Industry surveyInteractive Advertising Bureau, Sep 2026

Creator/influencer ads, demo-targeted ads, first-party data publisher ads, and contextual ads are becoming key new marketing priorities

Channel mix & planning

Top 10 ad types: increased focus, Sep '26

Top 10 ad types: increased focus, Sep '26
Ad type	% focusing more
Creator/influencer ads/partnerships	54%
Demo-targeted/cohort-based ads	53%
With publishers that have 1P data	48%
Contextual ads	45%
Shoppable ads	45%
Behavioral ads	40%
Ads within live programming	40%
In-person/experiential marketing	36%
Augmented reality (AR) ads	18%
In-game ads	16%

Reader Note:: The four are not moving together: creator ads slipped from 57% to 54% while demo/cohort jumped from 35% to 53% and publisher 1P data fell from 55% to 48%. Only cohort targeting is genuinely rising.
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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Creator/influencer ads, demo-targeted ads, first-party data publisher ads, and contextual ads are becoming key new marketing priorities

Good for

Not for

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