Industry surveyInteractive Advertising Bureau, Sep 2026

Optimizing content for AI-generated answers is now U.S. ad buyers' top area of increased focus for 2026

Channel mix & planning

Top 10 areas of increased focus - Sep '26 survey wave

Top 10 areas of increased focus - Sep '26 survey wave
Focus area	% of respondents
Optimizing content for AI-generated answers	76%
AI LLM Models	72%
Generative AI use in media campaigns	69%
Cross-platform measurement	64%
Marketing mix modeling (MMM)	61%
Using AI as an end-to-end solution	60%
Attribution modeling	60%
Incrementality measurement	59%
Agentic AI ad buying/campaign execution	54%
1P data acquisition/partnerships	49%

Reader Note:: Optimizing for AI-generated answer visibility is now a top focus for ad buyers.
Evidence:: Stated intention
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Email survey of 211 U.S. buy-side ad investment decision-makers, primarily at agencies (52%) and brands (44%); fielded July 17-31, 2026.

Good for

Reading the mood, and deciding what to test yourself.

Not for

Predicting what people will actually do. Intentions and behaviour come apart.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

Paid media overtook martech as the largest slice of the marketing budget between 2018 and 2025, rising from 23.2% to 30.6% while martech fell from 29.2% to 22.4%

Change in marketing budget allocation by resource, 2018 to 2025
Resource	Change 2018 to 2025 (percentage points)
Paid media	7.4
Labor	-2.6
Agencies	-2.3
Martech	-6.8

33.8%

of US Fashion site visits now come from paid channels (Search + Social + Display), overtaking Direct traffic's 27.8% share for the first time in three years (Jul 2023–Jul 2026).

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Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers

53.9% of US marketing leaders say marketing keeps influencing a customer for a year or longer, though the most common single answer is several months at 24.4% and the report's median is six months

Marketing Performance: Perceived marketing influence duration on customers, as reported by US CMOs in 2026
Duration	Percent (%)
An hour	0.6%
12 hours	0.6%
A day	1.3%
A week	2.6%
A month	6.4%
Several months	24.4%
6 months	10.3%
1 year	21.8%
2 years	18.6%
5 years	9%
7 years	0%
10 years or more	4.5%

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9.6%

of overall budget and company revenues go to marketing on average (2026 survey of US companies)

SEO, social, email, retail media and influencer all rank higher on impact than on the budget they receive

Marketing budgets ranged from 5.8% to 9.7% of company revenue across industries in 2025, with consumer products highest and IT and business services lowest

Marketing budget as a percent of total revenue by industry, 2025
Industry	2025 (%)
Consumer products	9.7%
Manufacturing	9.5%
Pharma	9%
Media	8%
Insurance	7.5%
Financial services	7.2%
Retail	7.1%
Tech services and products companies with over $250M revenue	7.1%
Travel and hospitality	6.7%
Healthcare	5.9%
IT and business services	5.8%

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Optimizing content for AI-generated answers is now U.S. ad buyers' top area of increased focus for 2026

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