---
url: 'https://piktochart.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics-2026/'
title: 'Video Marketing Statistics 2026: What 91% Adoption Actually Means for Small Teams'
author:
  name: Ai Ching Goh
  url: 'https://piktochart.com/blog/author/piktochart/'
date: '2026-09-15T04:40:00+00:00'
modified: '2026-09-16T16:42:07+00:00'
type: post
categories:
  - Marketing
  - Video
tags:
  - video marketing
image: 'https://piktochart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/video-marketing-statistics-2026.png'
published: true
---

# Video Marketing Statistics 2026: What 91% Adoption Actually Means for Small Teams

Ninety-one percent of businesses now use video as a marketing tool. Ninety-three percent of those marketers call it an important part of their strategy. Eighty-five percent say it has generated leads, 83% say it has directly increased sales, and 82% say it has driven more traffic to their site.

Here’s the number that should actually change how you plan: 24% of the businesses still not using video say it’s because video is too expensive, 19% say they don’t have the time, and 10% say they simply don’t know where to start.

That last group is the whole story of 2026. Video adoption is no longer the question. Almost everyone is doing it. What separates teams now is whether they can produce video consistently without it eating the rest of the marketing calendar.

We pulled the latest figures from Wyzowl’s 12th annual State of Video Marketing report, surveyed from 266 respondents in late 2025, and cross-checked the consumer-side numbers. Here’s what the data actually says, and what it means if you’re the person who has to make the videos.

## Video adoption has plateaued, and that changes everything

In 2026, 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, back to matching the all-time high after a slight dip in 2025. Wyzowl has now tracked this figure for twelve consecutive years, and it has sat in the same high band for three of them.

That’s not a growth curve anymore. It’s a ceiling.

For roughly a decade, the advice was “start using video.” That advice is now redundant for nine out of ten businesses. The competitive edge has moved from *whether* you publish video to whether you can publish enough of it, in the right format, for the right platform, without your team grinding to a halt.

And a lot of teams are grinding to a halt. That’s what the barrier data tells us.

### Why the last 9% still aren’t making video

Among marketers who don’t use video:

- 24% say they don’t feel it’s needed

- 24% say it’s too expensive

- 19% say they don’t have enough time

- 10% are unclear on the ROI

- 10% don’t know where to start

- 5% can’t convince key decision-makers

- 5% had a negative past experience

Look at what’s actually on that list. Cost, time, and not knowing where to begin account for more than half the holdouts. Those aren’t strategic objections. They’re production problems.

And there’s a contradiction sitting right in the middle of it. A quarter of non-users say video is too expensive, while 30% of the marketers who do use video say costs are getting *cheaper*, and another 32% say costs haven’t changed at all. The perception of video as an expensive line item is lagging behind what it now costs to actually make one.

Encouragingly, 67% of the marketers who didn’t use video last year say they plan to start in 2026.

## Most video is now made in-house

Fifty-nine percent of video marketers create their video themselves. Another 32% use a mix of in-house and external vendors. Only 10% outsource it entirely.

This is probably the single most useful stat in the whole report if you’re a small team. The default mode of video marketing in 2026 is not an agency brief and a production schedule. It’s someone on the marketing team, making the thing.

Which makes the format data worth reading carefully. Live action is still the most common type of video created at 51%, followed by animated at 23% and screen-recorded at 19%.

Screen recording deserves more attention than that 19% suggests. It’s the one format where you don’t need a camera, a location, a script read, or anyone on screen. If you’re explaining software, walking through a process, or answering a question a customer keeps asking, a [screen recorder](https://piktochart.com/video-editor/screen-recorder/) gets you a finished video in the time it takes to talk through the thing once.

## What marketers are actually making

The use cases are spread more evenly than you might expect, which tells you video has stopped being a single tactic and become a general-purpose format:

| Video type | % of marketers creating it |
| --- | --- |
| Social media videos | 69% |
| Explainer videos | 68% |
| Testimonial videos | 57% |
| Presentation videos | 48% |
| Video ads | 48% |
| Teaser videos | 45% |
| Product demos | 39% |
| Sales videos | 37% |
| Videographics | 27% |
| Customer service videos | 24% |
| Training videos | 23% |
| Customer onboarding videos | 23% |
| App demo videos | 17% |
| Employee onboarding videos | 16% |

Social media video tops the list, and that has a practical consequence most teams underestimate. If you’re posting to more than one platform, you’re not making one video. You’re making one video and then reformatting it, because a vertical clip for Reels doesn’t work as a YouTube upload and a widescreen YouTube cut looks wrong in a TikTok feed.

That reformatting step is where a lot of small teams lose their afternoon. It’s also the easiest part of the process to speed up, which we’ll come back to.

## The AI jump is the biggest year-over-year shift in the report

Sixty-three percent of video marketers say they’ve used AI video tools to help create or edit marketing videos. Last year that figure was 51%.

A twelve-point jump in a single year is the largest movement in the entire dataset. AI video went from something roughly half of marketers had tried to something closer to two-thirds, in twelve months.

That matters most for the teams citing cost and time as barriers, because AI generation changes what you do when you’re missing a shot. You used to have three options: film it, buy stock, or cut the idea. Now there’s a fourth. Describing the scene you need and generating it is often faster than searching a stock library for something close enough, which is exactly what an [AI video generator](https://piktochart.com/video-editor/ai-video-generator/) is for.

Worth being clear-eyed about it though: AI generation is a starting point, not a finished video. The generated clip still needs trimming, captioning, and branding before it goes out. Which is why the tools that hand you a clip and stop there tend to disappoint.

## ROI is still strong, but the number came down

Eighty-two percent of marketers say video marketing has given them a good ROI.

That’s a real drop from last year’s all-time high of 93%, and it’s worth sitting with rather than glossing over. The most plausible explanation is straightforward: when 91% of businesses are producing video, more of that video is going to be mediocre. Average ROI falls when the average participant is less experienced, not because the format stopped working.

The supporting numbers back that up. Video is still doing the job:

- 93% say video increased user understanding of their product or service

- 93% say it increased brand awareness

- 85% say it generated leads

- 83% say it directly increased sales

- 82% say it increased web traffic

- 82% say it kept visitors on their site longer

- 57% say it reduced support queries

That last one is quietly the most interesting. More than half of video marketers say video cut their support load. If the same question keeps landing in your inbox, recording the answer once is cheaper than typing it fifty times, and the [video to text converter](https://piktochart.com/video-editor/video-to-text-converter/) means that recording also gives you a searchable transcript you can paste into a help doc.

How marketers actually measure this is more mixed. Sixty-seven percent quantify ROI through views and 63% through engagement, while only 32% track it through bottom line sales. So when you read “82% report good ROI,” understand that for most respondents that’s a view and engagement judgement, not a revenue attribution.

Also worth noting: 17% of marketers aren’t tracking their video spend at all, which makes any ROI answer from that group somewhat theoretical.

## Keep it short, but not as short as you think

Seventy-one percent of marketers believe videos between 30 seconds and two minutes are the most effective length.

That’s a useful correction to the “shorter is always better” reflex. The sweet spot isn’t six seconds. It’s long enough to actually explain something and short enough that people finish it.

For most teams the practical work isn’t shooting to length, it’s cutting to length afterwards. You record a five-minute walkthrough, then pull the ninety seconds that matter. That, plus resizing the same cut for each platform you post to, is what a [video cropper](https://piktochart.com/video-editor/video-cropper/) handles in a couple of clicks instead of a couple of hours.

## Where video actually works, and where marketers are wasting effort

This is the section of the report with the most actionable gap in it. Compare how widely a platform is used against how effective marketers say it is:

| Platform | Used by | Rated effective by | Gap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| YouTube | 82% | 69% | -13 |
| LinkedIn | 70% | 50% | -20 |
| Instagram | 69% | 56% | -13 |
| Facebook | 66% | 55% | -11 |
| Webinars | 56% | 42% | -14 |
| TikTok | 40% | 29% | -11 |
| Interactive video | 31% | 20% | -11 |
| X | 29% | 16% | -13 |
| Snapchat | 16% | 8% | -8 |

YouTube is both the most used and the most effective, so that one is simple. The more interesting line is LinkedIn: 70% of video marketers publish there, making it the second most used platform, but only 50% rate it effective, the widest usage-to-effectiveness gap in the report.

TikTok is the other one worth flagging. Four in ten marketers use it, but it sits near the bottom for reported effectiveness at 29%. That doesn’t mean TikTok doesn’t work. It more likely means a lot of brands are posting repurposed content there that was never made for the platform, which is a production problem rather than a channel problem.

## What consumers say they want

The audience-side data is blunt:

- 96% have watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service

- 89% say video quality affects their trust in a brand

- 85% have been convinced to buy something by watching a video

- 84% want to see more video from brands in 2026

- 80% have bought or downloaded an app after watching an app demo video

And when people are asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 63% choose a short video. Text-based articles come in at 12%, infographics at 7%, sales calls at 5%, and ebooks or webinars at 4% each.

Pair that 63% with the 89% who say video quality affects brand trust and you get the real brief for 2026. People want video, and they can tell when it was made carelessly. Which doesn’t mean you need a production budget. It means the basics need to be right: readable text, captions that match, consistent colours and logo, and a sensible length.

## What this actually means for your team

Strip the report back and four things follow.

**Video is now table stakes, so competing on having it is pointless.** With 91% adoption, publishing video no longer differentiates you. Publishing it consistently does.

**The barriers are production barriers, not strategy barriers.** Cost, time, and not knowing where to start are the reasons teams stall. None of those are solved by another strategy deck. They’re solved by shortening the distance between “we need a video” and “the video is done.”

**In-house is the default.** With 59% of marketers making video themselves, the tool that matters is the one a non-editor can actually use, not the one with the most features.

**One video should become several.** Given that social media video is the most common use case and every platform wants a different shape, the teams keeping up are the ones treating a single recording as raw material for a week of posts rather than a single deliverable.

That last point is where most of the time savings actually live. If you want the practical version of it, we’ve written a separate walkthrough on [turning one video into a week of content](https://piktochart.com/blog/repurpose-video-content/).

## Make your next video without the production overhead

The gap between the teams publishing consistently and the teams stalled at “we should really do more video” is almost never talent. It’s setup time.

Piktochart’s [online video editor](https://piktochart.com/video-editor/) is built for the 59% making video in-house. Upload your own clips, record your screen, generate a shot with AI, or pull something from the stock library, then edit it all on one simple timeline. No install, no learning curve, and a free account to start with.

## Frequently asked questions

**What percentage of businesses use video marketing in 2026?** 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2026, according to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing report. This matches the all-time high first reached in 2023, after a slight dip in 2025.

**Is video marketing still worth it in 2026?** Yes, though the headline number has softened. 82% of marketers report a good ROI from video, down from 93% the previous year. The most likely explanation is that near-universal adoption means more inexperienced teams are producing video, which pulls the average down rather than indicating the format is weakening.

**What is the best length for a marketing video?** 71% of marketers say videos between 30 seconds and two minutes are the most effective. Shorter than 30 seconds often isn’t enough to explain anything useful, and engagement tends to fall off as videos run longer.

**Which platform is best for video marketing?** YouTube leads on both counts: 82% of video marketers use it and 69% rate it effective. Instagram (56%), Facebook (55%) and LinkedIn (50%) follow on effectiveness. LinkedIn shows the biggest gap between how widely it’s used (70%) and how effective marketers find it (50%).

**How many marketers use AI to make videos?** 63% of video marketers have used AI video tools to create or edit marketing videos in 2026, up sharply from 51% the year before. That twelve-point jump is the largest single-year change in the report.

**Why do some businesses still not use video marketing?** The most common reasons are that they don’t feel it’s needed (24%), it’s too expensive (24%), and they don’t have enough time (19%). A further 10% say they don’t know where to start. Notably, 67% of non-users plan to start using video in 2026.

**What do consumers prefer, video or text?** When asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 63% of consumers choose a short video, compared with 12% who prefer a text-based article. 84% say they want to see more video from brands.

## Sources

All primary survey figures in this article come from Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2026, the 12th edition of their annual report, based on 266 unique respondents surveyed in late 2025.

- Wyzowl, State of Video Marketing 2026: https://wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/