Video has moved from a “nice to have” marketing channel to the default way brands communicate. The average internet user now spends around 17 hours a week watching online video nearly two and a half hours a day and that appetite is reshaping how companies plan, budget, and measure their marketing.

The data emerging from 2026 makes one thing clear: video is no longer a specialized tactic reserved for big-budget brands. It’s the baseline expectation for reaching an audience.

Adoption numbers back this up. Roughly nine in ten businesses now use video as a core part of their marketing strategy, a figure that has climbed steadily for nearly a decade and shows no sign of plateauing. What’s more telling is the return marketers are seeing on that investment: 93% report positive ROI from video content, the highest rate ever recorded in industry tracking. Video isn’t just popular it’s proving itself financially, which is why budgets keep expanding even in periods of broader marketing belt-tightening.

Spending reflects that confidence. Short-form video advertising alone is projected to hit around $111 billion globally in 2025, a 12% jump from the prior year, while total digital video ad spend worldwide is expected to top $200 billion. That growth is outpacing the wider digital advertising market, suggesting advertisers see video and short-form video in particular as a disproportionately effective place to put their money rather than simply following audience trends.

The platform landscape has also shifted in an unexpected direction. LinkedIn has overtaken the traditionally dominant social platforms to become the most-used channel for video marketing, cited by around 70% of marketers the first time it’s claimed the top spot. That’s a significant signal for B2B brands especially, as a network once known mainly for text posts and job updates has evolved into a serious multimedia channel for professional audiences.

Consumer behavior explains why brands keep doubling down. Nearly all consumers 98% say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service, and 87% say they’ve made a purchase directly after watching a brand’s video. When given a choice of formats for learning about a product, 78% of people prefer short video, compared to just 9% who’d rather read a text article. These numbers make clear that video isn’t just an engagement tool anymore; it’s become a primary driver of the buying decision itself.

Quality bars have risen alongside demand. Consumers are more discerning than ever about production value: 91% say video quality directly affects how much they trust a brand, up from 87% just a year earlier. That shift puts pressure on marketing teams to move beyond simply “having video content” and toward consistently polished, professional execution a harder ask as volume expectations climb at the same time.

AI’s role in video production has actually pulled back rather than accelerated. About 51% of marketers now report using AI tools to help create video content, down sharply from 75% the year before. That drop doesn’t point to AI losing relevance it looks more like a correction after early over-enthusiasm, with marketers narrowing in on the applications that deliver the clearest payoff, like caption generation and early-stage ideation, rather than trying to automate the entire creative process.

Where AI is used, it’s applied selectively rather than end-to-end. Marketers lean on it most for technical, lower-risk tasks captioning and ideation support and far less for core creative decisions. That pattern suggests brands are treating AI as a productivity tool for specific steps in the workflow, while keeping the strategic thinking and creative judgment behind a campaign firmly human-led.

Taken together, these trends point to a few clear strategic priorities for brands heading deeper into 2026. First, video budgets should keep growing, particularly in short-form formats where spend growth is outpacing the broader market. Second, marketers should reassess platform mix LinkedIn’s rise means B2B teams in particular can no longer treat it as secondary to more established video platforms.

Third, investment in production quality can’t be skipped, since consumer trust is now directly tied to how polished a video looks and feels. Fourth, AI should be deployed selectively rather than broadly, focused on the specific tasks like captions or early drafts where it clearly saves time without compromising creative quality.

The bottom line is that video marketing in 2026 has matured into a measurable, high-return discipline rather than an experimental one. Businesses that treat it as core infrastructure, backed by clear platform strategy, thoughtful use of AI for scale and localization, and a real quality bar are the ones capturing the engagement and conversion gains the data describes. Those still treating video as optional are increasingly out of step with both consumer expectations and where competitors are already investing.