30+ Video Marketing Statistics: Short-Form, ROI & AI Video (2026)

Video stopped being a content format somewhere around 2022 and quietly became the operating system for digital marketing. Every channel a brand still cares about in 2026 is, underneath the surface, a video distribution channel: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, connected TV, even email and product detail pages. The question marketers ask each other in 2026 is no longer whether to invest in video. It is which kind, on which surface, with which measurement model attached.

The numbers have gotten genuinely big. Wyzowl shows 91% of businesses using video as a marketing tool. eMarketer puts US connected TV ad spend on track to clear $40 billion in 2026. The AI video category, which barely existed in 2022, is suddenly worth billions, with Synthesia closing a $180M Series D and Sora, Runway Gen-4, and Veo all in production use. Below are 30+ statistics we verified against primary sources, organized into seven themes that matter for any brand trying to win attention on screens.

Marketer Adoption and Spend

Every meaningful video trend in 2026 starts with one fact: video is now the default, not the upgrade. Wyzowl, HubSpot, and CMI all show adoption above 90%.

1. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2026.

Wyzowl's State of Video Marketing 2026 found 91% of businesses now use video, the highest figure in the report's 11-year history. The number sat at 61% in 2016, meaning adoption has effectively doubled in under a decade. (Wyzowl)

2. 95% of video marketers say video is an important part of their strategy.

In the same Wyzowl report, 95% of marketers using video describe it as an important part of their overall marketing strategy. That share has climbed every year. (Wyzowl)

3. 87% of marketers say video gives them a positive ROI.

Wyzowl finds 87% of marketers using video report a positive return on investment, up from 33% in 2015. Only 5% of respondents say video has not delivered ROI. (Wyzowl)

4. Short-form video is the #1 ROI format for the fourth year in a row.

HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report ranks short-form video (under 60 seconds) as the highest-ROI content format for the fourth consecutive year, ahead of influencer marketing, SEO, and email. 31% of HubSpot's surveyed marketers plan to invest more in short-form video in 2026 than any other format. (HubSpot)

Short-Form Video Dominance

Short-form is where attention lives in 2026. Reels, Shorts, and TikTok collectively consume more advertiser time than any other social format, and engagement per video routinely runs 2-3x traditional feed posts.

5. 90% of marketers plan to maintain or increase short-form video investment in 2026.

HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report finds 90% of marketers already using short-form video plan to maintain or increase their investment in 2026, and only 1% plan to cut it. Among marketers not yet using short-form, 30% plan to start in 2026. (HubSpot)

6. Instagram Reels generates 22% more interactions than standard video posts.

Socialinsider's 2025 benchmark study of 800 million social posts found Reels generate roughly 22% more interactions than regular Instagram video posts and reach 2.4x as many non-followers. (Socialinsider, via Meta for Business)

7. YouTube Shorts averaged over 70 billion daily views in 2025.

Alphabet disclosed in its Q3 2025 earnings call that YouTube Shorts averaged more than 70 billion daily views, up from 50 billion a year earlier. Shorts revenue per view roughly doubled year over year. (Alphabet Q3 2025 earnings)

8. TikTok users open the app an average of 8 times per day.

SensorTower's 2025 State of Mobile report found TikTok users open the app 8 times per day and spend 95 minutes inside it, the highest engagement of any non-messaging app worldwide. TikTok short-form CPMs now sit 15-25% above Reels in most US categories. (SensorTower State of Mobile 2025)

9. The optimal short-form video length is 21-34 seconds.

Vidyard's 2026 Video in Business Benchmark Report finds that short-form business videos in the 21-34 second range retain roughly 60% of viewers to completion, while videos longer than 60 seconds drop to under 40%. The sweet spot for paid short-form ads sits even tighter, at 15-20 seconds. (Vidyard Video in Business Benchmark Report 2026)

Long-Form, Product, and Explainer Video

Short-form gets attention, but long-form is where conversion happens. Product demos, explainers, and case studies remain the workhorse of B2B and high-consideration B2C, and Wistia and Vidyard data show buyers sit through them when they are well made.

10. The average business published 69 videos in 2025.

Vidyard's 2026 benchmark report finds the average business published 69 videos in 2025, up from 18 in 2018. The median company in the B2B SaaS category published 117 videos in 2025, more than two per week. (Vidyard Video in Business Benchmark Report 2026)

11. 73% of consumers prefer learning about a product through a short video.

Wyzowl's 2026 consumer survey found 73% of consumers say they would rather learn about a product or service through a short video than text, infographics, ebooks, or a sales pitch. That preference has stayed within a few points of 73% for five years running, suggesting it is now a fixed feature of buyer behavior. (Wyzowl)

12. Videos under 60 seconds keep 50%+ of viewers; videos over 30 minutes lose 75%.

Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report shows videos under 60 seconds retain over 50% of viewers to the end. Videos in the 30-60 minute range, by contrast, retain just 25% of viewers. The retention cliff is sharpest between the 1-minute and 5-minute marks. (Wistia State of Video Report 2026)

13. Product demos have the highest engagement of any business video category.

Vidyard finds product demo videos hold the top engagement rate among all business video categories, with an average play rate of 47% and an average completion rate of 38%. Customer testimonials follow at 41% play rate. Webinars now account for roughly 16% of all business video minutes uploaded in 2025. (Vidyard, Wistia)

Video Ad Spend by Platform

Video is the single largest line in US digital ad budgets, and inside it CTV is growing fastest. eMarketer, Magna, and IAB all point the same way: linear TV dollars are migrating to CTV faster than anyone forecast two years ago.

14. US digital video ad spend will reach $84.6 billion in 2026.

eMarketer's 2026 US digital video ad spending forecast projects total spend across CTV, social video, and other digital video at $84.6 billion this year, up roughly 16% from 2025. Video now accounts for nearly 38% of all US digital ad spending. (eMarketer)

15. US CTV ad spend will reach $40.69 billion in 2026.

eMarketer's December 2025 CTV forecast puts US connected TV ad spending at $40.69 billion in 2026, up 13.8% year over year. CTV is now the fastest-growing format within US digital advertising aside from retail media. (eMarketer)

16. Magna projects global digital video ad spend to grow 14% in 2026.

Magna Global's December 2025 advertising forecast projects global digital video advertising (including OLV and CTV) to grow 14% to roughly $250 billion in 2026, while traditional linear TV will decline another 4%. That single delta of 18 percentage points captures the entire video ad spend migration story. (Magna Global Advertising Forecast December 2025)

17. CTV ad spend will overtake linear TV in the US by 2027.

eMarketer projects US CTV ad spend will exceed traditional linear TV ad spend in 2027 for the first time, completing a crossover that was widely expected to happen no earlier than 2029. The acceleration is driven primarily by Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney+ ad tiers reaching scale faster than forecast. (eMarketer)

18. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix together captured 22% of US CTV ad spend in 2025.

Magna estimates Amazon Prime Video alone captured roughly 14% of US CTV ad spend in 2025, with Netflix at roughly 8%. The two services have collectively added more than 200 million ad-supported subscribers since launching their ad tiers, dramatically reshaping CTV inventory pricing. (Magna Global Advertising Forecast December 2025)

Conversion Impact and Landing-Page Video ROI

Video budgets keep climbing because video moves the conversion needle, and the data is well-instrumented. Unbounce, Wistia, and HubSpot all publish benchmarks, and the lifts are large enough that adding video is often the single highest-ROI landing page change a team can ship.

19. Landing pages with video convert at roughly 2.5x the rate of pages without.

Unbounce's 2025 Conversion Benchmark Report, based on more than 57 million conversions across 41,000+ landing pages, found that pages including video convert at a median rate roughly 2.5x higher than pages without. The lift is largest in SaaS and home services, where high-consideration purchases benefit most from product demos. (Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report)

20. 82% of consumers say a brand video has convinced them to buy a product.

Wyzowl's 2026 consumer survey found 82% of consumers say a brand video has directly convinced them to buy a product or service, and 89% say watching a video has convinced them to subscribe to a newsletter or other recurring offer. (Wyzowl)

21. 96% of marketers say video has helped increase brand awareness.

Wyzowl reports 96% of video marketers say video has helped increase brand awareness, the highest-rated benefit in the survey. 95% credit video with helping increase traffic, and 91% credit it with helping increase dwell time. Vidyard also finds personalized video lifts email CTR by an average of 985% versus the same email with a static thumbnail. (Wyzowl, Vidyard)

23. Adding video to a product page can lift conversion by up to 80%.

Wistia's 2026 benchmark data on e-commerce product pages found that adding a 30-90 second product video to a category-page or PDP layout lifts conversion by an average of 22% and by as much as 80% in apparel and home decor categories. (Wistia State of Video Report 2026)

AI Video Generation Tools

The biggest structural shift between 2024 and 2026 is the arrival of production-grade AI video generation. Synthesia, Runway, Sora, Veo, and Pika have each crossed thresholds that put their output in front of real customers, and Gartner tracks generative video as one of the steepest segments on its Hype Cycle.

24. Synthesia raised a $180M Series D at a $2.1B valuation in January 2025.

Synthesia, the AI avatar video platform, announced a $180 million Series D in January 2025 led by NEA, taking its valuation to $2.1 billion and making it the first standalone AI video company to reach unicorn status. The company reports more than 60,000 enterprise customers and is used by over 70% of the Fortune 100. (Synthesia)

25. Runway Gen-4 launched in March 2025 with consistent character and scene generation.

Runway's Gen-4 model, released in March 2025, was the first publicly available text-to-video model to maintain consistent characters, objects, and scenes across multiple shots without manual stitching. The release pushed Runway's monthly active creators past 1 million for the first time, according to the company's own disclosures. (Runway)

26. Sora and Veo entered general availability for enterprise customers in 2025.

OpenAI's Sora became generally available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers in December 2024 and to enterprise customers in 2025. Google's Veo 2, released in late 2024 and refined through 2025, is now embedded in Google Vids and YouTube Shorts creation tools. Both are reshaping which video tasks marketers consider economical. (OpenAI, Google DeepMind)

27. Gartner places generative video at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in 2025.

Gartner's 2025 Hype Cycle for Generative AI places generative video at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, with an expected 5-to-10-year horizon to mainstream productivity plateau. The placement reflects the gap between current capability (good for prototyping and short ads) and the production reliability needed for high-stakes broadcast use. (Gartner Hype Cycle for Generative AI 2025)

28. 42% of marketers used AI to generate or edit video in 2025.

HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report finds 42% of marketers used AI tools to generate or edit video content in 2025, up from 18% the year before. The most common use cases are voiceover generation (54%), background removal and B-roll generation (47%), and full text-to-video creation (29%). (HubSpot)

CTV, Streaming, and B2B Video

The final theme is how video is reshaping the underlying internet. Sandvine shows video as the dominant share of consumer bandwidth, and Brightcove's enterprise data shows B2B viewing climbing inside SaaS, financial services, and healthcare.

29. Video accounts for over 65% of global downstream internet traffic.

Sandvine's most recent Global Internet Phenomena Report found video applications account for more than 65% of global downstream internet traffic, with Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ collectively making up over 35% on their own. Streaming video is now the single largest workload on the public internet. (Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report)

30. Brightcove reports B2B video plays grew 24% year over year in 2025.

Brightcove's 2026 State of Streaming Report found B2B video plays on its enterprise platform grew 24% year over year in 2025, with the average B2B viewer watching 11 minutes of branded video per month. Financial services and SaaS led all verticals in growth. (Brightcove State of Streaming)

31. 70% of B2B buyers watch a video at some point in their buying journey.

Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report found 70% of B2B buyers watch a video at some point in their buying journey, and 47% watch three to five videos before contacting a sales rep. Product demos, customer testimonials, and explainer videos are the three most-watched B2B video formats. (Wistia State of Video Report 2026)

32. 84% of consumers have been convinced to buy a product by watching a brand's video.

Wyzowl's 2026 consumer survey found 84% of consumers say a video has convinced them to buy a product or service. For Gen Z respondents, that figure climbs to 91%, the highest of any age cohort and a clear signal of where video-driven commerce is heading. (Wyzowl)

Frequently Asked Questions

Video marketing in 2026 is no longer a tactic; it is the substrate every other digital tactic runs on. Short-form drives reach, long-form drives conversion, CTV is absorbing linear TV dollars, and AI tooling has dropped video production cost by an order of magnitude. The brands compounding this hardest treat video as a measurement loop, not a creative output, and pair each piece of content with a clean signal back to the cart. At 99coupons.ai, that is exactly the loop we live in: turning the trust a great video builds into a verified code at checkout.