Marketing statistics: 850+ graded insights

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

38%

adoption increase in older populations after Dubai Smart ID used a calming tone and simpler biometric explanations in 2021

86% of both Gen Z and Millennials say a smartphone is their most important device

Share of each generation calling smartphone their most important device
Generation	Share saying smartphone is most important device (%)
Gen Z	86%
Millennials	86%
Gen X	82%
Baby Boomers	58%

AI made people 11.7 points more confident even though about half its answers were faulty

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).

The average B2B customer journey now lasts 272 days from the first marketing touch to closed revenue, with 81% of the journey happening before the sales pipeline.

Average B2B customer journey (272 days): the average B2B customer journey – a total of 272 days, split into marketing and sales phases (% of total duration)
Journey Stage	Share of Journey (%)
Marketing Journey (1st Touch to Sales Pipeline)	81%
Sales Journey (Sales Pipeline to New Biz)	19%

Personalization in B2B marketing is now standard practice, but leaders stand out in the level and precision of their personalization

Buyer confidence is U-shaped: high for the first buy, then it drops and then comes back as people gain experience

Gemini and ChatGPT lead AI shopping research in the U.S.; 64.0% of AI shoppers use two or more assistants

Share of AI shoppers using each AI assistant in the past 90 days
Assistant used in the past 90 days	Share of AI users (%)
Google Gemini	63.5%
ChatGPT	60%
Amazon's shopping assistant	27.5%
Walmart's shopping assistant	22.5%
Microsoft Copilot	22.4%

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More than half of brands said economic volatility pushed them to focus harder on ROI

How Economic Volatility Has Affected Marketing Strategy, Overall vs Enterprise Brands
Response	Brands overall (%)	Enterprise brands (%)
Increased focus on ROI	51%	56%
Seeking cost saving measures	46%	49%
Budget restrictions	44%	43%
Reallocation of resources to proven channels	38%	43%
Job or role uncertainty	29%	39%

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Only 36% of Gen Z call themselves price-conscious, vs 40% of Millennials, 45% of Gen X and 55% of Boomers

Share of each generation who describe themselves as price-conscious
Generation	Share who describe themselves as price-conscious (%)
Gen Z	36%
Millennials	40%
Gen X	45%
Baby Boomers	55%

Planning questions suggested by Gartner: objectives and goals, primary strategies and execution, direction of product lines or services, success measures, long-term success factors, and major obstacles

Template: Strategic Alignment Discussion Guide for Business Partner Conversations
Questions about that business partner's domain	Notes of your business partner's answer
What are your key business objectives and resultant goals for the next two to five years?	—
What are your primary strategies? How do you plan to execute on these strategies?	—
What is the direction of the key product line, supply chain, service offerings, etc.?	—
How will you know if your unit is successful? What will you measure?	—
What are the key success factors that will make or break your unit's success in the long term?	—

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Lead quality and MQLs are the top KPI marketers track overall

Top KPIs marketers prioritize overall (2026)
KPI	Share of marketers prioritizing it (%)
Lead quality and MQLs	39%
Lead-to-customer conversion rates	34%
Return on marketing investment	31%
Customer acquisition cost	30%
Lead generation volume	29%

touches in the average B2B buying journey, with 4 channels and 10 stakeholders (Dreamdata 2025)

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

Broad green claims make consumers assume companies do more for the environment than the ad actually says.

79.8%

of wrong AI answers were still followed when participants chose to use the AI in Study 1

89.9%

of AI users on the online-shopper trend base said they verified the assistant’s recommendation before buying

60%–90%

of consumers’ value perception was explained by price perception across multiple subsectors in Deloitte’s regression analysis

60%

of consumers say social content, recommendations, or communities influence how they discover new brands

as many channels are used to make purchases by shoppers compared to a decade ago

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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Adding more detail to green marketing claims does not hurt brand appeal.

Concrete wording kept word-of-mouth topics going longer

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