Budgets keep flowing into social platforms, but the returns aren’t landing evenly. That tension is exactly what these social media marketing statistics for 2026 capture. Ad spend is climbing toward $338.75 billion, yet organic reach keeps slipping on the same platforms brands rely on most. Something has to explain the gap.
This report breaks down what’s actually driving results this year. You’ll find data on ad spend, platform adoption, engagement benchmarks, and paid performance by channel. Below, we’ll break down where video and influencer content are outperforming everything else, and why TikTok’s engagement numbers keep pulling ahead. Every figure here is sourced, so you can see exactly where the data comes from.
Key Takeaways
Social media ad spend, engagement, and returns moved in different directions in 2026. Budgets grew. Organic reach shrank. Video and influencer content carried the returns that other formats did not.
- Statista’s current forecast projects global social media ad spend will reach $338.75 billion in 2026 (Statista)
- 80% of marketing leaders plan to shift budget from other channels into social (Sprout Social)
- 87% of marketing leaders expect their paid social spend to increase in 2026 (Sprout Social)
- Mobile is projected to account for 82.9% of total social ad spend by 2030 (Sprout Social)
- TikTok’s platform-average engagement rate rose to 3.70% in 2025, up 49% year over year (Sprout Social)
- Facebook’s platform-average engagement rate sits at 0.15%, and Instagram’s at 0.48%, down from 0.50% in 2024 (Sprout Social)
- 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, and 62% call it effective (Hubspot)
- 49% of marketers rank short-form video their top ROI content format (Hubspot)
- 92% of marketers plan to spend the same or more on video in 2026 (Sprout Social)
- Influencer marketing delivers an average reported ROAS of $5.78 per $1 spent (Sprinklr)
- Overall social media marketing delivers an average reported ROAS of $5.20 per $1 spent (SQ Magazine)
- 94% of organizations say influencer marketing outperforms traditional digital advertising, most reporting 2x or higher returns (Sprout Social)
- Organic reach across the platforms measured here declined 3 to 5% per post (SQ Magazine)
- Facebook Pages averaged 1.37% organic reach per post in 2024 (Swydo)
- TikTok delivers 5 to 15x higher organic reach than Facebook across comparable account sizes (SQ Magazine)
Social Media Ad Spend and Market Size
Ad budgets keep moving toward social platforms.
- 80% of marketing leaders plan to shift budget from other channels into social (Sprout Social)
- 87% of marketing leaders expect their paid social spend to increase in 2026 (Sprout Social)
- Earlier estimates placed global social media ad spend at approximately $276 billion to $276.72 billion in 2025 (Statista; Sprinklr)
- Statista’s current worldwide forecast projects social media advertising spend will reach $338.75 billion in 2026 (Statista)
- Social media now accounts for $3 of every $10 spent on digital advertising (Sprout Social)
- Brands are projected to spend more than $5 billion per week on social media advertising (SQ Magazine)
- Dentsu separately forecasts social ad spend will grow 11.4% in 2026 under its own methodology, with digital taking 68.7% of total ad investment (ThriveAgency)
The $276 billion and $276.72 billion estimates for 2025 are close enough to reflect rounding or forecast timing. The $338.75 billion figure for 2026, however, comes from a different point in Statista’s forecast series and should not be used to calculate year-over-year growth against the older estimates — doing so would imply roughly 23% growth, which is not what any single source claims. Dentsu’s 11.4% growth figure is a separate estimate from a separate provider and methodology; it is not a year-over-year read on the Statista numbers above. The defensible conclusion is that social advertising remains one of the two largest digital advertising categories, behind paid search in absolute spending.
Where the Social Ad Budget Goes: Mobile and Platform Revenue
Mobile is not a segment of social ad spend anymore. It is most of it.
- Mobile is projected to account for 82.9% of total social ad spend by 2030 (Sprout Social)
- Marketers spent over $140 billion on mobile social advertising in 2023, the largest share of global mobile ad investment (Hubspot)
- TikTok is projected to generate close to $44 billion in ad revenue in 2026 (Hubspot)
Platform-Specific Ad Revenue
- Meta’s ad impressions rose 19% year over year in Q1 2026, following an 18% rise in Q4 2025 (ThriveAgency)
- Meta’s average price per ad climbed 12% year over year in Q1 2026 (ThriveAgency)
- Meta’s full-year 2025 ad impressions rose 12%, with average price per ad up 9% for the year (ThriveAgency)
- YouTube’s ad revenue hit $9.883 billion in Q1 2026, up 11% year over year (ThriveAgency)
- YouTube’s ad revenue was $11.383 billion in Q4 2025 (ThriveAgency)
Which Platforms Marketers Actually Use
Platform adoption numbers vary by research firm because each survey samples a different pool of marketers and may define usage differently — “using,” “investing in,” and “maintaining a presence on” a platform are not the same measurement. Facebook and Instagram remain the two most widely used platforms, but their order is not universal: HubSpot’s 2026 survey places Instagram marginally ahead of Facebook, while other surveys still put Facebook first. TikTok is closing the gap fast, and LinkedIn remains the clearest B2B leader.
| Platform | Usage Among Marketers | What Was Measured | Source |
| 86% | General platform use | Statista | |
| 83% (worldwide) | General platform use | Sprout Social | |
| 69.6% | General platform use | Hubspot, ThriveAgency | |
| 78% (worldwide) | General platform use | Sprout Social | |
| 70% | General platform use | Hubspot, ThriveAgency | |
| TikTok | 57% | General platform use | Hubspot |
| TikTok | 69% | Use of creator content specifically | Goat Agency |
| 42% (2025), an 11-point rise from 2024 | General platform use | Hubspot | |
| X (Twitter) | 56% | Marketers still investing in the platform | Hubspot |
| 22% (2026), a 6-point rise from 2025 | General platform use | Hubspot | |
| Threads | 12% | General platform use | Sprout Social |
| Snapchat | 30% | Companies maintaining a presence | Sprout Social |
Facebook and Instagram Still Drive the Most Business Impact
- 43% of marketers name Facebook as one of the platforms they consider among their highest-ROI channels — a “which platforms rank among your best performers” question, not a single-platform ranking (Hubspot)
- 28% of marketers say Facebook delivers their best influencer-marketing ROI specifically (Hubspot)
- 98% of marketers consider Instagram the most influential platform for influencer campaigns, and 72% prefer it for long-term creator partnerships (Goat Agency)
TikTok’s Rapid Rise
- TikTok is the platform most marketers plan to expand their use of in 2026 (Hubspot)
- 32% of marketers say TikTok consistently delivers their highest ROI — HubSpot ranks this response fourth-highest among all channels surveyed, a different survey question from the “highest-ROI platforms” question asked about Facebook above (Hubspot)
- TikTok leads influencer marketing by campaign volume and viral reach (Goat Agency)
- Creator-led discovery audiences on TikTok grew by as much as 483% in some markets (SQ Magazine)
LinkedIn’s B2B Lead
- 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, and 62% call it effective (Hubspot)
- B2B marketers name LinkedIn their single most-used platform (Sprout Social)
Newer and Smaller Channels
- Sponsored Snaps drive up to 22% more conversions and up to 19% lower cost-per-action inside a broader Snapchat campaign mix (Hubspot)
- Threads’ median post engagement rate of 6.25% runs about 73.6% higher than X’s 3.6% median (SQ Magazine)
- Only 12% of marketers currently use Threads for marketing, despite its growing user base (Sprout Social)
- 86% of social marketers now combine paid and organic tactics in their strategies (SQ Magazine)
- 73% of businesses prioritize organic social for authentic connection rather than relying on paid campaigns alone (Goat Agency)
- Over half of marketing leaders point to poor integration between social tools and the rest of their tech stack as the top barrier to proving social’s business impact (Sprout Social)
Engagement Rate Benchmarks by Platform
Engagement rates tell a different story than adoption rates. TikTok’s usage lags Facebook and Instagram, but its platform-wide engagement per post beats both by a wide margin in the Sprout Social data set. The rows below come from different publishers, samples, and formulas, so they are grouped here for reference, not as a single ranked league table.
| Platform / Format | Engagement Rate | Source |
| TikTok, platform average, 2025 | 3.70%, up 49% year over year | Sprout Social |
| TikTok, organic average per post | 2.5%, up to 7.5% for accounts under 100k followers | Sprinklr |
| Instagram, platform average, 2025 | 0.48%, down from 0.50% in 2024 | Sprout Social |
| Facebook, platform average, 2025 | 0.15% | Sprout Social |
| LinkedIn multi-image posts | 6.6% | Sprinklr |
| LinkedIn native documents | 5.85% | Sprinklr |
| LinkedIn video | 5.6% | Sprinklr |
| YouTube Shorts | 5.91% | Sprinklr |
| Threads | 6.25% median | SQ Magazine |
| X (Twitter) | 3.6% median | SQ Magazine |
| Cross-platform average, 2026 | 1.8% | SQ Magazine |
Hootsuite’s figures measure the highest engagement observed at specific posting frequencies, not unconditional platform averages. Across all industries in its benchmark data, the highest rates were 4.04% for Instagram, 2.08% for Facebook, and 3.56% for LinkedIn, each among accounts posting twice per week (Hootsuite). These figures should not be ranked directly against Sprout Social’s aggregate platform averages above.
Within Sprinklr’s own Instagram format data, carousels average 1.92% engagement per post, compared with 1.74% for single-image posts (Sprinklr). Other publishers report different carousel rates because they use different samples, industries and formulas.
- Video ads deliver 48% higher engagement than static image ads (SQ Magazine)
- LinkedIn carousel posts drive 11.2x more impressions than text-only updates (Sprinklr)
Organic Reach Benchmarks
Organic reach is declining on the platforms measured below; the data does not establish a decline on every platform, since not every platform is represented in this data set.
| Platform | Organic Reach | Source |
| Cross-platform decline (measured platforms) | Down 3 to 5% per post | SQ Magazine |
| TikTok vs. Facebook | TikTok delivers 5 to 15x higher reach across account sizes | SQ Magazine |
| TikTok, small accounts | 25 to 30% of followers reached per post | SQ Magazine |
| Instagram, small accounts | 3.5% per post, about 2.5x Facebook’s rate | SQ Magazine |
| Facebook Pages, 2024 average | 1.37% organic reach per post | Swydo |
Paid Ad Performance by Platform
The figures below come from different studies, campaign types, and objectives — e-commerce campaigns, B2B lead campaigns, platform-wide benchmarks, and lift studies against a platform’s own baseline. They are organized by context rather than presented as one ranked table, because the underlying numbers are not directly comparable to each other.
| Platform / Context | CTR | CPC / CPM | Conversion / Return | Source |
| Facebook, e-commerce and lead campaigns | 2.59% | $1.92 CPC | 7.72% conversion rate, $27.66 cost per lead | SQ Magazine |
| Meta, all placements (separate study) | 2% | N/A | $23.10 cost per acquisition | SQ Magazine |
| TikTok, e-commerce campaigns | 0.84% | $9.16 CPM, ~$1.00 CPC | 0.46% conversion rate; typical CPM range $3.20–$10.00 | SQ Magazine |
| TikTok, platform-wide (separate study) | N/A | N/A | 2.4x average ROAS versus the median NCS benchmark | Sprinklr |
| Instagram, B2B lead campaigns (separate study; not directly comparable to Facebook’s e-commerce CPL above) | N/A | $61.95 cost per lead | Reported as an effective B2B channel within its own study’s comparison set | SQ Magazine |
| LinkedIn, its own comparison set (separate study; not directly comparable to the Facebook/Meta rows above) | 0.96% — the highest CTR within this specific study’s own set of platforms tested | N/A | N/A | SQ Magazine |
| Pinterest, shopping ads (lift vs. platform’s own baseline) | N/A | N/A | 3x higher conversion, 2x positive incremental ROAS | Sprinklr |
| Meta Advantage+ placements (lift vs. standard Meta placements) | +4% CTR | N/A | +3.8% conversion lift versus standard placements | Sprinklr |
- Facebook Ads reach a potential audience of 2.28 billion users globally (SQ Magazine)
A note on the LinkedIn and Instagram rows above: LinkedIn’s 0.96% CTR is not “the highest” in an absolute sense — Facebook’s own figure in this table is 2.59%. LinkedIn’s figure is the highest within the specific comparison set that study used, which did not include Facebook’s 2.59% figure above (that number comes from a different study). Similarly, Instagram’s $61.95 B2B cost per lead is not more cost-effective than Facebook’s $27.66 figure in absolute terms; the two numbers describe different lead types and campaign environments and were not measured against each other.
A single CPC/CPM bar chart comparing Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram side by side is not possible from this data: Instagram’s figure here is a B2B cost-per-lead, not a CPC or CPM, so it isn’t on the same axis as the Facebook and TikTok figures.
Content and Video Marketing Performance
Video keeps taking share from every other social content format.
- 92% of marketers plan to spend the same or more on video in 2026 (Sprout Social)
- 93% of marketers already call video an important part of their social strategy (Sprout Social)
| Content Format | ROI Ranking / Figure | Source |
| Short-form video | 49% rank it their top ROI format | Hubspot |
| Long-form video | 29% | Hubspot |
| Live-streaming video | 25% | Hubspot |
| Short-form video, B2B specifically | 41% top ROI, ahead of brand storytelling (38%) and testimonials (34%) | Sprout Social |
Short-Form Video Completion and Engagement
TikTok completion rates fall sharply as video length increases.
- Clips under 10 seconds complete at 81.2% (SQ Magazine)
- Clips under 15 seconds complete at 76.4% (SQ Magazine)
- Platform-wide average completion sits at 58.3% (SQ Magazine)
- Completion drops to 41.8% for 31 to 60 second clips (SQ Magazine)
- Completion falls further to 22.7% for clips over 90 seconds (SQ Magazine)
- Educational content is the exception, completing at 67.2% regardless of length pressure (SQ Magazine)
- Vertical video delivers up to 130% higher engagement than horizontal formats on mobile (SQ Magazine)
- Reels made up more than half of all ads shared on Instagram in 2025 (Sprout Social; Goat Agency)
- Reels account for 35% of total time spent on Instagram and receive 2x more impressions than other post types (Sprout Social; Goat Agency)
YouTube and Long-Form Video
- YouTube remains the most widely used video platform, at 82% of video marketers (Hubspot)
- 64% of marketers with 10+ years of experience use YouTube for marketing (Hubspot)
- 67% of marketers plan to grow their YouTube investment in 2026 (Hubspot)
- YouTube is 1.6x more likely to influence a purchase decision than other social platforms (Sprout Social)
- US viewers rate YouTube best for instructional videos (91% agree), product reviews (81%), and unboxing content (76%) (Sprout Social)
- 85% of users say a video on YouTube convinced them to purchase (Sprout Social)
- 80% of users have downloaded an app or bought a product after watching a video on YouTube (Sprout Social)
Influencer Marketing and Overall Social ROI
- 94% of organizations say influencer marketing outperforms traditional digital advertising, most reporting 2x or higher returns (Sprout Social)
- Influencer marketing delivers an average reported ROAS (return per dollar spent) of $5.78 per $1 spent in 2025 (Sprinklr)
- Overall social media marketing delivers an average reported ROAS of $5.20 per $1 spent (SQ Magazine)
Note: these two figures describe a revenue-return multiple — commonly labeled ROAS — rather than net-profit ROI, which would need to account for costs beyond media spend. The original sources use the term “ROI”; this report labels them by what they actually measure. - 96% of marketers report positive returns from social media marketing overall (Goat Agency)
- 83% of marketers say social media has become their primary customer acquisition channel (Sprinklr)
- 90% of marketers say sponsored influencer content outperforms brand content on reach and engagement (Sprout Social)
- 83% of marketers say influencer content converts better than brand content (Sprout Social)
- 93% of influencers say a brand’s existing social content affects their decision to collaborate (Sprout Social)
- 63.8% of brands plan to partner with influencers, and live streaming makes up 52.4% of content initiatives (Sprinklr)
- 61% of consumers trust influencer endorsements more than traditional ads (Sprinklr)
- 69% of consumers trust product recommendations from influencers they follow (Sprinklr)
Micro vs. Macro Influencers
Follower count and engagement move in opposite directions.
- Micro-influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers) average 3.86% engagement (Goat Agency; Sprinklr)
- Macro-influencers (over 1 million followers) average just 1.2 to 1.21% engagement, roughly a third of the micro-influencer rate (Goat Agency; Sprinklr)
- About 46 to 49% of consumers make a purchase at least once a month because of influencer content, depending on the survey wave (Sprout Social)
Conclusion
These social media marketing statistics for 2026 point to a clear split. Budgets keep growing, but organic reach keeps shrinking on the platforms that matter most. Video and influencer content are picking up the slack, delivering the returns that older formats increasingly can’t match on their own.
At the end of the day, bigger spend doesn’t guarantee better results. Whether you’re leaning into TikTok’s rising engagement or doubling down on influencer partnerships, the platforms proving real returns are the ones worth your attention. By understanding where reach is actually converting, not just where audiences are largest, you can put budget where it works. That’s the real takeaway heading into 2026.