Data & Research March 17, 2026 • Updated: 6 November 2026

Content marketing
statistics 2026

50+ verified content marketing stats and benchmarks. From budgets and effectiveness to blogging, video, distribution, AI-generated content and SEO. Compiled from research by the Content Marketing Institute (including its new report for 2027), Orbit Media, HubSpot, Ahrefs, Wistia, Litmus, DataReportal and the Reuters Institute, with a source link for every figure, and interpreted by our content marketing agency.

88%

of B2B marketers say their organization uses AI-powered content creation tools

Source: CMI, 2026

65%

of B2B marketers faced increased pressure to produce content faster in the past 12 months

Source: CMI, 2026

92.4%

of content marketers now use AI for blogging

Source: Orbit Media, 2026

58%

lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview is shown

Source: Ahrefs, 2026

Content marketing in 2026 is under pressure from two sides: AI makes content faster and cheaper to produce, while AI-powered search sends fewer clicks to the pages that rank. So what do marketers actually invest in, which formats and channels do they rate as effective, and what does the data say about AI content? The best results come when content is paired with a rigorous SEO agency so every piece earns ongoing organic traffic. For Dutch companies, how to become visible in AI answers: read more about our GEO agency (in Dutch).

On this page you will find 50+ verified content marketing statistics and benchmarks, compiled from research by the Content Marketing Institute, Orbit Media, HubSpot, Ahrefs, Wistia, Litmus, Semrush, DataReportal and the Reuters Institute. Every figure links to its source; older measurements are shown with their year. Most surveys cover B2B marketers, mainly in North America, and we say so where it applies. Use these numbers to build a business case for content marketing, or plug them into a broader growth marketing roadmap.

Section 1

Content marketing ROI & budgets

40%

of B2B marketers are spending more on owned media (content, website, blog, email) than last year

CMI, 2026

42%

name owned media as their top investment area for 2027, up 10 points

CMI, 2026

60%

of B2B marketers rate their marketing over the past 12 months as effective

CMI, 2026

97%

of B2B marketers say they have a content strategy

CMI, 2025

Budgets and investment

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) surveys B2B marketers, mostly in North America, every summer. Its newest edition, Insights for 2027, was published on 4 November 2026.

  • 40% of B2B marketers are spending more on owned media (content, website, blog, email) than last year, 45% about the same and 10% less (CMI, 2026)
  • Owned media is the top investment area for 2027, named by 42% of B2B marketers (up 10 points), ahead of events (35%) and AI-powered tools (30%, down 15 points) (CMI, 2026)
  • In 2024, 46% of B2B marketers who know their budget expected their content marketing budget to increase in 2025 versus 2024; 41% expected it to stay the same (CMI, 2024)

Effectiveness and measuring ROI

  • 60% of B2B marketers rate their marketing over the past 12 months as effective: 12% highly and 48% somewhat (CMI, 2026)
  • Among B2B marketers who rate their marketing effective, 47% credit content relevance and quality, the most-cited driver (CMI, 2026)
  • 97% of B2B marketers say they have a content strategy; 61% of those say its effectiveness improved over the past year (this is not the same as a documented strategy) (CMI, 2025)
  • 56% of B2B marketers who measure content performance find it difficult to attribute ROI to content (survey from 2024) (CMI, 2024)
Section 2

Blogging & articles

1,312

words in the average blog post, down from a peak of 1,427 in 2023

Orbit Media, 2026

3h 20m

to write an average blog post, down from a peak of 4h 10m in 2022

Orbit Media, 2026

13.9%

of content marketers report strong results from blogging, an all-time low

Orbit Media, 2026

2.6x

the strong-results benchmark for bloggers who collaborate with influencers or experts

Orbit Media, 2026

How bloggers work in 2026

Orbit Media's annual blogger survey (Blogging Statistics 2026, 1,042 respondents) is the longest-running benchmark of how content marketers write.

  • The average blog post is 1,312 words long, down from a peak of 1,427 words in 2023 (Orbit Media, 2026)
  • Writing an average blog post takes 3 hours and 20 minutes, down from a peak of 4 hours 10 minutes in 2022 (Orbit Media, 2026)
  • Only 13.9% of content marketers report strong results from blogging, an all-time low in the survey's history (Orbit Media, 2026)
  • 92.4% of content marketers now use AI for blogging (Orbit Media, 2026)
  • Bloggers who collaborate with influencers or experts beat the strong-results benchmark by 2.6x, yet only 7% do so (down from 25% in 2017) (Orbit Media, 2026)

Length, links and evergreen posts

  • In a 2020 analysis of around 900 million pages, Ahrefs found that referring domains rise with word count up to about 1,000 words and then start to decrease (a correlation) (Ahrefs, 2020)
  • According to Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million search results, the average Google first-page result contains 1,447 words (an older study) (Backlinko, updated 2025)
  • In older HubSpot research (around 2015), compounding (evergreen) posts made up about 10% of a blog's posts but generated 38% of total blog traffic (HubSpot, c. 2015)
Section 3

Video content performance

54%

of companies now have an in-house video team, up from 36% two years earlier

Wistia, 2026

2.5B

plays of videos hosted on Wistia in 2025, up 6% year on year

Wistia, 2026

76%

of B2B marketers used video in the past 12 months (survey from 2024)

CMI, 2024

21%

of marketers name short-form video as the format with the highest ROI, ranking it first

HubSpot, 2025

Video teams and performance

Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report combines platform data with a survey of almost 1,000 marketers.

  • Videos hosted on Wistia were played 2.5 billion times in 2025, up 6% from the year before (Wistia, 2026)
  • According to Wistia, the share of companies with an in-house video team rose from 36% to 54% in two years (Wistia, 2026)
  • 62% of video teams already use AI in their video workflows or plan to start soon (Wistia, 2026)
  • Homepage videos have a 24% play rate, and almost 20% of viewers who see a lead-gen form inside a video fill it out (Wistia platform data) (Wistia, 2026)
  • 88% of teams repurpose their webinar content, and 60% pull social clips from webinars (Wistia, 2026)

Video among B2B marketers

  • In 2024, 76% of B2B marketers had used video in the past 12 months, and videos (58%) were rated the most effective content type (CMI, 2024)
  • According to HubSpot's 2025 State of Marketing, short-form video ranks first as the format with the highest ROI, named by 21% of marketers (HubSpot, 2025)
Section 4

Content distribution & promotion

89%

of B2B marketers used organic social media to distribute content (survey from 2024)

CMI, 2024

85%

of B2B marketers say LinkedIn delivers the best value of all social platforms

CMI, 2024

42%

of B2B marketers rate email as one of their most effective distribution channels

CMI, 2024

76%

name LinkedIn the most effective channel for thought leadership

CMI, 2025

Channels B2B marketers use

  • In the 12 months before the 2024 survey, 89% of B2B marketers used organic social media platforms, 84% used blogs on their corporate website and 71% used email newsletters (CMI, 2024)
  • B2B marketers rate email (42%), organic social media (42%) and corporate blogs (41%) as their most effective distribution channels (CMI, 2024)
  • 85% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn delivers the best value of all social platforms (Facebook: 28%), and 68% increased their use of LinkedIn in the past 12 months (CMI, 2024)
  • For thought leadership, B2B marketers name LinkedIn (76%), email newsletters (54%) and speaking events or webinars (52%) as the most effective channels (CMI, 2025)

Email returns

  • According to Litmus, for every $1 spent on email, 35% of marketing leaders see a return of $10 to $36 and 30% see $36 to $50 (survey of almost 500 marketers worldwide) (Litmus, 2025)
Section 5

AI-generated content

80%

of marketers use AI for content creation; 75% use it for media production

HubSpot, 2026

78%

of B2B marketers name speed as AI's biggest contribution; only 17% name quality

CMI, 2026

75%

of B2B marketers worry AI is making audiences more skeptical of online content

CMI, 2026

5.3%

of pages in Google's top 10 were detected as 100% AI-generated (June 2026)

Ahrefs, 2026

How marketers use AI

  • 88% of B2B marketers say their organization uses AI-powered content creation tools, and 60% of those expanded their use compared with a year ago (CMI, 2026)
  • According to HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing, 80% of marketers use AI for content creation and 75% use it for media production (HubSpot, 2026)
  • 78% of B2B marketers name speed as AI's biggest contribution, while only 17% name quality (CMI, 2026)
  • 75% of B2B marketers are concerned that AI is making audiences more skeptical of online content, yet 52% say their organization has no AI disclosure policy (CMI, 2026)

AI content in Google

  • Google says appropriate use of AI or automation is not against its guidelines; it focuses on the quality of content rather than how it is produced (guidance from February 2023) (Google Search Central, 2023)
  • In Google's top 10 (June 2026, about 150,000 analyzable pages), Ahrefs' detector flagged 5.3% of pages as 100% AI-generated and 54.7% as less than 20% AI (a correlation study) (Ahrefs, 2026)
  • According to Ahrefs, pages with low AI content had an indexation rate of 49.28%, versus 40.35% for pages with very high AI content (Ahrefs, 2026)
  • 74.2% of 900,000 newly created web pages analyzed in April 2025 contained AI-generated content, according to Ahrefs (Ahrefs, 2025)
Section 6

Content marketing & SEO

96.55%

of all pages in Ahrefs' index get zero traffic from Google

Ahrefs, 2023

72.9%

of pages in Google's top 10 are more than 3 years old (59% in 2017)

Ahrefs, 2025

5 years

average age of the #1 ranking page in Google (2 years in 2017)

Ahrefs, 2025

79%

of B2B marketers whose website traffic fell blame AI-powered search

CMI, 2026

Most content gets no search traffic

  • 96.55% of all pages in Ahrefs' index get zero traffic from Google (study of about 14 billion pages) (Ahrefs, 2023)
  • Only 1.94% of pages get between one and ten visits a month from Google (Ahrefs, 2023)
  • In BrightEdge's 2019 channel research, 53% of trackable website traffic came from organic search (up from 51% in 2014) (BrightEdge, 2019)

Content is a long-term investment

Ahrefs' study of 1.3 million random US keywords shows that ranking pages are getting older.

  • 72.9% of pages in Google's top 10 are more than 3 years old (59% in 2017) (Ahrefs, 2025)
  • On average, the #1 ranking page in Google is 5 years old (2 years in 2017) (Ahrefs, 2025)
  • Only 13.7% of pages in Google's top 10 are less than one year old (22% in 2017) (Ahrefs, 2025)

AI search and clicks

  • When an AI Overview is present, the top-ranking page gets a 58% lower average click-through rate (December 2025 vs December 2023, 300,000 keywords, desktop) (Ahrefs, 2026)
  • Over the past 12 months, website traffic rose for 31% of B2B marketers and fell for 31%; of those with falling traffic, 79% blame AI-powered search (CMI, 2026)
Section 7

B2B vs B2C content marketing

64%

of B2B marketers say consistently useful, practical information builds the most trust

CMI, 2026

61%

of the buying process is done before B2B buyers first contact a vendor

6sense via CustomerThink, 2025

77%

of the time, B2B buyers bought from their top-ranked vendor

6sense via CustomerThink, 2025

B2B: what buyers and marketers report

The Content Marketing Institute no longer publishes a separate B2C content marketing study, and we found no reliable B2C counterpart with comparable data. This section therefore covers B2B content marketing.

  • The content that most builds trust with B2B audiences is consistently useful, practical information (64%), followed by demonstrated expertise (59%) and customer stories (50%) (CMI, 2026)
  • In the previous CMI edition (fieldwork 2025), 59% of B2B marketers rated their marketing at least somewhat effective; only 12% called it highly effective (CMI, 2025)
  • According to 6sense's 2025 survey of almost 4,000 buyers worldwide, B2B buyers first contact a vendor when they are 61% through their buying process, down from 69% (6sense via CustomerThink, 2025)
  • 79% of B2B buyers initiated contact with vendors themselves, and they bought from their top-ranked vendor 77% of the time (6sense via CustomerThink, 2025)
Section 8

Global market data

6.04B

people worldwide used the internet at the start of October 2025 (73.2% of the population)

DataReportal, 2025

5.66B

social media user identities worldwide, equal to 68.7% of the population

DataReportal, 2025

45%

of B2B marketers named AI-powered tools their top area for increased investment in 2026

CMI, 2025

The audience and the spending

We do not publish a figure for the size of the global content marketing market: research firms' estimates diverge widely and none we found explains its method. What can be measured is the online audience and where marketers put their money.

  • 6.04 billion people worldwide used the internet at the start of October 2025, 73.2% of the world's population (DataReportal, 2025)
  • There are 5.66 billion social media user identities worldwide, equal to 68.7% of the population (identities, not unique people) (DataReportal, 2025)
  • For 2026, AI-powered tools were the top area for increased investment (45%) among B2B marketers; human resources ranked last (9%). For 2027, owned media took over the top spot (see section 1) (CMI, 2025)
Section 10

Key takeaways

42%

Budgets: owned media is the top investment area for 2027 among B2B marketers

CMI, 2026

13.9%

Blogging: only this share of content marketers reports strong results, an all-time low

Orbit Media, 2026

88%

AI: B2B organizations using AI-powered content creation tools

CMI, 2026

96.55%

SEO: pages in Ahrefs' index that get zero traffic from Google

Ahrefs, 2023

  • Video: the share of companies with an in-house video team rose from 36% to 54% in two years (Wistia, 2026)
  • B2B buyers: they first contact a vendor when they are 61% through their buying process (6sense via CustomerThink, 2025)
  • AI search: an AI Overview means a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page (Ahrefs, 2026)

Methodology & sources

The statistics on this page are compiled from publicly available research reports by leading organizations. We update this page regularly with the latest data. Key sources include:

  • Content Marketing Institute (CMI) / MarketingProfs: B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2027 (861 B2B marketers, fieldwork June to August 2026), Insights for 2026 (1,015 B2B marketers, fieldwork 2025) and Outlook for 2025 (fieldwork 2024)
  • Orbit Media: Blogging Statistics 2026 (annual blogger survey, 1,042 respondents)
  • HubSpot: 2026 State of Marketing, video marketing statistics, compounding blog posts research
  • Ahrefs: Search Traffic Study, How Long Does It Take to Rank, AI Overviews click study (2026 update), AI content studies, blog post length analysis
  • Wistia: 2026 State of Video Report
  • Litmus, Semrush, Backlinko, BrightEdge: email ROI, AI search traffic, search ranking and channel share research
  • 6sense: 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report (via CustomerThink)
  • DataReportal, Reuters Institute, Google Search Central: Digital 2026 Global Overview, Digital News Report 2026, guidance on AI-generated content

Disclaimer: Figures are sourced from the most recent available editions of the reports cited; we only publish figures we could check in the original source. Survey results describe the respondents of that survey (often B2B marketers in North America), not all companies. This page is compiled for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or strategic advice. For tailored guidance, get in touch with our team.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is the ROI of content marketing?

There is no reliable single ROI figure for content marketing, and attributing ROI is hard: in CMI's 2024 survey, 56% of B2B marketers who measure content performance named it a challenge. What surveys do show: 60% of B2B marketers rate their marketing over the past 12 months as effective, and 47% of them credit the relevance and quality of their content (CMI, 2026). 40% are spending more on owned media than last year. Ready to start creating content that performs? Get in touch.

How long should a blog post be for SEO?

There is no measured ideal length. The average blog post is 1,312 words (Orbit Media, 2026), and Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million search results found that the average first-page result contains 1,447 words. Ahrefs (2020) saw referring domains rise with word count up to about 1,000 words and then decrease. Write as long as the topic needs: quality and relevance matter more than word count.

How often should you blog to see results?

We found no current, verifiable study that links posting frequency to traffic. What the data does show: only 13.9% of content marketers report strong results from blogging (Orbit Media, 2026), while bloggers who collaborate with influencers or experts beat that benchmark by 2.6x. In older HubSpot research, evergreen posts were about 10% of all posts but generated 38% of blog traffic. Consistent, useful content that keeps earning traffic beats a high volume of thin posts.

How is AI impacting content marketing?

88% of B2B marketers say their organization uses AI-powered content creation tools (CMI, 2026), and HubSpot reports that 80% of marketers use AI for content creation. Marketers mainly see speed (78%), rarely quality (17%), and 75% worry that AI makes audiences more skeptical of online content. Google says appropriate use of AI is not against its guidelines; it judges quality. In Google's top 10, Ahrefs detected 5.3% of pages as fully AI-generated (June 2026). The best approach is using AI as a writing assistant, not a replacement.

Which content formats perform best in 2026?

In CMI's 2024 survey, B2B marketers rated videos the most effective content type (58%), and in HubSpot's 2025 State of Marketing short-form video ranked first as the format with the highest ROI (21% of marketers). For distribution, B2B marketers rate email (42%), organic social media (42%) and corporate blogs (41%) as most effective. In B2B, consistently useful, practical information builds the most trust (64%, CMI 2026).

How much should you spend on content marketing?

No reliable benchmark exists for the share of the marketing budget that goes to content. The direction is clear, though: 40% of B2B marketers are spending more on owned media (content, website, blog, email) than last year, 45% about the same and 10% less, and owned media is the top investment area for 2027 (42%, CMI 2026). Contact us for tailored advice on your content strategy.

CONTENT
Ready to get started?

Content that actually drives results

At Searchlab, we combine 10 years of content and SEO expertise with data-driven AI tooling. Find out what smart content can do for your business.

Get in touch Explore our SEO services
Ruud ten Have

Compiled by

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a digital marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and AI implementation. At Searchlab, he combines strategic thinking with hands-on AI tooling to deliver measurable results for businesses.

Marketing by industry — guides

Industry-specific marketing playbooks:

Marketing for Coaches Build a practice: niching, brand, pricing. Marketing for Consultants LinkedIn strategy + IP-driven marketing. Marketing for Therapists Practice builder with ethical content.

Lead generation guides

Turn these stats into actual leads:

Content Marketing for One-Person Business Hub-and-spoke + 3 pillars + repurposing. LinkedIn for Consultants and Coaches Organic strategy: 3 post types + 30-min routine.

Positioning & messaging guides

For getting your positioning right:

One-Sentence Pitch That Works 4 templates + 10 good-vs-generic examples. Small Business Messaging Framework Audience + Promise + Proof operationalized.

More small business marketing guides

Apply these stats with our deep-dive guides:

Small Business Marketing Channels 10 channels reality-check and the 1-channel rule. Marketing Calendar for Small Business 4-layer calendar with 12-month samples.

Related guides

Put these stats into action with our small-business marketing guides:

AI Website Copy That Converts Write hero, services, About and CTAs with AI. AI Marketing for Small Business: Complete Guide What AI marketing really means for a small business in 2026.

About Searchlab

We don’t just collect this data, we apply it daily as an AI-first marketing agency in Amsterdam. Dutch businesses can explore our content marketing bureau services.

[ Free growth analysis ]

See where the
biggest gains are.

  1. TodayName, email and website. That is all we need.
  2. Within 5 working daysA document you can forward to your director or colleagues.
  3. ThenHalf an hour with the specialist who does the work.
You talk to the specialistNot a salesperson

Free, no obligation. We only use your details for the growth analysis.