168 Content Marketing Statistics for 2026

How many B2B marketers have a content strategy, and where is the budget going?

Nearly all B2B marketers say they have a content strategy, and their spending plans favour the channels they own.

1. 1 Owned media 42%
2. 2 Events and experiential 35%
3. 3 AI-powered marketing tools 30%
4. 4 Paid media 30%
5. 5 Social and earned media 25%
6. 6 Tech infrastructure 20%
7. 7 Research 18%
8. 8 Content personalisation 16%
9. 9 Agency and outsourcing 15%
10. 10 First-party data capabilities 9%
11. 11 Human resources 9%

• 97% of B2B marketers said they have a content strategy and 3% do not, in the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs survey fielded in mid-2025. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)
• Among B2B marketers with a strategy, 13% said its effectiveness significantly improved over the year, 48% said it somewhat improved, 30% said it remained stable, 8% said it somewhat declined and 1% said it significantly declined. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)
• Of the B2B marketers whose strategy improved, 74% credited strategy refinement, 51% new technology, 40% team restructuring and resource changes, 26% measurement capabilities and 16% budget adjustments. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)
• 40% of B2B marketers invested more in owned media in 2026 than the year before (12% significantly more and 28% somewhat more), 45% invested about the same, 8% somewhat less and 2% significantly less, in a survey of 861 B2B marketers, mostly in North America. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• The share of B2B marketers naming owned media as an investment area for 2027 is up 10 percentage points on plans for 2026, AI-powered marketing tools are down 15 points and paid media is up five points. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs survey their own audiences of B2B marketers once a year. The mid-2025 and mid-2026 surveys asked different questions, so their answers are not a time series. Investment plans are intentions, not money spent.

How long does a blog post take to write, and does blogging still work?

Blog posts are getting shorter and quicker to write, and fewer bloggers say the work pays off. Every figure here is a self-reported answer from one annual survey of content marketers.

• The average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write in 2026, down from a peak of 4 hours 10 minutes in 2022, in the Orbit Media survey of 1,042 content marketers. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• From 2014 to 2019 the typical post in the same survey grew from 800 words to more than 1,200 words, and the time spent on it rose from two and a half hours to almost four hours. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• Between 20% and 30% of marketers told Orbit Media year after year that their blog delivers strong marketing results. The share was 26% in 2022. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• 18% of content marketers say they do not know if their blog delivers results in 2026. For a decade that share fell between 9% and 14%. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• The share of marketers publishing two to six times a week fell from 28% in 2014 to 12% by 2022, while monthly publishing doubled. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• Influencer collaboration is used by 7% of surveyed marketers in 2026, down from 25% in 2017. Those who do it beat the survey benchmark for strong results by 2.6 times. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)

Orbit Media surveys an international, self-selected sample of content marketers and bloggers each year. Results are the respondents' own assessment of their blogs, not measured outcomes, and the link between a tactic and strong results is a correlation.

How much content is published on blogging platforms?

Tens of millions of posts a month on the WordPress.com network alone, most of them in English. Each platform counts only its own network, so the figures below cannot be added together.

1. 1 English 71%
2. 2 Spanish 4.7%
3. 3 Indonesian 2.4%
4. 4 Portuguese (Brazil) 2.3%
5. 5 French 1.5%
6. 6 Russian 1.3%
7. 7 German 1.2%
8. 8 Italian 1%
9. 9 Turkish 0.7%
10. 10 Dutch 0.6%

• Users of WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected sites produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month, on a WordPress.com activity page read in November 2026. (WordPress.com (activity page), Nov 2026)
• Over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month on the same network of sites. (WordPress.com (activity page), Nov 2026)
• WordPress.com hosts blogs written in over 120 languages. English accounts for 71% of them and Spanish for 4.7%. (WordPress.com (activity page), Nov 2026)
• Ghost, the non-profit open-source publishing platform, showed an annual run rate of $11,140,013 and 30,316 active customers on its live metrics feed on 14 November 2026. (Ghost (live company metrics), Nov 2026)
• Ghost counts more than 100 million installs, and 23,046 new publications got started with it in the week before 14 November 2026. (Ghost (live company metrics), Nov 2026)

The WordPress.com figures cover blogs on WordPress.com and sites connected through its Jetpack plugin, not every WordPress site, and the page is undated. Ghost publishes a live feed, so its numbers change daily.

Which content formats and channels do marketers use most?

Video comes ahead of the written word in what marketers say they use, and a website with a blog is the channel B2B marketers name most. These are answers to one vendor survey, not measured performance.

1. 1 Website, blog and SEO 48.4%
2. 2 Email marketing 39.3%
3. 3 Organic social media content 38.6%

• Blog posts were used by 38% of marketers in 2025, which made them the third most popular content format in the HubSpot survey, behind long-form video, also at 38%. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page), 2026)
• Asked which formats drive return on investment, marketers in the same survey most often named short-form video (49%), long-form video (29%) and live-streaming video (25%). This is the marketers' own judgement, not a measured return. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page), 2026)
• 22.26% of marketers named blog posts, which placed them among the five formats most often credited with return on investment in the HubSpot survey. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page), 2026)
• Among B2B marketers, 30.2% named website, blog and SEO as the channel that drives return on investment, 23.6% email marketing and 23.3% paid social media content. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, channels article), Jan 2026)
• Among B2C marketers, 41.7% use organic social media content, 41.6% website, blog and SEO and 41.2% paid social media content. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, channels article), Jan 2026)

HubSpot surveys marketers worldwide for its annual State of Marketing report and publishes selected results on its statistics page and blog. The B2B and B2C figures are subsets of that survey. Return on investment here is what marketers reported, not a measured return.

How much content earns links, shares or search traffic?

Very little of it. A 2019 study of blog posts and a 2023 study of indexed pages both found that the great majority of content gets no links and no visits from Google.

• Increased 31%
• Decreased 31%
• About the same 24%
• Not tracking 14%

• 94% of blog posts in a 2019 Backlinko analysis of 912 million posts had zero external links, and 2.2% had links from more than one website. (Backlinko (2019 content study), Feb 2019)
• Content longer than 3,000 words got an average of 77.2% more referring-domain links than content shorter than 1,000 words in the same 2019 study. (Backlinko (2019 content study), Feb 2019)
• 1.3% of articles generated 75% of all social shares in the 2019 Backlinko study. (Backlinko (2019 content study), Feb 2019)
• 96.55% of the roughly 14 billion pages in the Ahrefs index got zero traffic from Google in a 2023 study, and 1.94% got between one and ten visits a month. (Ahrefs (search traffic study), Dec 2023)
• 31% of B2B marketers report that website traffic rose over the last 12 months (6% significantly and 25% somewhat) and 31% report a fall (21% somewhat and 10% significantly), in a mid-2026 survey of 861 B2B marketers. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• Among B2B marketers whose traffic fell, 79% blame AI-powered search. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• 48.9% of brands believe their website traffic has decreased because consumers use AI for answers, in the HubSpot global survey for its 2026 report. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, channels article), Jan 2026)
• 70.6% of marketers in the HubSpot survey say they use AI to optimise for SEO and AI-powered search engines. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, channels article), Jan 2026)

The Backlinko study covers its own sample of blog posts from 2019, and the Ahrefs study covers the pages in its own index. The survey answers from the Content Marketing Institute and HubSpot are perceptions from different groups of marketers and are not combined.

How well do email newsletters perform?

Newsletter platforms report open rates of more than a third, and paid subscriptions are growing. Each platform reports only its own customers, so rates from different platforms and years are not compared.

1. 1 Non-profits 40.04%
2. 2 Education and training 35.64%
3. 3 Business and finance 31.35%
4. 4 Ecommerce 29.81%

• Publishers on beehiiv sent 28 billion emails in 2025 and reached more than 255 million unique readers. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• The spam complaint rate across the emails sent through beehiiv in 2025 was 0.02%. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• Paid subscriptions on beehiiv generated $19 million for creators in 2025, compared with $8 million in 2024, growth the platform puts at 138%. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• 46.67% of beehiiv creators sent weekly in 2025, 27.15% monthly and 1.37% daily. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• 86% of opens of beehiiv newsletters happen on desktop, on the platform's own count. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• Open rates on beehiiv were highest for sends at 5am EST, at 44.46%, and fell to a low of 28.61% around 10pm EST. Subject lines of 0-20 words averaged a 41.56% open rate. (beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026), Jan 2026)
• Across all Mailchimp users the average email open rate was 35.63%, the click rate 2.62% and the unsubscribe rate 0.22%, in data last updated in December 2023. (Mailchimp (email benchmarks), Dec 2023)
• Click rates in the same December 2023 Mailchimp data were 3.27% for non-profits, 3.02% for education and training, 2.78% for business and finance and 1.74% for ecommerce. (Mailchimp (email benchmarks), Dec 2023)
• Substack reports 5 million paid subscriptions on its platform, and its writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees, on an about page read in November 2026. (Substack (about page), Nov 2026)
• More than 30% of paid subscriptions on Substack come from within its own network, and more than half of new subscribers come from its built-in network, on the same page. (Substack (about page), Nov 2026)

beehiiv, Mailchimp and Substack each report data on their own customers. The Mailchimp benchmarks date from 2023 and cover its users in all industries, while beehiiv covers newsletter publishers in 2025, so the open rates are not compared. The Substack page is undated.

How many people listen to podcasts?

More than half of Americans aged 12 and over now listen to or watch a podcast every month. Surveys with different age ranges and time windows give different shares, so each is listed with its own definition.

• Listened and watched 57%
• Listened, did not report watching 21%
• Watched, did not report listening 2%
• Neither 20%

• 45% of Americans aged 12 and over, an estimated 130 million people, listened to or watched a podcast in the last week in January 2026. (Edison Research (Infinite Dial 2026), Mar 2026)
• 57% of Americans aged 12 and over have both listened to and watched a podcast. (Edison Research (Infinite Dial 2026), Mar 2026)
• Monthly online audio listening among Americans aged 55 and over rose from 52% to 70% in two years. (Edison Research (Infinite Dial 2026), Mar 2026)
• 54% of US adults said they had listened to a podcast in the past 12 months in August 2025, up from 49% in 2022, in a Pew Research Center survey. (Pew Research Center (Podcasts and News Fact Sheet), Sep 2025)
• By age in 2025, 67% of US adults aged 18-29 had listened to a podcast in the past 12 months, 62% of those aged 30-49, 50% of those aged 50-64 and 33% of those aged 65 and over. In 2022 the shares were 67%, 58%, 42% and 28%. (Pew Research Center (Podcasts and News Fact Sheet), Sep 2025)

Edison Research surveys Americans aged 12 and over and asks about listening to or watching podcasts. Pew Research Center asks US adults aged 18 and over about listening in the past 12 months. The two measures are not comparable.

How many podcasts are published, and where are they played?

Spotify lists millions of podcast titles, while one hosting company counts just over a hundred thousand active shows, and the lower half of its episodes get no more than 27 downloads in their first week. Publishing counts, audience shares and advertising revenue are separate measures.

1. 1 Apple Podcasts 30.0%
2. 2 Spotify 24.9%
3. 3 Web browser 18.2%
4. 4 Buzzsprout embed player 4.0%
5. 5 Castbox 1.8%
6. 6 Overcast 1.8%
7. 7 Pocket Casts 1.1%
8. 8 Podcast Addict 1.0%
9. 9 Amazon Music 0.7%

• Spotify lists 8 million podcast titles, alongside over 100 million tracks and 800,000 audiobooks in select markets, on its company information page in October 2026. (Spotify (company information), Oct 2026)
• Spotify reports 788 million users, including 306 million subscribers, in 184 markets. (Spotify (company information), Oct 2026)
• Buzzsprout hosted 111,713 active podcasts in October 2026, which published 150,766 new episodes and drew 88,101,139 downloads in the month. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)
• In their first 7 days, the lower 50% of Buzzsprout episodes drew 0 to 27 downloads, the next 25% drew 28 to 98 and the next 15% drew 99 to 424, in October 2026. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)
• The next 5% of Buzzsprout episodes drew 425 to 1,033 downloads in their first 7 days, the next 4% drew 1,034 to 4,657 and the top 1% drew 4,658 or more. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)
• 79.2% of downloads of Buzzsprout podcasts play on a phone: 56.7% on an iPhone and 22.5% on an Android phone. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)
• The United States accounts for 49.7% of Buzzsprout downloads worldwide, the United Kingdom for 6.2%, Canada for 4.4%, Australia for 3.8% and Germany for 3.2%. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)
• By day of the week, 16.9% of Buzzsprout episodes in October 2026 were published on a Monday, 17.1% on a Tuesday, 16.0% on a Wednesday, 18.1% on a Thursday, 15.5% on a Friday, 6.6% on a Saturday and 9.9% on a Sunday. (Buzzsprout (platform statistics), Oct 2026)

Spotify counts the podcast titles on its service, and its user numbers cover the whole service, not podcast listeners. Buzzsprout reports only the shows it hosts. Neither is a count of all podcasts. US podcast advertising revenue, reported by the IAB and PwC, is a separate measure from audience and publishing figures.

How many marketers use AI to create content?

Most of them, in every survey that asks. The surveys question different groups in different ways, so each figure below is given with its own producer and none are combined.

1. 1 Speed 78%
2. 2 Efficiency 59%
3. 3 Volume 44%
4. 4 Innovation 22%
5. 5 Quality 17%
6. 6 Performance improvement 12%
7. 7 Growth 9%
8. 8 None 3%

• Of the B2B marketers whose organisations use AI-powered content creation tools, 60% expanded their use compared with a year earlier, in a survey of 861 B2B marketers, mostly in North America, fielded from June to August 2026. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• Asked what generative AI contributes to their content creation, with up to three answers allowed, B2B marketers most often chose speed (78%), efficiency (59%) and volume (44%). Quality was chosen by 17%. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• 95% of B2B marketers said their organisations use AI-powered applications in the mid-2025 edition of the same survey. Content creation tools were used by 89%, creative asset tools by 53%, SEO tools by 41%, social media tools by 38% and email marketing tools by 36%. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)
• 80% of marketers use AI for content creation and 75% use it for media production, in the HubSpot global survey of marketers for its 2026 report. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page), 2026)
• About 94% of marketers in the HubSpot survey plan to use AI in their content creation in 2026. (HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page), 2026)
• 87% of 879 content marketers surveyed by Ahrefs in 2025 reported using AI to create or help create content, and 13% did not use AI in any capacity. (Ahrefs (AI content study), May 2025)
• 92.4% of the 1,042 content marketers in the Orbit Media survey use AI for blogging in 2026. AI users and non-users are equally likely to report strong results. (Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey), Sep 2026)
• 65.4% of US companies use AI for content personalisation, against 52.8% in autumn 2023, and 41.5% use generative engine optimisation to get content to appear in AI-generated search results, in The CMO Survey of January 2026. (The CMO Survey (2026 report), Apr 2026)

Samples and questions differ. The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs survey B2B marketers from their own audiences, HubSpot surveys marketers worldwide, Ahrefs surveyed 879 content marketers, Orbit Media surveys content marketers and bloggers, and The CMO Survey questions marketing leaders at US for-profit companies. The shares are not comparable and are not averaged or charted together.

How much new web content is AI-generated, and what does AI do to quality?

Most new pages carried at least some AI-generated content in one 2025 study, though few were AI alone. Marketers credit AI with speed far more often than quality, and about half work without a policy on disclosing it.

• Mix of AI and human 71.7%
• Pure human 25.8%
• Pure AI 2.5%

• 2.5% of the new pages Ahrefs analysed in April 2025 were categorised as pure AI and 25.8% as pure human. The rest were a mix of the two. (Ahrefs (AI content study), May 2025)
• 25.86% of the pages in the Ahrefs study showed moderate AI use (11% to 40% of the page content), 20.50% substantial use (41% to 70%) and 15.51% dominant use (71% to 99%). (Ahrefs (AI content study), May 2025)

Ahrefs categorised the pages itself, so the shares depend on its own method. The survey answers below come from B2B marketers in the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs audiences.

How effective do marketers say their content is, and what do they measure?

Most B2B marketers rate their marketing as effective, but few call it highly effective. Engagement is the measure they use most for thought leadership, and getting content to prompt action is the difficulty they name most.

• Highly effective 12%
• Somewhat effective 48%
• Neutral 30%
• Somewhat ineffective 4%
• Highly ineffective 1%
• Too soon to tell 5%

• Combined, 60% of B2B marketers rate their organisation's marketing over the last 12 months as effective, in a mid-2026 survey of 861 B2B marketers, mostly in North America. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• Among B2B marketers who rate their marketing effective, 47% credit content relevance and quality and 43% team skills and capabilities. AI-powered marketing applications are credited by 14%. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• Alignment with sales and channel selection and optimisation are each credited by 26% of those marketers, competitive positioning by 23%, measurement and reporting by 20% and marketing technology by 15%. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027), Nov 2026)
• The content marketing difficulties B2B marketers named most often in mid-2025 were creating content that prompts a desired action (40%), resource constraints (39%) and measuring content effectiveness (33%). (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)
• Creating enough quality content was named by 28% of B2B marketers in mid-2025, differentiating content from competitors by 24%, matching content to the buyer journey by 23% and cross-department collaboration by 21%. (Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026), Oct 2025)

All figures in this section are self-ratings from B2B marketers in the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs audiences, mostly in North America. The mid-2025 and mid-2026 surveys asked different questions.

How do people read content online?

They scan it. Usability studies from 1997 to 2018 found that visitors read a fraction of the words on a page and give most of their attention to the top. These are lab and browser-log studies with small groups of users, and the year is part of each figure.

1. 1 Concise 58% better
2. 2 Scannable 47% better
3. 3 Objective language 27% better
4. 4 All three combined 124% better

• In the same 1997 experiment, rewriting one website raised its measured usability by 124% when concise, scannable and objective writing were combined. (Nielsen Norman Group (How Users Read on the Web), Sep 1997)
• On an average visit, users had time to read at most 28% of the words on a web page, and about 20% was more likely, in a 2008 Nielsen Norman Group analysis of 59,573 page views by 25 users. The average page view contained 593 words. (Nielsen Norman Group (How Little Do Users Read?), May 2008)
• Users in that 2008 dataset spent 4.4 seconds more on a page for each additional 100 words, on top of a fixed time of about 25 seconds, and read half the information only on pages with 111 words or less. (Nielsen Norman Group (How Little Do Users Read?), May 2008)
• 17% of the page views in the 2008 dataset lasted less than 4 seconds and 4% lasted more than 10 minutes. (Nielsen Norman Group (How Little Do Users Read?), May 2008)
• Users often leave web pages in 10-20 seconds, and the rate of leaving flattens only after about 30 seconds on a page, in a 2011 Nielsen Norman Group article. (Nielsen Norman Group (How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?), Sep 2011)
• Users spent about 57% of their page-viewing time above the fold and 74% in the first two screenfuls in a 2018 Nielsen Norman Group eye-tracking study of 120 participants. In 2010 the above-the-fold share was 80%. (Nielsen Norman Group (Scrolling and Attention), Apr 2018)
• On general websites in the 2018 study, more than 42% of viewing time fell within the top 20% of the page and more than 65% within the top 40%. 81% of viewing time was spent in the first three screenfuls. (Nielsen Norman Group (Scrolling and Attention), Apr 2018)

Each study is a usability test, a browser-log analysis or an eye-tracking session with a small group of users, not a survey of the population. The studies date from 1997, 2008, 2011 and 2018.

Where do people in the United States get news and content online?

Search, news websites and social media lead, and about a third of US adults get news from newsletters or podcasts. AI chatbots reach fewer people, though the share using them for news rose in a year.

1. 1 Search 70%
2. 2 News websites or apps 66%
3. 3 Social media 59%
4. 4 Email newsletters 34%
5. 5 Podcasts 32%
6. 6 AI chatbots 15%

• 88% of US adults at least sometimes get news from digital devices such as a smartphone, computer or tablet, and 59% do so often, up from 56% in 2025. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• 12% of US adults often get news from radio and 6% from printed newspapers or magazines, in the same August 2026 survey. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• 15% of US adults get news from AI chatbots at least sometimes as of summer 2026, up from 9% in 2025. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• Between 2020 and 2026 the share of US adults who often or sometimes get news from search went from 65% to 70% and from social media from 53% to 59%, while news websites or apps went from 68% to 66%. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• Asked which platform they prefer for news, 28% of US adults say television, 21% news websites or apps, 19% social media, 12% search and 5% podcasts. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• Radio is the preferred news platform for 5% of US adults, print publications for 4%, email newsletters for 2% and AI chatbots for 1%. A year earlier 34% preferred television and 14% social media. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• By age, 75% of US adults aged 18-29 get news from social media at least sometimes, 69% of those aged 30-49, 53% of those aged 50-64 and 37% of those aged 65 and over. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• News websites or apps are a news source at least sometimes for 59% of US adults aged 18-29, 69% of those aged 30-49, 73% of those aged 50-64 and 61% of those aged 65 and over. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)
• AI chatbots are a news source at least sometimes for 17% of US adults aged 18-29, 20% of those aged 30-49, 14% of those aged 50-64 and 8% of those aged 65 and over. (Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet), Oct 2026)

Pew Research Center surveys US adults. These figures are about news, which is narrower than all online content.

How do audiences worldwide find, trust and pay for online content?

Trust in news is at the lowest level the Reuters Institute has recorded since 2015, many people avoid the news and few pay for it. Creators and AI chatbots are taking a share of attention.

• Trust in news averaged 37% across 48 markets in 2026, the lowest level the Reuters Institute has recorded since it started to measure trust in 2015. In the United States 25% say they trust the news most of the time. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 42% of respondents across all markets say they sometimes or often avoid the news, flat on the year and against 29% in 2017, from a total sample of 97,520. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 25% of respondents are casual or passive news users who typically consume news once a week, up from 16% in 2021, while the share of news lovers fell from 29% to 22%. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 77% of people across the 48 markets consume online news video each week. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 27% of respondents get some news from news-focused creators or influencers, and 46% get some news from creators of any type. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 13% of respondents across the 48 markets say most or all of their news needs are met by creators who focus on news, and 3% rely solely on creators for their news. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026, full report), Jun 2026)
• The share saying all or most of their news needs are met by creators is 33% in Kenya, 26% in Thailand, 23% in Peru and 15% in both the United States and Hungary. Around 7% in Kenya and 3% in the United States use only creators for news. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026, full report), Jun 2026)
• 17% of people pay for access to online news in the basket of 20 countries the Reuters Institute tracks, unchanged on the year. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• 10% of people use AI chatbots for news, up from 7% a year earlier, and the share is 16% among under-35s. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)
• The most popular feature of AI chatbots for news, named by 42% of respondents, is the ability to ask follow-up questions. (Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026), Jun 2026)

The Reuters Institute figures are averages across the 48 markets in its 2026 survey, not a world figure, and they are not comparable with the Pew Research Center figures for US adults.

How much do content marketers and writers earn?

It depends on the job title and on who is counting. Official US statistics cover employed writers, editors and public relations specialists, while community and association surveys report the pay of the people who chose to answer.

View data table

Average total annual income of content marketers in the Superpath community survey, by report year, in US dollars. Respondents choose to take part, so the years are not a controlled series.

Period	Value
2020	$79,657
2021	$84,829
2022	$93,725
2023	$95,379
2024	$111,352
2025	$111,891

• There were 140,300 jobs for writers and authors in the United States in 2025. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in employment from 2025 to 2035, with about 11,900 openings a year. (Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook), Oct 2026)
• 65% of US writers and authors are self-employed. The lowest-paid 10% earned less than $44,310 and the highest-paid 10% more than $139,870. (Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook), Oct 2026)
• US editors earned a median $77,920 a year in 2025 across 105,000 jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment to decline 1% from 2025 to 2035, with about 7,900 openings a year. (Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook), Oct 2026)
• US technical writers earned a median $90,390 a year in 2025 across 46,400 jobs, with employment projected to grow 1% from 2025 to 2035 and about 3,200 openings a year. (Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook), Oct 2026)
• US public relations specialists earned a median $74,750 a year in 2025 across 314,500 jobs, with employment projected to grow 2% from 2025 to 2035 and about 23,000 openings a year. (Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook), Oct 2026)
• Content marketers in the Superpath community survey published in January 2025 reported a median total annual income of $100,000, down from $105,000 a year earlier, and 50.3% made $100,000 or more. (Superpath (2025 salary report), Jan 2025)
• Average income in the Superpath survey was $75,004 for content marketers with 0 to 3 years of experience, $94,083 with 4 to 7 years, $125,624 with 8 to 12 years and $142,533 with 13 or more years. (Superpath (2025 salary report), Jan 2025)
• Male content marketers in the Superpath survey earned $13,819 more a year on average than female and non-binary respondents, with women earning about 88 cents on the dollar compared with men. (Superpath (2025 salary report), Jan 2025)
• 13% of in-house content marketers in the Superpath survey said they had been laid off in 2024, down from 16% the year before. (Superpath (2025 salary report), Jan 2025)
• Average compensation for US-based marketers is up about 16% in two years, in the Content Marketing Institute career survey of February 2026. Salaries are up roughly 21% since 2024 for Gen X, 18% for millennials and 10% for Gen Z. (Content Marketing Institute (2026 career survey), Apr 2026)
• The pay gap between male and female marketers in the Content Marketing Institute career survey is roughly 13%. (Content Marketing Institute (2026 career survey), Apr 2026)
• Full-time US authors earned a median $10,000 from their books in 2022 and $20,000 including other author-related income, in the Authors Guild survey published in 2023. Across all surveyed authors the medians were $2,000 and $5,000. (Authors Guild (2023 author income survey), Sep 2023)

Bureau of Labor Statistics medians are official figures for the United States, and its 2025-2035 projections are forecasts. Superpath surveys its own community of content marketers and the Content Marketing Institute its own audience, so neither sample is representative. The Authors Guild surveys book authors, a different group from content marketers.

Methodology and sources

Figures come from the producers' own publications: annual marketer surveys (Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, Orbit Media, HubSpot, The CMO Survey, Superpath), platform data (beehiiv, Mailchimp, Substack, Ghost, WordPress.com, Buzzsprout, Spotify, W3Techs), studies of web pages (Ahrefs, Backlinko), usability research (Nielsen Norman Group), audience surveys (Pew Research Center, Reuters Institute, Edison Research), official US labour statistics, the IAB and PwC advertising revenue report, the Editorial Freelancers Association and the Authors Guild. Each link goes to the page or PDF that carries the number. A survey of marketers is the producer's own survey of its own audience or panel, and platform figures cover that platform's customers only, so figures from different producers are not merged or averaged. Older studies carry their year in the sentence. Figures that could be read only from a chart image, series whose years were not printed beside the values and sums the sources do not state are left out. The page is reviewed monthly.

• Ahrefs (AI content study) · May 2025
• Ahrefs (search traffic study) · Dec 2023
• Authors Guild (2023 author income survey) · Sep 2023
• Backlinko (2019 content study) · Feb 2019
• beehiiv (State of Newsletters 2026) · Jan 2026
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook) · Oct 2026
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook) · Oct 2026
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook) · Oct 2026
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook) · Oct 2026
• Buzzsprout (platform statistics) · Oct 2026
• Content Marketing Institute (2026 career survey) · Apr 2026
• Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2026) · Oct 2025
• Content Marketing Institute (B2B report for 2027) · Nov 2026
• Edison Research (Infinite Dial 2026) · Mar 2026
• Editorial Freelancers Association (2026 rate chart) · May 2026
• Ghost (live company metrics) · Nov 2026
• HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, channels article) · Jan 2026
• HubSpot (State of Marketing 2026, statistics page) · 2026
• IAB and PwC (2025 internet ad revenue report) · Apr 2026
• Mailchimp (email benchmarks) · Dec 2023
• Nielsen Norman Group (How Little Do Users Read?) · May 2008
• Nielsen Norman Group (How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?) · Sep 2011
• Nielsen Norman Group (How Users Read on the Web) · Sep 1997
• Nielsen Norman Group (Scrolling and Attention) · Apr 2018
• Orbit Media (2026 blogger survey) · Sep 2026
• Pew Research Center (News Platform Fact Sheet) · Oct 2026
• Pew Research Center (Podcasts and News Fact Sheet) · Sep 2025
• Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026, full report) · Jun 2026
• Reuters Institute (Digital News Report 2026) · Jun 2026
• Spotify (company information) · Oct 2026
• Substack (about page) · Nov 2026
• Superpath (2025 salary report) · Jan 2025
• The CMO Survey (2026 report) · Apr 2026
• W3Techs (WordPress usage) · Nov 2026
• WordPress.com (activity page) · Nov 2026