---
title: "Marketing Statistics 2026: 115+ Data Points (Updated August 2026)"
description: "115+ marketing statistics for 2026, each cited. CMOs put 15.3% of budget into AI, email still returns $36 per $1 spent, and 91% of businesses now use video. Updated monthly."
date: 2026-08-15
lastmod: '2026-08-15'
draft: false
type: research
author_name: "Kamaraj Mathiarasan"
author_slug: kamaraj-mathiarasan
reviewed_by: "Vignesh Sampath Kumar"
reviewed_by_slug: vignesh
reviewed_by_role: "Founder, Topickz"
read_time: "16 min read"
cover_image: "/images/research/marketing-statistics-2026-cover.svg"
image: "/images/research/marketing-statistics-2026-cover.png"
image_alt: "Topickz Marketing Statistics 2026 cover, an X-style card from the verified topickz.com research desk titled Marketing Statistics 2026: 115+ Data Points on Budgets, AI, Content and Channels"
schema: "Article"
ai_summary:
- "CMOs allocate 15.3% of their marketing budget to AI in 2026, but only 30% say their organization is ready to scale AI capabilities, per Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey."
- "Marketing budgets sit at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, essentially flat from 7.7% in 2025, per Gartner."
- "86.4% of marketers now use AI in at least one part of their job, and 94% plan to use it for content creation in 2026, per HubSpot's State of Marketing report."
- "Email marketing still returns an average $36 for every $1 spent, and the top 8% of programs clear a 45:1 ratio, per Litmus's State of Email report."
- "91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool and 82% report a good ROI from it, per Wyzowl's 2026 State of Video Marketing survey."
---
Every marketing team is running the same experiment right now: fold AI into the workflow, keep the budget roughly flat, and try to prove the whole thing still works. The data below is what that experiment actually looks like across thousands of marketers, not the highlight reel from a keynote stage.
We pulled 115+ marketing statistics for 2026, each traced to the survey, report or dataset that produced it, with the month it published. Where a widely-repeated number turned out to be untraceable or years stale, we left it off the page rather than pad the count.
This is a living page, refreshed as new benchmark reports land through 2026.
{{< infographic-stat
number="15.3%"
label="of the marketing budget CMOs now put toward AI, yet only 30% say their organization is ready to scale it"
sub="Gartner, 2026 CMO Spend Survey, May 2026" >}}
{{< collapse "How we compiled this, our sources and method" >}}
**What this page is.** A curated, cited roundup of third-party marketing statistics published in 2025 and 2026. The Topickz research desk collected, checked and organized these figures. We did not run these studies ourselves, and we never present another firm's data as our own. Topickz's own proprietary datasets (the 816-tool pricing study, the buyer-behavior report) cover B2B SaaS purchasing, not general marketing benchmarks, so this page leans on the field's own primary research instead of forcing a fit.
**Sourcing bar.** Every stat links to a source and carries a publication month. We prioritized primary sources: the survey, report or platform data that first produced the figure, from HubSpot, Gartner, the Content Marketing Institute, Litmus, Wyzowl, Sprout Social, DataReportal, WordStream, Salesforce and McKinsey.
**What we dropped.** Several popular "marketing automation ROI" and "SEO spend" figures circulating on other stats pages could not be traced past a blog-to-blog citation chain back to any actual study, so they are not here. A handful of aggregator-only email benchmark tables were dropped in favor of Litmus and Mailchimp's own published numbers.
**Forecasts.** A few figures below are projections (Gartner budget-readiness commentary, market-size estimates). We phrase these as forecasts or estimates in the sentence so you can tell measured survey data from a projection.
**Disclaimer.** This is general market analysis, not advice on any specific vendor. Topickz may earn affiliate commissions from some tools we cover, and commissions never influence our data or analysis. See our [editorial standards](/about/methodology/) and [affiliate disclosure](/affiliate-disclosure/).
{{< /collapse >}}
## Key takeaways
- **CMOs allocate 15.3% of the marketing budget to AI in 2026**, yet only 30% say their organization is ready to scale those AI capabilities. ([Gartner](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), May 2026)
- **Marketing budgets sit at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026**, barely moved from 7.7% in 2025, and 59% of CMOs still call their budget insufficient. ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue), May 2025)
- **86.4% of marketers now use AI in at least one part of their marketing work**, and 94% plan to use it for content creation in 2026. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Email marketing returns an average $36 for every $1 spent**, and the top 8% of programs clear a 45:1 ratio. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool**, tied for an all-time high, and 82% report a good ROI from it. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **B2B buyers consume 13.4 pieces of content on average before contacting sales**, and 67% of the buying journey happens before a sales rep gets involved. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **Only 12% of B2B marketers call their content marketing highly effective**, while 63% still struggle to prove its revenue impact. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **Measuring marketing ROI is now the single biggest challenge marketers report**, cited by 33% ahead of keeping up with trends (29.8%) and lead generation (29.6%). ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **73% of marketers are expected to produce more content than last year**, and workload rose for nearly three-quarters of teams even as headcount stayed flat. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **5.79 billion people now use social media worldwide**, 69.9% of the planet, growing by more than 800,000 new users a day. ([DataReportal](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2026-global-overview-report), April 2026)
- **Personalization leaders drive 5 to 15% more revenue and cut customer acquisition costs by up to 50%**, largely through product recommendations and triggered messaging. ([McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-personalization-and-how-to-get-ready-for-it), 2025)
## Marketing budgets and spend
- **Marketing budgets flatlined at 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2025**, with half of CMOs reporting 6% or less. ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue), May 2025)
- **Budgets edged up slightly to 7.8% of company revenue in 2026**, a marginal gain rather than a real recovery. ([Gartner](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), May 2026)
- **59% of CMOs say they don't have enough budget to execute their strategy** for the year. ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue), May 2025)
- **Paid media absorbs 30.6% of the total marketing budget**, the single largest line item CMOs manage. ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue), May 2025)
- **70% of CMOs call becoming an AI leader a critical goal for 2026**, but only 30% report the organizational maturity to scale it. ([Gartner](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), May 2026)
- **79.2% of marketers expect at least a slight budget increase in 2026**, including 21.2% who expect a significant jump; only 6% expect a cut. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **73% of marketers say their budget faces more scrutiny than in past years**, a sign that growth in dollars hasn't loosened the accountability bar. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **The top three areas marketers plan to increase spend on in 2026 are AI chatbots (37.7%), paid social (37.4%) and video marketing (37.1%)**. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Physical ads, direct mail and print advertising are the categories most marketers plan to cut**, at 23.3%, 21.6% and 21.4% respectively. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **The B2B marketing budget median sits at 9.1% of company revenue**, down from 9.5% in 2025. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
## AI in marketing
- **86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least a few areas of their work**, and only 1.7% have no plans to adopt it at all. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **68.2% of marketers say they understand how to use AI in marketing**, up sharply from 47% in 2025. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **67.5% say they know how to measure AI's impact**, up from 48% the prior year. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **73.4% of marketers see AI working alongside them**, assisting with most job duties rather than replacing the role outright. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **94% of marketers plan to use AI in content creation, including blog articles, in 2026**. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **26.5% of marketers say AI significantly increased their productivity**, and another 66.2% say it helped slightly or moderately. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **About a third of marketers using AI save 10 to 14 hours a week**, and another third save more than 15 hours a week. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Top AI use cases by extensive usage**: content creation (42.5%), media creation (37.2%), administrative automation (35.6%), skill development (34.6%) and advertising automation (34.1%). ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **25.7% of marketing leaders still say using AI strategically is difficult**, even as day-to-day adoption keeps climbing. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ai-predictions-marketing), 2026)
- **95% of B2B marketing organizations now use AI-powered applications**, but just 5% call their implementation advanced and 3% call it fully leading. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **87% of B2B marketers using AI report improved productivity**, 80% cite operational efficiency gains, and 12% say AI content actually hurt their content quality. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **AI-powered marketing tools are the top planned 2026 investment for B2B marketers**, named by 45% as a top-three priority area. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **50% of Google searches now surface an AI overview**, and roughly half of consumers use AI-powered search in 2026, both reshaping how marketers think about visibility. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Nearly 30% of marketers reported decreased organic search traffic** as more consumers shift queries to AI tools. ([HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing), 2026)
## Content marketing
- **B2B buyers consume 13.4 pieces of content on average before ever contacting sales**, with 67% of the buying journey happening on their own. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **The highest-performing B2B companies dedicate 11 to 30% of their total marketing budget to content**, with a median around 18%. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **Companies that invest 25 to 30% of budget in content generate roughly 3x more inbound leads** than those investing under 10%. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **Only 12% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing highly effective**, 47% say somewhat effective, and 31% report neutral or mixed results. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **97% of B2B organizations have a documented content strategy**, and 61% say it improved their content's performance in the past year. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **63% of B2B marketers still struggle to prove their content's revenue impact**, even with AI-assisted content calendars in place. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **96% of B2B organizations create thought leadership content**, and 76% publish it on LinkedIn specifically. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **89% of B2B marketers personalize content**, though only 5% call their personalization extensive and just 1% comprehensive. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **91% of B2B organizations collect first-party data**, most often through direct customer engagement (77%) and content-driven collection (68%). ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **Short-form video generated 104% more votes as the highest-ROI content format** in 2025 compared to 2024, the single biggest format shift HubSpot tracked. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **52% of marketers believe AI has made content so easy to produce that it's become less effective**, and 53% say they struggle to differentiate their content in an AI-saturated market. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## Email marketing
- **Email delivers an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent**, the most durable benchmark in the channel. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **Retail and ecommerce brands average $45 per $1 spent on email**, outperforming the cross-industry benchmark. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **The top 8% of email programs achieve a 45:1 or better ROI ratio**, and those programs are most likely to prioritize newsletters and onboarding sequences. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **Advanced AI adopters are 75% more likely to hit ROIs above 45:1** than teams without advanced AI use in email. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **76% of email teams can now deploy a single campaign within three days**, up from just 38% of teams hitting that speed in 2024. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **75% of marketers maintained or increased their email marketing budget in 2026**, a sign the channel keeps earning its spot despite the AI-tool land grab. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Multi-touch attribution use in email measurement rose 22% year over year**, as more teams move past last-click reporting. ([Litmus](https://www.litmus.com/state-of-email-reports), 2025-2026)
- **The average email open rate across industries is 19.21%, with a 2.44% click-through rate**, though Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open counts by pre-loading tracking pixels. ([Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/), 2026)
- **Government sector emails post the highest open rates at 30.5%**, followed by nonprofits at 25.2%. ([Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/), 2026)
## Social media marketing
- **5.79 billion people actively use social media worldwide as of April 2026**, 69.9% of the global population. ([DataReportal](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2026-global-overview-report), April 2026)
- **294 million new social media users joined in the 12 months to April 2026**, more than 800,000 new users every day. ([DataReportal](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2026-global-overview-report), April 2026)
- **94.7% of all internet users now use social media at least monthly**, and the average person actively uses 6.5 different platforms. ([DataReportal](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2026-global-overview-report), April 2026)
- **Instagram is the most-leveraged platform among marketers at 70% usage**, followed by Facebook at 69.6%. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **X and TikTok trail at 55.8% and 54.5% marketer usage** respectively, still sizable but well behind the top two platforms. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **48.4% of B2B marketers rank Instagram in their top three ROI channels**, edging out Facebook's 36.9% among B2B marketers. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Social networks generated an estimated 15.2% of total online sales in 2026**, as social commerce revenue climbed toward $820 billion globally. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
- **81% of consumers say social media has swayed them into a spontaneous purchase multiple times a year**. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
- **TikTok, Instagram and YouTube together account for over 60% of product discovery**, surpassing Google search for the first time in Sprout's tracking. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
- **41% of Gen Z now turns to social media first when researching a purchase**, versus 32% who go to traditional search first. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
- **73% of consumers say they'll switch to a competitor if a brand doesn't respond to them on social media**. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
- **49.4% of marketers reuse the same content across every social platform**, while 39.5% tailor content per platform. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## Video marketing
- **91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool**, tied for an all-time high in a 12-year-running survey. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **93% of video marketers call it an essential part of their overall strategy**. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **82% of video marketers report a good ROI from video**, and 88% say it directly helped increase sales or leads. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **93% of marketers say video increased user understanding of their product**, and the same share credit it with lifting brand awareness. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **Businesses using video grow revenue roughly 49% faster than those that don't**. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **85% of people say they've been convinced to buy a product after watching a video about it**. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **84% of consumers want to see more video from brands**, a figure that has held within 8 points for eight straight years. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **92% of marketers plan to spend the same or more on video in 2026** than they did the year prior. ([Wyzowl](https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/), 2026)
- **48.6% of marketers name short-form video as the format earning the biggest ROI**, ahead of long-form video at 28.6%. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Short-form video captures the highest ROI among video formats at 41%** in Sprout Social's separate measurement. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
## Influencer marketing
- **The global influencer marketing market was valued at $31.07 billion in 2025**, projected to reach $40.51 billion in 2026. ([Mordor Intelligence](https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-influencer-marketing-platform-market), 2025-2026)
- **The US accounts for roughly 82% of total influencer marketing budget spend** among the top five spending countries, at an estimated $9.3 billion in 2025. ([Mordor Intelligence](https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-influencer-marketing-platform-market), 2025)
- **21.2% of marketers overall leverage influencer marketing**, split between 23.6% of B2C companies and 18.6% of B2B companies. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Micro-influencers deliver the most success for 32.4% of marketers**, ahead of macro-influencers (30.2%) and mega-influencers (13.1%). ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **94% of organizations say influencer marketing outperforms traditional digital advertising**, often by 2x to 3x on returns. ([Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-roi-statistics/), 2026)
## Paid advertising and PPC
- **The average cost per click across all industries is $5.42 in Google search ads**, ranging from $1.63 in Arts & Entertainment to $9.87 in Attorneys & Legal Services. ([WordStream](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks), 2026)
- **The average Google Ads conversion rate rose to 8.18%**, improving across 87% of industries WordStream tracked. ([WordStream](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks), 2026)
- **Average cost per lead fell to $66.69**, the first year-over-year CPL decrease WordStream has recorded since before 2020. ([WordStream](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks), 2026)
- **WordStream's 2026 benchmarks were built from over 13,000 search campaigns across 23 industries**, running between April 2025 and March 2026. ([WordStream](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks), 2026)
- **37.4% of marketers plan to increase paid social spend in 2026**, the second-most-cited planned budget increase behind AI chatbots. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## Marketing automation and martech
- **47.38% of marketers cite automation as a top trend they're leaning into for 2026**. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **35.6% of marketers use AI extensively for administrative task automation**, one of the fastest-growing AI use cases in the HubSpot survey. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **34.1% of marketers use AI extensively for advertising automation**, from bid management to creative testing. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Only 31% of marketers are fully satisfied with their ability to unify marketing data**, and 41% report meaningful data silos between platforms in their stack. ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/marketing-statistics/), 2025-2026)
- **63% of marketers report currently using generative AI tools** as part of their regular marketing workflow. ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/marketing-statistics/), 2025-2026)
## Personalization and customer experience
- **Personalization leaders drive 5 to 15% more revenue** than companies that don't personalize at scale. ([McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-personalization-and-how-to-get-ready-for-it), 2025)
- **Fast-growing companies derive 40% more of their revenue from personalization** than their slower-growing peers. ([McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-personalization-and-how-to-get-ready-for-it), 2025)
- **Personalization can cut customer acquisition costs by up to 50%** and lift marketing-spend efficiency by 10 to 30%. ([McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-personalization-and-how-to-get-ready-for-it), 2025)
- **93.2% of marketers say personalized or segmented experiences led to more leads and purchases**. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Only 12.6% of marketers have reached hyper-personalization**, meaning true behavior-based messaging and recommendations, even though 65% say they have high-quality audience data available. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **69.2% of marketers say they effectively use customer data for personalization**, a confidence gap against the 12.6% actually running hyper-personalized programs. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## B2B marketing
- **B2B buyers consume 13.4 pieces of content on average before contacting sales**, confirming that most of the buying decision happens without a rep in the room. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **19% of B2B organizations run both ABM and ABX programs together**, 30% run ABM alone, and 51% run neither. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **65% of B2B marketers running ABM say it outperforms traditional marketing** for the accounts it targets. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **78% of B2B marketers allocate budget to experiential marketing**, though only 30% call their program mature. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **The B2B marketing budget median is 9.1% of company revenue**, down from 9.5% a year earlier, a sign B2B spend is under more pressure than the cross-industry average. ([Content Marketing Institute](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research), 2025-2026)
- **18.6% of B2B companies use influencer marketing**, well below the 23.6% adoption rate among B2C companies. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## Marketing attribution and ROI
- **Measuring marketing ROI is the top-cited challenge for marketers**, named by 33%, ahead of keeping up with trends (29.8%) and lead generation (29.6%). ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **93.8% of marketers say lead quality improved over the past year**, and 74.5% report lead volume also increased. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **55.7% of marketers say generating leads is easier than it was a decade ago**, even though 30% still name lead generation their top challenge. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **27.6% of marketers cite sales-and-marketing alignment as a top challenge**, and 19.5% struggle specifically with adopting a data-driven strategy. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **Only 31% of marketers are fully satisfied with unifying data across their martech stack**, the structural issue underneath most attribution complaints. ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/marketing-statistics/), 2025-2026)
## Marketing teams, workload and careers
- **73% of marketers are expected to produce more content this year than last**, and 35.7% say leadership expects "much more" output. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **25.7% of marketers report their workload increased significantly in the past year**, and 47.4% say it increased moderately; fewer than 5% saw any decrease. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **37.9% of marketers say leadership now views marketing as less important than in past years**, even as output expectations climb. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **70% of marketers believe the field has changed more in the past three years than in the previous fifty**. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
- **65% of marketers say they're meeting or exceeding their performance benchmarks**, despite the reported rise in workload and scrutiny. ([HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report), 2026)
## What these marketing statistics mean for 2026
The budget story and the AI story are really the same story. CMOs are putting real money behind AI, 15.3% of the budget, but only three in ten say their organization is actually ready to use it well. That gap between spend and readiness shows up everywhere else on this page: 86% of marketers use AI, yet 33% still call ROI measurement their number one problem, and 63% of B2B marketers can't tie content to revenue even with AI tools running their calendars.
The channels that keep proving themselves are the boring ones. Email still returns $36 for every dollar spent, more than a decade after marketers started predicting its death, and video's 91% adoption rate with an 82% good-ROI rate suggests it graduated from experiment to infrastructure years ago. What's shifting is the discovery layer underneath those channels: nearly a third of marketers already see AI search eating into organic traffic, and 41% of Gen Z now starts a purchase search on social media before Google.
The workforce read is the least comfortable one. Nearly three-quarters of marketers are being asked to produce more, budgets barely moved, and 38% feel their function is valued less by leadership than it used to be. Marketing in 2026 isn't shrinking. It's being asked to do more with the same money and prove it, which is exactly why attribution, not creativity, is the skill in shortest supply on most teams right now.
We keep this page current. If a figure here is out of date or you have a study we should add, tell us through our [editorial standards](/about/methodology/) page.
## Related research from Topickz
- [AI Statistics 2026](/research/ai-statistics-2026/)
- [B2B SaaS Buyer-Behavior Statistics 2026](/research/b2b-saas-buyer-behavior-statistics-2026/)
- [Sales Statistics 2026](/research/sales-statistics-2026/)
- [AI SEO Statistics 2026](/research/ai-seo-statistics-2026/)