Paid media overtakes Direct traffic as Fashion's main growth channel

Channel mix & planning

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).

Reader Note:: The 33.8% is two channels added together, the report's Paid channel plus Display, with Display alone at 11.7%. What the Paid channel includes is not spelled out, and Direct's own share is not printed next to it, so the overtaking is stated by the report rather than shown.
Evidence:: Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Statista Consumer Insights: two surveys (Global Consumer Survey and Consumer Insights Pulse), ages 18-64, in US/UK/Germany. Respondent counts: US Global=60,356 / Pulse=7,326; UK Global=23,343 / Pulse=7,309; Germany Global=35,911 / Pulse=7,309. Statista Market Insights: bottom-up modelling using historical ARPU adjusted by country/segment-specific drivers (no respondent sample — modelled, not surveyed).

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Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
Nobody counted this directly — it's a calculation. The publisher worked it out itself, or took the ad platform's word for what its ads achieved.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.

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

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)

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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39%

of CMOs plan to reduce their agency budget in 2025, and the same share plan to reduce labour

Paid media overtakes Direct traffic as Fashion's main growth channel

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