Visual content has become a core part of content creation and marketing. Recent studies report that video leads many format and effectiveness measures, while images, illustrations, infographics, and mobile-first design remain important ways to communicate. The figures below cover marketing activity, audience behavior, platform use, and visual accessibility across the periods identified by each source.
Table of contents
- The role of visual content in marketing
- Video consumption and purchase influence
- Short-form video and production choices
- Visual formats, learning, and accessibility
- Mobile and social platform behavior
- Audience reach across major platforms
The role of visual content in marketing
Video is the most popular and effective media format in HubSpot’s visual content marketing statistics, updated in 2025. Half of marketers use video in their marketing strategy, compared with 47% who use images. The strategic importance of content is also rising: 71% of B2B marketers said content marketing had become more important to their organization during the previous year.
Visual production was already widespread in 2021. More than half of marketers used visuals in over 91% of their content. Among specific assets, original graphics were used by 36% of marketers, while nearly 34% used stock photos. HubSpot reports that marketers considered original graphics and illustrations the best-performing visual formats, while stock photos performed worst.
Blogs remain a significant destination for visual work. Thirty percent of marketers primarily created visual content for blogs, and 30% shared infographics as part of content creation. The emphasis on original visuals suggests that content teams often use design to make information distinctive rather than relying only on generic imagery.
Video also dominates investment intent. In HubSpot’s 2025 update, 24% of marketers planned to invest more in video than in any other format. The same source reports that short-form video had the highest return on investment of all marketing trends, and 90% of marketers using short-form video planned to increase or maintain their investment during the following year.
Video consumption and purchase influence
People watched an average of 17 hours of video content per week according to HubSpot’s 2025 visual content statistics. Consumer demand remains high: 91% of consumers wanted to see more online videos from brands in that source’s measurement.
Wyzowl’s 2025 and 2026 video marketing research shows similar demand, although the measurements come from separate reporting periods. In 2025, 83% of consumers wanted to see more videos from brands. In the 2025/2026 figures, 78% of people preferred learning about a product or service by watching a short video, and 63% would rather watch a short video than read text, view an infographic, download a manual, attend a webinar, or take a sales call.
Video also plays a direct role in product education and action. HubSpot reports that 96% of consumers had watched an explainer video to learn more about a product. Wyzowl’s 2025/2026 figures report that 98% had watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service, 87% had been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video, and 81% had bought or downloaded an app after watching a video about it. HubSpot separately reports that 79% of people said video had convinced them to purchase an app or software.
Quality affects credibility as well as conversion. In Wyzowl’s 2025/2026 research, 91% of consumers said video quality impacts their trust in a brand. For publishers and marketers, this makes production quality part of the message: a video can explain an offer, but its execution can also influence whether the viewer finds the brand credible.
| Video measure | Reported result | Source period |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers wanting more brand videos | 91% | HubSpot, updated 2025 |
| Consumers wanting more brand videos | 83% | Wyzowl, 2025 |
| People preferring short video for product learning | 78% | Wyzowl, 2025/2026 |
| People influenced to buy by video | 87% | Wyzowl, 2025/2026 |
| Consumers saying video quality affects brand trust | 91% | Wyzowl, 2025/2026 |
These percentages should not be treated as one combined survey: they come from different reports and measurement periods. Together, they show a consistent pattern of strong demand for useful, clearly produced video.
Short-form video and production choices
Short-form video is especially prominent on mobile. HubSpot, citing eMarketer in its 2025 update, reports that 75% of U.S. adults watched short-form video on a mobile device. Among Gen Z viewers, 59% used short-form video apps to discover content they later watched in longer versions, according to HubSpot’s citation of Think with Google.
Most short-form videos are under 60 seconds, and HubSpot reports that this length had the highest average engagement. Wyzowl’s 2025 research found that 59% of video marketers said short-form video had the highest average engagement. In planning data reported by HubSpot, 21% of marketers planned to use short-form video for the first time in 2023.
The format is not limited to a single channel. In 2023, 31% of marketers used YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Twenty-six percent planned to use TikTok for the first time, 56% planned to increase investment in TikTok, and 16% planned to invest more in TikTok than any other social app. These are planning figures for 2023, not current platform forecasts.
Longer video is growing too. HubSpot reports that long-form videos above 30 minutes experienced more than 11,000% growth over the previous decade. This finding sits alongside the engagement strength of sub-60-second clips: creators can use short video for discovery and longer video for depth, provided the format matches the audience’s intent.
Wyzowl’s 2026 production figures show several common video types. Sixty-nine percent of video marketers created social media videos, 68% created explainer videos, 57% created testimonial videos, 48% created presentation videos, 48% created video ads, and 45% created teaser videos. In the same research, 51% of video marketers mostly created live-action video, 23% mostly created animated video, and 19% mostly created screen-recorded video.
Production ownership was mixed in 2026: 59% of teams created video in-house, 10% used external vendors only, and 32% used a combination of in-house and external support. Wyzowl also reported that 91% of businesses used video as a marketing tool in 2026, compared with 89% in its 2025 research. Among non-video marketers, 67% planned to start using video in 2026.
Visual formats, learning, and accessibility
Different formats serve different communication tasks. Social media videos were the most common type of video created by marketers in HubSpot’s 2025 update, at 71%. Explainer videos followed closely at 70%. Wyzowl reported that 73% of video marketers had created explainer videos in 2025.
The learning case for visuals extends beyond video. People following directions with text and illustrations performed 323% better than people following directions without illustrations, according to HubSpot’s citation of Springer. This is a quantified comparison about instructions and should not be generalized to every visual format or audience.
Live and immersive formats also appear in the research. HubSpot reports that 80% of marketers held live events in 2022. Among consumers interested in the metaverse, 56% wanted to watch television and movies there. More than 11 million people streamed video for the first time on Twitch in 2022, while YouTube surpassed Netflix as the top streaming platform in the United States in 2022.
Visual communication must also account for people who cannot access content in the same way. The World Health Organization’s 2026 blindness and vision impairment fact sheet reports that 2.2 billion people globally have near or distance vision impairment. More than 1 billion of those impairments could have been prevented or remain unaddressed. WHO estimates annual global productivity loss from vision impairment at US$411 billion.
Access to corrective and surgical care remains uneven. Two out of three people in low-income countries who need eyeglasses do not have access to them, and one in two people globally who need cataract surgery do not have access to it. For content creators, these figures reinforce the importance of readable design, clear contrast, meaningful structure, and alternatives that do not depend on vision alone.
Mobile and social platform behavior
Mobile usage shapes how people encounter visual content. HubSpot reports that 65% of all web traffic comes via mobile devices, and 40% of marketers planned to prioritize mobile-friendly website design in 2023. On Instagram, 70% of users did not mind seeing ads while watching videos, according to HubSpot’s 2025 update.
Sound behavior is mixed. Fifty-six percent of Instagram Story viewers sometimes watched with sound on, while 29% always did so. The most common engagement pattern for Instagram Stories was short narrative content combining photos, videos, and text: 35% of Instagram Story users engaged most often with that type of Story.
Platform formats also differ in engagement. Instagram carousel posts drew the highest engagement of all post types, followed by video posts, according to Statista as cited by HubSpot. On Facebook, 64% of marketers used the platform, and HubSpot reports that it had the best return on investment among social platforms in the cited measurement.
Pinterest illustrates the potential of interactive visual advertising. Pinterest reported that 91% of users said immersive, actionable ads made a brand more memorable, with brand recall 59% higher. Pinterest had 450 million global active users at the end of 2022, and its revenue reached US$2.8 billion in 2022, up 9% year over year. Hootsuite’s Pinterest advertising guide, cited by HubSpot, says advertisers could reach more than 250 million people on Pinterest and that users were five times more likely to make a purchase after using a Try-On-enabled pin.
Audience reach across major platforms
The Pew Research Center’s 2022 report on U.S. teens and technology found that 95% of U.S. teens used YouTube, 67% used TikTok, 62% used Instagram, and 59% used Snapchat. Facebook reached 32% of U.S. teens, down from 71% in 2014–15. These figures describe U.S. teens in 2022 and should not be read as global audience shares.
Other platform figures come from different periods. Statista, cited by HubSpot in its 2025 visual content update, reported 100 million daily active users on Snapchat as of 2022. HubSpot also reports that 56% of marketers planned to increase TikTok investment in 2023, while 16% planned to invest more in TikTok than in any other social app.
The numbers support a channel-specific approach to visual content. YouTube’s reach among U.S. teens favors discoverable video, TikTok and Reels favor short-form discovery, Instagram supports carousels, Stories, and video, Pinterest supports actionable visual shopping experiences, and blogs remain a primary destination for some marketers’ visual work. The appropriate format depends on the audience, the platform, the accessibility needs, and whether the goal is discovery, explanation, trust, or purchase.