50+ current, independently sourced statistics on how businesses use video and how people watch it. Every figure is attributed to its original research. Last updated September 2026.
By
Larry Mutenda
THE BOTTOM LINE
Here’s the short version of everything on this page, so you don’t have to squint at a hundred numbers to find the point. Your audience is watching video. Nearly all of them, every day. And they’re watching it short.
The companies pulling ahead in 2026 aren’t the ones with the biggest video budget. They’re the ones putting out the right short video, consistently. That’s the whole game. As you read through the numbers below, that’s the lens I’d use. Not isn’t that interesting, but what does this tell me to go do. I’ve added our read at the end of each section to make it easy.
watch online video weekly
DataReportal / GWI
YoY growth in business video creation
Vidyard
finish a video under one minute
Vidyard
teams say LinkedIn is their #1 video channel
Wistia
say short-form has the highest ROI
HubSpot
of Instagram users prefer short-form
Sprout Social
of U.S. adults use YouTube
Pew Research
more likely to act after a YouTube discovery
of teams make their videos accessible
Wistia
global digital video ad spend, 2024
Statista
87.5%
87.5% of online adults watch short-form video weekly, about 6h 37m across 4.12 days.
85%
85% of U.S. adults use YouTube, and 90% of U.S. teens.
72%
72% of Gen Z have a TikTok profile.
30%
30% rise in time spent watching video on Instagram, year over year.
90%+
90%+ of internet users watch online video content every week.
THOUGHTS IN THIS
The thing that jumps out at me is that the habit is already won. Nearly 9 in 10 adults watch short-form video every week. That’s not a trend to get ahead of. It’s just how people take in information now. So when an owner tells me they’re not sure their audience is into video, the data settles it. They are, every day. The real question was never whether people will watch. It’s whether the video they land on is worth their time. That part you control, and it’s where good production earns its keep.
88%
88% year-over-year growth in business video creation, with nearly 1 million videos analyzed.
37
37 videos created per user on average, up 241% year over year.
420%
420% growth in videos over 20 minutes long; videos under 3 minutes grew about 30%.
267
267 videos created by the average mid-market company; small companies averaged 144.
76%
76% of teams now make at least one video a month.
4
4 core video formats most companies create regularly: educational, product, social, and webinar.
Curious what a video like this returns for your business?See how a well-made video performs across your funnel.
THE TAKEAWAY
What gets me about this section is the sheer volume. Business video creation grew 88% in a single year, and the average person is now making 37 of them. Video quietly stopped being a campaign you run once and became something companies do all the time. If you’re still treating it as one big hero piece a year, you’re not being out-spent. You’re being out-published. You can’t match that pace with one shoot. What you can do is plan a steady run of shorter videos and produce them well, so each one still looks like you and still does its job.
21%
21% of marketers say short-form video delivers the highest ROI of any format.
37.1%
37.1% of marketers plan to increase their video investment in 2026.
2.3x
2.3x higher long-term return on ad spend from YouTube Shorts ads versus paid social.
1 in 4
1 in 4 marketers now name social engagement a top success metric, the fastest-rising metric of the year.
WHAT THIS MEANS
This is the section I’d point a skeptical CFO to. Short-form isn’t the cheap-and-cheerful option. Marketers are calling it the highest-ROI format they have, and Shorts ads are pulling 2.3x the long-term return of paid social. So the marketers planning to spend more on video next year aren’t doing it on a hunch. If you’re weighing where a marketing dollar goes furthest, a short, well-made video is one of the most reusable assets you can buy. It lives on your site, in your ads, in your emails, and in your sales calls. One production, five jobs.
65%
65% of viewers finish a video under one minute, versus about 20% for videos over 20 minutes.
52%
52% of Instagram users (and 48% of Facebook users) engage most with short-form video under 60 seconds.
4.12
4.12 days a week short-form viewers watch, more than any other online video format.
2x
2x engagement for 31 to 45 minute webinar replays versus replays under 30 minutes.
HOW I SEE THIS
If you take one number from this whole page, make it this one. 65% of people finish a video that’s under a minute, and only about 20% get through anything over 20. Attention has a cliff, and it sits right around the one-minute mark. I don’t see that as a limit to complain about. I see it as a spec to build to. When we plan a video, the first question is what we can land in 60 seconds, because that’s the length people actually finish. Say one clear thing, say it well, and stop.
29.58%
29.58% of marketers plan to invest more in YouTube, ahead of Instagram (28.84%) and TikTok (27.64%).
8 in 10
8 in 10 teams say LinkedIn is now their primary place to share video.
29.18%
29.18% of marketers currently use short-form formats like TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.
24x
24x more comments (and 7x more reactions) on LinkedIn live video versus native video.
70B
70B daily views on YouTube Shorts.
76%
76% of teams adjust aspect ratio by platform, and most repurpose content into short clips.
SEE THE PATTERN
The pattern here is that one video isn’t one video anymore. The teams winning are cutting a single piece to fit YouTube, Reels, Shorts, and LinkedIn. 76% are literally changing the aspect ratio per platform. And LinkedIn has quietly become the B2B video room. 8 in 10 teams now call it their main stage. My read is simple. Plan for repurposing from day one. Shoot the main video and the platform cuts together, so one production becomes ten native posts and you show up everywhere your buyers already are.
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12x
12x growth in AI-avatar adoption in business video in just eight months.
65%
65% of viewers finish a video under a minute, the length most video and animated videos target.
87.5%
87.5% of adults watch short-form video weekly, the primary home of animated videos.
THE CONCLUSION
The data lines up here. The format people actually finish, under a minute, is exactly where video and animated video live. The place they watch, short-form feeds that reach 87.5% of adults every week, is where those videos do their best work. And AI-avatar adoption jumping 12x in eight months tells me the appetite for clear, visual explanation keeps climbing. So a short video isn’t a nice-to-have buried in this list. For a lot of businesses it’s the most efficient way to make a complex product easy to understand, then use that same video right across the funnel.
12x
12x growth in AI-avatar adoption across business video in eight months.
50%+
50%+ of teams are increasing AI investment; over a third already use AI in their workflow.
82%
82% more likely to add multilingual subtitles among AI users (who are also 52% more likely to make video ads).
90%
90% of teams make their videos accessible, with captions the most common feature.
HOW I UNDERSTAND THIS
The AI question is on everyone’s mind, so let me be straight about how we see it. More than half of teams are increasing their AI investment, and it’s genuinely useful for the grunt work. Subtitles, translations, versioning. But faster to produce and worth watching are not the same thing. The video that gets finished and remembered still needs a person deciding what to say and how to make it land. So we use AI to move quicker on the busywork. We don’t hand it the creative. That’s the line we hold, and for the work businesses hire us for, it’s the right one.
$191B
$191B in global digital video ad spending in 2024, led by the U.S.
40%
40% of companies spent under $5,000 producing video in 2025; just over 30% spent more.
48%
48% plan to increase promotion budgets; fewer than 10% are cutting them.
7%
7% year-over-year rise in outsourced video production.
13.99%
13.99% of marketers say they will invest more in video channels this year.
How teams split their video time
Share of teams by where they spend the most time
57%
20%
23%
More time creating More time promoting Split evenly
Source: Wistia, State of Video 2026
WHAT THIS MEANS
Two numbers to sit with together. $191 billion went into digital video ads last year, and 40% of companies produced their video for under $5,000. Put those side by side and the whole video is too expensive objection falls apart. There’s a huge market moving real money here, and plenty of it is being done affordably. Budgets are climbing. 48% are increasing promotion spend and almost nobody is cutting. More teams are outsourcing production because it’s cheaper than staffing for it. If you’ve been sitting this out because you assumed it would blow the budget, it probably won’t.
91%
91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
96%
96% of people have watched a video to learn about a product or service.
85%
85% of people say they have been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video.
84%
84% of consumers say they want to see more video from brands.
93%
93% of video marketers say video is an important part of their overall strategy.
82%
82% of marketers say video gives them a good return on investment.
83%
83% of video marketers say video has directly increased sales.
85%
85% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
82%
82% of video marketers say video has helped increase web traffic.
82%
82% of video marketers say video keeps visitors on their site longer.
57%
57% of video marketers say video has reduced support queries.
63%
63% of people say they would most like to watch a short video to learn about a product.
92%
92% of video marketers plan to spend the same or more on video this year.
WHAT THIS TELLS ME
This is the part where video stops being optional. When more than 9 in 10 businesses already use it and most marketers say it pays back in leads, sales, and traffic, the question isn’t whether to make video. It’s whether yours is good enough to compete. If you’re an owner still on the fence, look at what your own customers already do. Almost everyone has watched a video to understand a product, and most have bought something after watching a video. So the move is simple. Put a clear video where people decide, measure what it does, and keep making the ones that work.
So, what do you actually do with all this?
If you scrolled all the way down here, let me save you the summary. Every one of these numbers points the same direction. Your audience is watching, they’re watching short, and they’re watching every day. The companies winning aren’t the ones with the biggest budget. They’re the ones putting out the right short video, consistently. That’s a production problem, and it’s the one we solve. If you want to see what that looks like for your business, take a look at our work. And if you’re already nodding along, grab a quote and we’ll map it to your product.
Yes. More than 9 in 10 internet users watch online video every week (DataReportal / GWI, 2025), business video creation grew 88% in a year (Vidyard, 2025), and 37.1% of marketers plan to increase their video investment (HubSpot, 2026).
Short wins for completion: 65% of viewers finish a video under one minute versus about 20% for videos over 20 minutes (Vidyard, 2025), and short-form is the format most marketers say delivers the highest ROI (HubSpot, 2025).
They live where attention is highest: 65% of viewers finish videos under a minute (Vidyard, 2025) and 87.5% of adults watch short-form weekly (DataReportal / GWI, 2025). Adoption of animated and AI-avatar video grew 12x in eight months (Vidyard, 2025).
YouTube reaches the widest audience. 85% of U.S. adults use it (Pew Research, 2025), and its users are 87% more likely to act after finding a product there (Google, 2026). For B2B, LinkedIn is the top sharing platform (Wistia, 2026).
Yes. Adoption of AI avatars grew 12x in eight months (Vidyard, 2025), and over half of teams are increasing their AI investment this year (Wistia, 2026).
40% of companies spent under $5,000 producing video in 2025 (Wistia, 2026), while global digital video ad spend surpassed $191 billion in 2024 (Statista, 2025).
