or 2026 daily-views disclosure I could verify at all. If a roundup gives you a precise TikTok watch-time number for 2026, ask where it came from.
Streaming’s Share of the TV Screen
39. Streaming reached 47.5% of total US TV usage in December 2025, an all-time high (Nielsen The Gauge, released January 2026).
40. Broadcast took 21.4% and cable 20.2% in the same month (Nielsen).
41. Netflix took 9.0% of all US TV use in December 2025 and Prime Video 4.3%, both platform-best shares (Nielsen The Gauge, released January 2026). The Gauge tracks YouTube as well, as its largest single streaming platform, and Nielsen has stated YouTube’s share there in plain text before: 11.1% of TV usage, a record at the time, in the December 2024 edition (Nielsen The Gauge, released January 2025). The December 2025 edition simply didn’t call YouTube out by number.
42. On the Media Distributor Gauge, the separate ranking that rolls the same viewing data up by parent company, YouTube held 12.9% of TV in November 2025, ahead of Disney at 10.5%, Paramount at 8.9%, NBCUniversal at 8.8% and Netflix at 8.3% (Nielsen), and 12.5% in January 2026, still ahead of every individual streaming service and of Disney at 11.9% (Nielsen Media Distributor Gauge). Nielsen did publish a December 2025 edition, on January 27, 2026, with Disney holding the No. 2 position at 10.7% (Nielsen). What it didn’t do was state YouTube’s own share anywhere in the release text, and neither did the December Gauge. So a precise December 2025 YouTube percentage, wherever you see one quoted, was read off a chart rather than published by Nielsen in words. One thing to watch when you quote across the two: Netflix shows 8.3% here and 9.0% in statistic 41. Those are different months, November and December, on two different Nielsen releases, so they are not two readings of the same thing.
43. Streaming took 54% of daily TV usage on Christmas Day 2025, the largest single-day share ever recorded for the category (Nielsen). By volume the same day ran to 55.1 billion viewing minutes, 8% above the previous single-day streaming record of 51.2 billion set on Christmas Day 2024. Those are two separate records, one of share and one of minutes, and they get quoted as though they were one.
44. Netflix’s ad-supported tier reached more than 250 million global monthly active viewers by its May 2026 upfront, up from 190 million in November 2025 (Netflix Upfront 2026, May 13, 2026; company-stated, not filed). That is the like-for-like comparison, and it is the only one available. Netflix changed the metric in November 2025: the earlier figures of 94 million (May 2025) and 70 million (November 2024) were monthly active users, meaning account profiles that watched ad-supported content. A monthly active viewer is a member who watched at least one minute of ad-supported content in the month, multiplied by Netflix’s own estimate of how many people are in that household (TheWrap, November 2025). The jump from 94 million to 190 million is mostly the definition changing, not the audience doubling, so never run those two numbers as one series.
45. Netflix full-year 2025 advertising revenue grew 2.5x to more than $1.5 billion (Netflix Q4 2025 shareholder letter; company-reported).
46. Disney+ ended its September 2025 quarter with 131.6 million paid subscribers, and Disney+ plus Hulu combined at 196 million (Disney Q4 FY2025 earnings). Disney stopped publishing quarterly subscriber counts from FY2026, so these are the last figures on record.
47. Roku passed 100 million streaming households globally in April 2026, and streamed 37.9 billion hours in Q2 2026, up 7% year over year (Roku Q2 2026 shareholder letter). Roku renamed this metric from Active Accounts to Streaming Households in 2024 but kept the same methodology, so older figures remain comparable. The real caveat is that Roku stopped reporting the household count quarterly from Q1 2025, which makes the 100 million a milestone announcement rather than a regular disclosure.
Nielsen measures TV screens only. Mobile and tablet viewing, which is where most Shorts and TikTok consumption happens, is outside the panel. For living-room behavior it’s the cleanest source here; for total video attention it undercounts short-form badly.
AI in Video Marketing Statistics
How Many Marketers Actually Use AI for Video
48. 62% of US video ad buyers now use generative AI to build or enhance digital video creative, up from 51% a year earlier (IAB 2026 full report, n=360; IAB’s summary puts it as “nearly two-in-three buyers, up from half in 2025”).
49. 41% of professionals reported using AI to create videos in Wistia’s 2025 survey, up from 18% the year before (Wistia State of Video 2025, 1,300+ professionals surveyed November 2024 to January 2025).
50. Wistia’s 2026 edition drops the precise figure and reports that more than a third of teams already use AI, with nearly a quarter more planning to start (Wistia 2026).
Statistic 4 says 63%, statistic 48 says 62%, and statistic 49 says 41%. All three are accurate.
Wyzowl asked marketers broadly whether they’d ever used AI tools to create or edit any marketing video. IAB asked large video ad buyers about generative AI they’re using right now for ad creative. Wistia asked its own customers about AI inside a video production workflow.
That the two 2026 surveys converge at 62% and 63% from completely different populations is the more interesting result. It suggests the real number, for people who buy or make video professionally, is close to two in three. Wistia’s lower figure is a year older and asks a narrower question.
What Buyers Use Generative AI For
51. Among the buyers who use it, generative AI touches 33% of their digital video ads in 2026, up from 24% in 2025, and they expect 43% by 2027 (IAB, 2026 report; summary).
52. Large spenders are well ahead of small ones: 70% of buyers spending over $50 million a year use generative AI for creative enhancements, against 54% of those below it (IAB, 2026 report, page 31). IAB’s own note is that usage “was relatively consistent across companies a year ago” and that large buyers are now meaningfully ahead. A year ago the two groups were roughly even, so this is a gap opening up rather than a reversal.
The 43%-by-2027 figure in statistic 51 is an expectation, not a measurement, and expectations in ad-buying surveys convert at well under 100%. The 2026 numbers either side of it are reported current use.
The AI Video Tool Market
53. Global funding for AI video companies reached $3.08 billion in 2025, up 94.6% from $1.58 billion in 2024 (Crunchbase News, February 2026).
54. Runway raised a $315 million Series E at a $5.3 billion valuation in February 2026, after a $308 million Series D announced April 3, 2025 (Crunchbase News, February 2026).
55. Synthesia closed a $200 million Series E in January 2026 at a $4 billion valuation (Synthesia; company-disclosed). Synthesia does not state its prior valuation in the announcement.
56. Synthesia reports more than 90% of the Fortune 100 as customers and over 50,000 teams on the platform (Synthesia; company-disclosed).
57. Synthesia hit an estimated $146 million ARR in September 2025 (Sacra; third-party reconstruction, not audited).
58. HeyGen reached an estimated $95 million ARR in September 2025, up from $57.5 million at the end of 2024 and $1 million by March 2023 (Sacra; third-party estimate).
59. Google shipped Veo 3 at I/O in May 2025 and Veo 3.1 in October 2025, which is still its current video model (Google DeepMind and Google Cloud announcements).
If you are evaluating any of these, the tool pages for Synthesia, HeyGen and Runway cover what each one is built for and where its pricing starts.
The Case Against Assuming Any of This Lasts
60. OpenAI’s Sora 2 launched September 30, 2025 and passed 1 million iOS downloads in under five days while still invite-only, faster than ChatGPT (CNBC, October 2025).
61. Sora’s monthly downloads peaked at about 3.33 million in November 2025 and had fallen to roughly 1.13 million by February 2026 (TechCrunch, citing Appfigures; third-party estimate, worldwide iOS and Android).
62. Appfigures estimates Sora earned about $2.1 million from in-app purchases across its entire life, before OpenAI announced the shutdown on March 24, 2026 (third-party estimate).
63. The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued April 26, 2026, and the API is scheduled to follow on September 24, 2026 (OpenAI Help Center).
Just under seven months from fastest-growing consumer app to retired product, and under a year to the API sunset. That’s the number I’d put next to any AI video tooling decision that assumes a vendor will still be there in two years.
Video Length and Format Statistics
Short-Form Effectiveness
64. 71% of marketers believe videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes are the most effective length (Wyzowl 2026).
65. Videos under 1 minute recorded a 50% average engagement rate, against 46% for 1 to 3 minutes and 45% for 3 to 5 minutes (Wistia State of Video 2025, 14M+ videos analyzed). Wistia’s 2026 edition no longer publishes the bracket-level numbers, so cite these as 2025 figures.
Long-Form Growth in B2B
66. Vidyard users created 420% more videos over 20 minutes in 2024, while videos under 3 minutes grew about 30% (Vidyard 2025 Video in Business Benchmark Report, from the 943,305 videos its users created in 2024).
67. Education companies created 436% more videos year over year, consulting 280% more, professional services 200% more, financial services 189% more, and high tech 149% more (Vidyard, 2025 report).
Short-form wins the engagement rate and long-form wins the growth rate, and those aren’t in conflict. One is a per-video attention metric on a hosting platform, the other is a creation-volume curve in B2B sales and demand generation. If you run webinars, the same split shows up in the webinar statistics I track separately.
Vertical Video and Distribution
68. Vertical HD uploads at 1080×1920 grew 24% year over year (Wistia 2026).
69. 81% of teams share videos on LinkedIn, ahead of YouTube at 76% (Wistia 2026). Wistia reports separately that eight in ten teams call LinkedIn their primary place to share video. That is an all-teams split, not a B2B-only cut.
70. Customer testimonial videos are planned by 47% of companies in 2026, up from 38% in 2025, 37% in 2024 and 17% in 2023 (Wistia 2026).
Consumer Video Behavior Statistics
What Consumers Say They Want
71. 84% of consumers want to see more videos from brands in 2026 (Wyzowl 2026, consumer half of the panel).
72. 63% of consumers say they would most like to learn about a product or service by watching a short video, against 12% who prefer a text article, 7% an infographic, 5% a sales call and 4% a webinar (Wyzowl 2026). Wyzowl’s 2020 wave put the same preference at 66%, against 18% who would rather read a text-based article, so the pattern has held for six years even as the wording and sample changed.
73. 89% of consumers say video quality affects their trust in a brand, down from 91% the prior year and up from 87% in 2024 (Wyzowl 2026).
Wyzowl’s consumer figures come from a self-selected online sample of 266 people split between marketers and consumers, and Wyzowl never publishes how that split falls, so every marketer and consumer figure here rests on some undisclosed fraction of 266. The sample also swings hard between waves: 656 respondents in 2020, 967 in 2024, then 205 in 2025 and 266 in 2026. No panel provider, sampling frame, weighting method or margin of error is disclosed for any wave. The figures are directionally useful and statistically thin. Where a probability sample exists, prefer it, which brings us to Pew.
How Teens Actually Watch
74. 92% of US teens use YouTube, 76% use it daily, and 17% say they are on it almost constantly (Pew Research Center, n=1,458 US teens aged 13 to 17, fielded September to October 2025 via Ipsos KnowledgePanel).
75. 68% of teens use TikTok, 61% daily, and 21% almost constantly (Pew topline, December 2025).
76. 63% use Instagram, 55% use Snapchat and 31% use Facebook (Pew topline, December 2025).
77. 64% of teens have used an AI chatbot, and 28% use one daily (Pew topline, December 2025).
Pew’s is the only probability-based sample on this page, which makes statistics 74 to 77 the sturdiest consumer numbers here. Note how far YouTube’s 92% sits above TikTok’s 68%. Marketer surveys and teen behavior agree on the top platform and disagree about almost everything below it.
Global Reach and Mobile
78. 6.12 billion people were using the internet at the start of April 2026, 73.8% of the world’s population (DataReportal, April 2026 update).
79. 96.2% of internet users go online via a mobile phone at least some of the time (DataReportal, April 2026).
80. The global figure was 6.04 billion at 73.2% penetration in the October 2025 edition (DataReportal Digital 2026). DataReportal warns that cross-edition comparisons are unreliable because that edition relied on data up to October 2025 rather than the January vintage it used in prior years. Source revisions are a separate issue it also flags. Either way, treat that delta as bookkeeping rather than growth.
Statistic 79 is the structural fact underneath every short-form curve on this page. Vertical isn’t a style choice.
Video Production and Cost Statistics
The adoption numbers say almost everyone makes video. These say what they actually make, who makes it, and what it costs them.
What Kinds of Video Teams Actually Make
81. Social media videos are the most-created type in 2026, at 69% of video marketers, followed by explainer videos at 68%, testimonial videos at 57%, presentation videos at 48% and video ads at 48% (Wyzowl 2026). Teaser videos follow at 45%, product demos at 39% and sales videos at 37%.
82. Live action is the dominant format, with 51% of video marketers mostly creating it, against 23% for animated video and 19% for screen recordings (Wyzowl 2026).
83. Training videos and customer onboarding videos sit at 23% each, app demo videos at 17% and employee onboarding videos at 16% (Wyzowl 2026).
Explainer video is the one worth noticing. It has been near the top of this list for a decade, and it is the only format on it that survived the shift from desktop to vertical without changing shape.
Who Makes the Video, and What It Costs
84. 59% of businesses create their video content entirely in house, 10% use external vendors exclusively, and 32% use a mix of both (Wyzowl 2026).
85. 46% of marketers allocate a third or less of their marketing budget to video content, and 17% do not track video spend at all (Wyzowl 2026).
86. Marketers disagree on where costs are going: 38% say video costs are increasing, 32% report no change and 30% believe costs are getting cheaper (Wyzowl 2026).
87. The two biggest reasons non-users give for skipping video are that they do not feel it is needed and that it is too expensive, at 24% each. Lack of time follows at 19%, with 10% each unclear on ROI or unsure where to start (Wyzowl 2026).
88. 67% of marketers who do not currently use video plan to start in 2026, down one point from the prior wave (Wyzowl 2026).
Statistic 85 is the one that undercuts every ROI number on this page. If 17% of marketers cannot say what they spend on video, the satisfaction figure in statistic 12 is being reported by a population that partly cannot calculate a return at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many businesses use video marketing in 2026?
91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, a joint all-time high in Wyzowl’s twelfth annual wave (n=266, fielded late 2025). Wyzowl is a video production agency and its respondents self-select for video commitment, so read this as the ceiling of a committed population rather than a census of all businesses.
Is video marketing still worth the investment?
The honest answer is that satisfaction fell while spending didn’t. 82% of marketers say video gives good ROI, down from 93% a year earlier, and yet 92% plan to spend the same or more in 2026 (Wyzowl 2026).
On the buyer side the money is unambiguous: US digital video ad revenue grew 25.4% to $78.0 billion in 2025 (IAB/PwC), faster than any other format.
How many marketers use AI to create video?
Close to two in three on the current evidence. Wyzowl says 63% of video marketers have used AI to create or edit marketing videos, and IAB’s 2026 buyer survey independently puts current use at 62%.
Wistia’s 2026 edition is lower, at more than a third of teams, asking a narrower question about AI inside a production workflow. The two 2026 surveys agreeing from different populations is what makes roughly 62% to 63% the defensible number.
What is the best video length in 2026?
71% of marketers say 30 seconds to 2 minutes is most effective (Wyzowl 2026), and Wistia’s analysis of 14 million videos found videos under a minute had the highest average engagement rate at 50%. The counter-trend sits in B2B, where Vidyard found videos over 20 minutes growing 420% in a year across the 943,305 videos its users created in 2024.
How much of US TV viewing is streaming?
47.5% in December 2025, an all-time high, against 21.4% for broadcast and 20.2% for cable (Nielsen The Gauge). Netflix took 9.0% of all TV use that month and Prime Video 4.3%.
YouTube appears in both of Nielsen’s reports. On the Media Distributor Gauge, which ranks by parent company, it held 12.5% of TV in January 2026, more than any individual streaming service. Nielsen measures TV screens only, so mobile and tablet viewing is excluded.
Which platforms do marketers rate most effective for video?
YouTube at 69%, then Instagram at 56%, Facebook at 55%, LinkedIn at 50% and webinars at 42% (Wyzowl 2026). TikTok sits at 29%, which Wyzowl groups under least effective. Wistia’s 2026 data has LinkedIn ahead of YouTube as the place teams share video, 81% to 76%, across all teams rather than B2B alone.
Is the “82% of internet traffic will be video” statistic still valid?
No. That figure came from Cisco’s Visual Networking Index forecast, which Cisco stopped publishing in 2020 when it folded into the Annual Internet Report.
The closest current replacement, AppLogic Networks’ 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report, publishes no single video traffic-share percentage at all. It does note that new encryption standards are degrading application-level visibility. It does report that YouTube reaches 88% of fixed-access subscribers and consumes more than 10% of internet bandwidth (AppLogic Networks).
Sources and Methodology
Every figure on this page was checked against the document it came from: SEC-filed earnings releases and transcripts, survey PDFs, and measurement-panel releases. Aggregator blogs and “X stats you need to know” listicles were used only to locate originals, never as citations.
Primary sources. Alphabet Q4 2025 and Q2 2026 earnings; Meta Q4 2025 and Q2 2026 results; Netflix Q4 2025 shareholder letter and May 2026 upfront statements; Disney Q4 FY2025 earnings; Roku company announcements; Nielsen The Gauge (December 2024 and December 2025) and Nielsen Media Distributor Gauge (November 2025, December 2025 and January 2026); IAB 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report (fielded February 20 to March 13, 2026, n=360) and the 2025 edition it replaced; IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report Full Year 2025; IAB 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report; Pew Research Center, Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025; DataReportal Digital 2026 and its April 2026 mid-year update; Wyzowl State of Video Marketing 2026 and 2020; Wistia State of Video 2025 and 2026; Vidyard 2025 Video in Business Benchmark Report and Vidyard’s Future of Revenue survey; Crunchbase News; Sacra; OpenAI Help Center; YouTube Help and the TeamYouTube view-counting announcement; AppLogic Networks Global Internet Phenomena Report 2025; Roku Q2 2026 shareholder letter.
Provenance labels. Company-disclosed figures come from filings, shareholder letters or earnings calls. Third-party estimates (Sacra, Appfigures) are reconstructions and are labeled as such in the text. Journalist-reported ByteDance figures come from leaked documents and have never been confirmed by the company. ByteDance’s FY2025 revenue total is a Sacra reconstruction rather than a leak, and is labeled as an estimate in the text.
Vendor conflicts. Wyzowl sells video production. Wistia sells video hosting. Vidyard sells video for sales prospecting. Synthesia and HeyGen sell the AI avatar products their own adoption numbers describe. Their surveys sample their own audiences and are cited here as vendor benchmarks, not market truth. The least-conflicted sources on this page are IAB/PwC, Nielsen, Pew, DataReportal and the audited filings.
Sample sizes vary by an order of magnitude. Wyzowl n=266, IAB n=360 video ad buyers, Vidyard n=656, Wistia 900+ to 1,300+, Pew n=1,458 probability-recruited. Only Pew’s is a probability sample. Wyzowl’s own sample is the least stable of the set, running 967 in its 2024 wave, 205 in 2025 and 266 in 2026, which is why year-over-year Wyzowl deltas on this page are read as direction rather than magnitude.
Figures excluded from this update. The Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast that video would reach 82% of IP traffic was retired in 2020 and is not cited as current. The “video on a landing page lifts conversion 86%” claim traces to a single early-2010s A/B test with no published methodology. A widely circulated “75% of marketing videos are now AI-generated” figure couldn’t be traced to any primary source. Roku’s “4 hours 13.7 minutes per account per day” appears on aggregator sites but not in any Roku shareholder letter; Roku last published a comparable figure of 4.1 hours in its Q4 2023 letter and retired the metric when it renamed Active Accounts to Streaming Households. A claim that HeyGen had 85,000 customers by May 2025 couldn’t be found in Sacra’s research or any company source. Each was dropped rather than repeated.
Figures carried forward from the previous edition. This page ran in a 2020/2021 form for years, and other sites cite it for particular numbers from that version. Under this site’s backlink-preservation rule none of them is silently deleted. Every numbered claim from that edition is reproduced below with its original figure, the source the previous edition actually cited, and where it stands now. Where the previous edition printed a figure without a link, that is stated rather than back-filled. Every one is a historical claim, correct on its publication date and not a 2026 measurement.
| Figure as previously published | Source the previous edition cited | Where it stands now |
|---|---|---|
| 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool | Wyzowl, State of Video Marketing 2020 | Superseded by statistic 5 (91%, Wyzowl 2026) |
| 92% of marketers who use video say it is an important part of their strategy | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 6 (93%, Wyzowl 2026) |
| 66% of people would prefer a short video to learn about a product, against 18% who would rather read an article | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 72 (63% against 12%, Wyzowl 2026) |
| Most-created video types: explainer 72%, presentation 49%, testimonial 48%, sales 42%, video ads 42% | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 81, the current most-created ranking (social videos 69%, explainers 68%, testimonials 57%, presentations 48%, video ads 48%) |
| 87% of video marketers say video increased traffic to their site, and 81% say it increased time on page | Wyzowl 2020 | Wyzowl no longer publishes either measure. Statistics 12 to 14 are the closest current outcome data |
| 59% of non-video marketers expected to start using video in 2020, and 20% of video marketers had used video for the first time in 2019 | Wyzowl 2020 | Retired. At 91% adoption the question no longer discriminates |
| People watch an average of 16 hours of online video a week, a 52% rise in two years, and 86% would like to see more video from brands | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 71 (84% want more video from brands, Wyzowl 2026) |
| Over 2 billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month, and people watch over a billion hours of video a day | YouTube press page, June 2020 | YouTube has stopped publishing a precise user figure and now says only “billions of monthly logged-in users.” The watch-time measure now appears as over 1 billion hours a day on TV screens alone, statistic 29 |
| 82% of all IP traffic would be video by 2022, and live internet video would reach 17% of internet video traffic after growing 15-fold from 2017 to 2022 | Cisco Visual Networking Index white paper, 2017 forecast | Retired. Cisco stopped publishing the VNI in 2020 and no successor publishes a single video-traffic percentage. See the FAQ |
| 91% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their social video, and 93% of businesses landed a customer through a social video | Animoto, Social Video Trends: Marketers 2020 | Retired. The current ROI reading is statistic 12 (82%, Wyzowl 2026) |
| Video ads are the number one way people move from discovering a brand to buying from it | Animoto, Social Video Trends: Consumers 2020 | Retired. No current primary source makes this ranking claim |
| Facebook is the most popular channel for marketers posting video at 81.2%, followed by YouTube at 62.9%, and 14.5% of marketers publish no video | Buffer, State of Social 2019 | Superseded by statistic 38 and the platform FAQ, where YouTube leads marketer-rated effectiveness at 69%. Wistia’s 2026 data puts LinkedIn ahead of YouTube on where teams share video |
| Videos earn 59% more engagement than other Facebook post types, and 81.8% of the top 500 posts were video | Buffer, analysis of 777 million Facebook posts, 2019 | Retired. Buffer hasn’t refreshed the dataset |
| Only 0.3% of Pinterest pins contain video | Buffer, study of 1.5 million pins, 2016 | Retired. No current equivalent exists |
| Twitter video views grew 220x in twelve months, 93% of them on mobile, and tweets with video are 6x more likely to be retweeted than tweets with an image and 3x more likely than tweets with a GIF | Twitter Business, video-on-Twitter resource page | Retired. X publishes no comparable figure. Statistic 38 has X at 16% marketer-rated effectiveness |
| TikTok reached 500 million monthly active users in October 2018 | CNN, October 2018 | Retired. ByteDance publishes nothing, so no audited user figure exists. Statistics 36 and 37 are the only current ByteDance data here, and both are leaked or third-party |
| Native LinkedIn videos are shared 20 times more than any other content type | TechCrunch, August 2017, reporting LinkedIn’s limited-release data | Retired. LinkedIn never published a methodology. Statistic 69 is the current LinkedIn video measure |
| The average business video was 4.07 minutes in 2018, 73% of business videos ran under two minutes, and 87% of business videos were watched on desktop | Vidyard, 2019 Video in Business Benchmark Report | Retired. Vidyard no longer publishes an average video length or a device split. Statistics 65 to 67 are the closest current length and volume data |
| A single webinar could net $20,930 | ClickMeeting webinar report | Retired. It was a single-case figure, never a benchmark. Current webinar data sits on the webinar statistics page |
| 65% of people skip online video ads as soon as they can | CNBC, February 2017 | Retired. No current primary source |
| 20% of non-video marketers say video is too expensive, with 17% each saying they don’t know where to start and don’t feel it’s needed | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 87 (24% each on “not needed” and “too expensive,” Wyzowl 2026) |
| 92% of video marketers feel the level of noise and competition has increased in the last year | Wyzowl 2020 | Retired. Wyzowl no longer asks the question |
| 95% of video marketers plan to increase or maintain their video spend in 2020 | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 9 (92% plan to spend the same or more in 2026, Wyzowl 2026) |
| First-time video marketers in 2019 got started because it was easier to convince others of video’s value (48%) and because video had become quicker to create (47%) | Wyzowl 2020 | Retired. Wyzowl no longer breaks out first-time adopters |
| 83% of video marketers who had used YouTube said it was successful for them | Wyzowl 2020 | Superseded by statistic 38, where YouTube leads marketer-rated effectiveness at 69% (Wyzowl 2026) |
| 88% of video marketers plan to include YouTube in their strategy | HubSpot Research, content trends global preferences (the page has since been taken down) | Superseded by statistic 38, where YouTube is the highest-rated video platform at 69% marketer-rated effectiveness |
| Only 1 in 10 video marketers have tried TikTok, and 66% of those saw success | Wyzowl 2020 | Retired. Wyzowl no longer publishes a TikTok trial or success rate. Statistic 38 has TikTok at 29% marketer-rated effectiveness, the nearest current measure |
| 54% of consumers prefer video content from brands they support over other content types | HubSpot, named but not linked in the previous edition | Retired. No HubSpot report I could find publishes this figure. The closest current measure is statistic 71 (84% of consumers want more video from brands, Wyzowl 2026) |
| The three most popular types of business video are webinars, demos and social videos | Vidyard, 2019 Video in Business Benchmark Report | Superseded by statistic 81 (social videos 69%, explainers 68%, testimonials 57%, Wyzowl 2026) |
| Under 45 seconds, mobile leads video consumption in Australia at 69%; over 55 seconds the non-connected living-room widescreen leads at 61% | Facebook Business, ANZ Video Consumption Report (the page has since been taken down) | Retired. Meta publishes no successor report |
| YouTube is the second most popular website in the world, after Google | Alexa Top Sites | Retired. Amazon shut Alexa’s ranking service down in May 2022, so no current equivalent exists |
| More than 50% of shoppers say online video has helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy | Think with Google, YouTube strategy to drive action | Retired. No current primary source republishes it |
| Half of people seek out videos that give them new perspectives, and 51% say they need to connect with and better understand others through video | Think with Google, video search behavior trends | Retired. No current primary source republishes it |
| 4 in 5 people use digital video to learn new skills | Think with Google, video search behavior trends | Retired. No current primary source republishes it |
| More than half of people would give up video and other media in exchange for faster-loading websites | Unbounce Page Speed Report | Retired. Unbounce has not refreshed the study |
| India’s online video audience was projected to reach 500 million in 2020 | Deloitte TMT Predictions, India | Retired. It was a forecast rather than a measurement, and the forecast year has passed |
| Live video is the third most popular social media tactic brands are implementing | HubSpot State of Marketing, social media trends (the page has since been taken down) | Retired. HubSpot no longer publishes the ranking |
| Video is the fastest-growing advertising tool on Twitter | Twitter Business, how video is reshaping digital advertising (the page went down with the move to X) | Retired. X publishes no comparable figure. Statistic 38 has X at 16% marketer-rated effectiveness |
| Direct-to-consumer advertisers are more likely to spend on stories and shoppable ads | IAB Video Advertising Spend Report 2019 | Retired. IAB no longer breaks out DTC spending on stories and shoppable ads. Statistics 16 to 22 are the current IAB video spend figures |
| YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are the top three purchase-driving platforms | Unattributed in the previous edition | Retired. No current primary source makes this ranking claim |
The two retirements worth knowing about, because they are still quoted daily, are the Cisco 82% traffic forecast and the “video on a landing page lifts conversion 86%” claim. The Cisco forecast gets its own FAQ answer, and both are set out in the exclusions note above.
Related data on this site. Content marketing statistics, digital marketing statistics, YouTube statistics, and a practical guide to making money on YouTube.
Last verified: August 23, 2026.
Written by
Chintan Zalani
Hey, I’m Chintan, a creator and the founder of Elite Content Marketer. I make a living writing from cafes, traveling to mountains, and hopping across cities. Join me on this site to learn how you can make a living as a sustainable creator.
View Profile →Related Articles
Marketing Data
Investment Statistics 2026: 100+ Sourced Numbers
100+ investment statistics for 2026, every number traced to its primary source: AI took 65.4% of US venture deal value and global FDI rose 6% to $1.6 trillion.
Aug 29, 2026Read more →
Marketing Data
75+ Email Marketing Stats for 2026: What Holds Up
75+ email marketing stats for 2026, each traced to a primary source: open rates from 30.7% to 39.64%, real ROI figures, and the new sender rules.
Aug 28, 2026Read more →
Marketing Data
95+ Online Review Statistics for 2026 (Sourced)
95+ online review statistics for 2026, every number traced to its primary source: 45% now ask AI for local recommendations and Google’s share fell to 71%.
Aug 27, 2026Read more →