Video Marketing Statistics for 2026: Who Watches, Where the Ad Money Goes, and What Marketers Report

Where each video number comes from, in one table

Each figure below was traced to its publisher in October 2026. Video statistics come in four kinds: meters that record viewing, network measurements that count bytes, spending estimates built from ad billings, and surveys of people who make or sell video. They answer different questions, so the last column says which kind you are reading. This page belongs to our marketing statistics library; for what to film and where to post it, the video marketing guide does the practical work.

The living room took the remote back from the phone

Nielsen's Gauge reports what share of all time spent with a television set in the US goes to each kind of viewing. In July 2026 YouTube's viewing rose 6% from June and its share reached a record 14.2%, according to Nielsen's July report, the latest US edition as of mid-October. Streaming as a whole took 49.0%, broadcast 19.5% and cable 18.7%. Nielsen says the Gauge covers ad-supported and ad-free viewing alike, and that methodology updates were planned for the fall, so compare months within one method.

YouTube's own figures point the same way. In its February 2025 letter on the year ahead, the company said TV had become the primary device for YouTube viewing in the US, measured by watch time as of December 2024, and that viewers watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube on TV screens every day. Those are company figures, unaudited and now nearly two years old. They agree with the meter, which is the best thing a company count can do.

The biggest screen in the house now plays the same videos as the smallest one.

For a business this is a production note more than a statistic. A video watched on a 65-inch screen is watched from a couch, with the sound on, sometimes by two people deciding together. A ten-minute walkthrough of a kitchen remodel is television now. YouTube also counts more than 1 billion monthly viewers of podcast content, as of January 2025: the same couch, a different format. Our YouTube SEO guide covers getting those videos found, and our social media statistics page carries YouTube's ad revenue and its claims about Shorts.

On the phone, video is most of the data, and social clips are most of the video

Ericsson builds mobile networks and measures the traffic on them. In the traffic update to its June 2026 Mobility Report, it says video accounted for around 75% of all mobile data traffic at the end of 2025, while total mobile data grew 23% between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026. Its November 2025 analysis of four European networks found social media video made up 70% to 80% of the video watched on smartphones, with on-demand streaming services under 10%.

Note what that measures: bytes, not attention. Video is heavy, so a minute of it moves far more data than a minute of reading. A 75% share of traffic says video is what phones carry, not that video fills 75% of the time people spend on them. The four networks are European and unnamed, so treat the social share as a strong hint about American phones rather than a measurement of them.

Pew Research Center asked the people holding the phones. Its survey of 1,458 US teens ages 13 to 17, fielded September 25 to October 9, 2025 and published in December 2025, found roughly nine in ten use YouTube and roughly three quarters use it every day. TikTok is a daily habit for 61% and Instagram for 55%, and 21% say they are on TikTok almost constantly, up from 16% in 2022. For adults, Pew's platform figures are on our social media page, and phone ownership is on mobile statistics.

Ad budgets followed the viewers, and social video passed CTV

The IAB's 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy Report, produced with Advertiser Perceptions and Guideline, puts US digital video ad spend at $73.6 billion in 2025 and projects $81.9 billion for 2026. The IAB's May 5, 2026 release calls 11% growth nearly 20% faster than the total ad market, and expects digital video to exceed 60% of all TV and video ad spend for the first time in 2026.

The dollar estimates come from Guideline's pool of agency billing data. The opinions in the same report come from an Advertiser Perceptions survey of 360 ad buyers who each spent at least $1 million on advertising in 2025, fielded February 20 to March 13, 2026. The report counts YouTube as social video, so the line that overtook CTV includes the platform most small businesses actually post on.

This is big-advertiser money. It tells you where viewers are, measured by the people with the most to lose from guessing wrong. It does not tell you what a plumber's YouTube ad costs or what a lead from one is worth. For click and lead prices, our PPC statistics page has named benchmarks, and digital marketing statistics covers the wider forecasts.

What video makers and video hosts say about their own trade

Wyzowl, which sells explainer video production, has surveyed the trade every year for twelve years. Its 2026 edition, based on 266 respondents surveyed in late 2025, marketers and consumers combined, reports that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, back to a joint all-time high after a dip in 2025. The share of video marketers who say video gives them a good return fell to 82%, from 93% a year earlier. And 63% of video marketers say they have used AI to create or edit video, up from 51%.

Wistia, which hosts video for businesses, published its sixth annual State of Video Report on April 22, 2026, from a survey of 900+ professionals and data on more than 13 million videos and 79 million hours of viewing on its platform. Its respondents favor LinkedIn over every other channel, a sign the sample leans business-to-business, and that colors every finding below.

The two surveys disagree politely on AI. Wyzowl's 63% have ever used AI to make or edit a video; Wistia's 'more than a third' use AI in their workflow now. Ever and currently are different questions, and the samples differ by more than three to one. Neither is wrong. Neither is a census. Our content marketing statistics page has the broader surveys on formats marketers credit.

Meters, billings, forecasts and polls: telling video numbers apart

1. 1

   Ask whether it was metered or remembered

   Nielsen and Ericsson record behavior on devices and networks. Pew asks people about their habits. Wyzowl and Wistia ask marketers about their own work. A meter can be wrong about who is on the couch; a survey can be wrong about anything people do not remember.

2. 2

   Find the date of the data, not the article

   YouTube's TV and podcast figures describe December 2024 and January 2025, even when you read them on a page dated 2026. Cisco's 82% is a 2018 forecast. Statistics age faster than the pages that repeat them.

3. 3

   Check who sells what

   Wyzowl sells video production. Wistia sells video hosting. The IAB represents companies that sell digital advertising. Each would be astonished to discover video was unimportant, and none of them is lying.

4. 4

   Weigh the sample

   266 respondents is small enough that a swing of several points from one year to the next can be noise, especially when the people answering change each year. Pew's 1,458 teens, Nielsen's panel and Guideline's billing data are built for measurement.

5. 5

   Read a good return as an opinion

   When a survey reports that marketers say video gives a good return, the respondents judged that return themselves. It is a measure of satisfaction, not revenue.

6. 6

   Separate bytes from attention

   A traffic share counts data volume. High-definition video inflates it. It is evidence that video is everywhere, not evidence that your video will be watched.

Your own video numbers, and the three places they live

Industry numbers say people watch video. Your numbers say whether they watch yours. Three are free and take an afternoon to read:

• YouTube Studio: average view duration, and the share of viewers still watching after the first thirty seconds. If most leave early, the opening is the problem, not the topic.
• Search Console: the video indexing report, which says whether Google found a video on each of your pages and why it skipped the rest.
• GA4: calls and form fills from pages with a video, compared with similar pages without one. A small business rarely has enough traffic for a clean test, but a three-month comparison is still more than a guess.
• Your page speed: a heavy player embedded at the top of the home page can slow the page it was meant to sell. Check it before and after you add the video.

Our SEO KPIs guide shows how to report these each month, and content distribution covers getting a finished video in front of people instead of leaving it on one channel. For the cost of a slow page, see page speed statistics; for the platforms themselves, the guide to social media marketing.

The free website audit checks the site your videos sit on, including speed and mobile problems, and emails a report with fixes. If you would rather have someone else plan the content and measure what it earns, that is what DataCram's content marketing service does. Business buyers watch differently from consumers; our B2B marketing statistics page covers how they research.