In the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs 2026 B2B research, published October 8, 2025, 45% of the 1,015 B2B marketers surveyed put AI-powered marketing tools among their top three areas for increased investment. That is the biggest number in the published content marketing channel investment data, and it tells you what people plan to grow, not what share of a budget any category gets.
That difference shapes everything in this piece. Almost every percentage you will find on this topic counts how many respondents picked something, used something or planned to spend more on something. None of the sources we reviewed publish a recent, complete split of a content budget across blogs, video, social, paid distribution and software, so we won't build one for you. What we can do is lay out the benchmarks that do exist, say what each one measures, and show you how to use them against your own mix.
What do these benchmarks actually measure?
Four kinds of numbers get mixed together in this space, and a content marketing priorities benchmark only helps if you know which one you are looking at.
| Measure | What it tells you | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Budget allocation | The portion of a stated budget that goes to a category | A full mix, unless every category and the budget it comes from are named |
| Investment-increase selection | How many respondents plan to spend more on a category | The category's current share or the size of the increase |
| Adoption | How many respondents use a format or channel | How much they spend on it |
| Priority ranking | Where a category sits in a ranked list | The percentage of spend behind each position |
Formats, channels and tools also overlap. A single video can be made with an AI tool, embedded in a blog post, sent in an email and promoted on paid social, so those four categories cannot be cut into neat slices of one pie. Many of the survey answers also allow more than one choice, which means the totals can run past 100% and should never be rescaled into a spending mix.
One more habit worth building is checking the date of the measurement, not just the date of the report. A report published in 2026 can summarize answers collected in 2025, and a planned increase is a plan, not money already spent.
Where are B2B marketers planning to increase investment?
The most direct view comes from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs 2026 B2B report, published October 8, 2025. It surveyed 1,015 B2B marketers, mostly in North America, between June 24 and August 14, 2025, and asked each of them to pick their top three areas for increased investment in 2026. AI-powered marketing tools, including generative AI and predictive analytics, led at 45%. Events and experiential marketing followed at 33%, owned media (content assets, website, blog and email) at 32%, paid media at 25%, content personalization at 24%, technology infrastructure (martech stack, analytics and CRM) at 21%, and social and earned media at 20%.
A few cautions go with this list. It is a selection from a wider survey question, and it is about marketing investment in general rather than a dedicated content budget. The 32% for owned media bundles together content assets, the website, the blog and email, so it can't be read as a blog budget. Also, a category that few people picked for growth might still be a large, steady line in the budget, and a popular pick might be a small experiment.
What are the content format priorities?
On formats, video shows up first in more than one source. CMI and MarketingProfs published their 2025 B2B report on October 9, 2024, based on 980 B2B respondents, mostly in North America, surveyed from June to August 2024. It asked which categories organizations expected to increase in 2025.
| Investment category | Respondents expecting an increase (2025 plans) |
|---|---|
| Video | 61% |
| Thought leadership content | 52% |
| AI for content optimization and performance | 40% |
| Paid advertising | 40% |
| AI for content creation | 39% |
| In-person events | 35% |
| Webinars | 32% |
| Building an online community | 27% |
| Digital events | 21% |
| Audio content | 20% |
These are expectations gathered in 2024, so they are not measured 2025 spending, and the question was framed differently from the 2026 top-three question above. That means you can't subtract one edition from the other and call the result a trend.
HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report, which draws on more than 1,500 global marketers, gives a ranking instead of percentages. The formats marketers plan to invest most in for 2026 are short-form video, live video, long-form video, user-generated content and blog posts, in that order. We could not confirm the report's fieldwork dates or the response count for this question, so treat it as a ranking and attribute it to the 2026 edition.
Adoption figures add some context. In CMI's 2025 report, 92% of B2B respondents said they use short articles and posts, 76% use video, 75% use case studies and customer stories, 69% use long articles and posts, 57% use data visualizations and 51% use e-books and white papers. HubSpot's 2026 report found that, among the formats used in 2025, 60% used short-form video, while long-form video and blog posts were each used by 38%. The two sets of figures cover different audiences and slice written formats differently, so a gap between 92% and 38% is not a sign that blogging is fading.
The fair reading of the content format priorities is that video leads on where extra money is headed, while written formats stay widely used and stay in the top five. Priority for new investment says little about the size of a base that is already in place, and a mature blog program can be both very common and not the top target for added spend.
How much attention goes to distribution?
For content marketing channel investment on the distribution side, the clearest data is about use. In CMI's 2025 B2B report, 89% of respondents distributed content on organic social platforms, 84% on blogs on corporate websites, 71% through email newsletters, 63% through email, and 55% each through in-person events and webinars. Email and email newsletters are separate categories in the source, so they shouldn't be added together.
The same report found that 84% of B2B marketers use paid channels. Among those paid-channel users, the most common were:
| Paid channel | Use among paid-channel users |
|---|---|
| Social media advertising and promoted posts | 73% |
| Search engine marketing and pay-per-click | 64% |
| Digital display advertising | 62% |
| Sponsorships | 62% |
| Native advertising and sponsored content | 34% |
| Partner emails | 30% |
| Print display advertising | 21% |
| Influencer marketing | 16% |
Social advertising was the most widely used paid channel in this survey. That is a statement about how many marketers use it, and it says nothing about how paid budgets are divided. The report's public article also does not give the exact number of respondents behind each paid-channel item, so these percentages are best taken as a rough guide to which channels are common.
HubSpot's 2026 summary adds intentions rather than use: 37.4% of marketers selected paid social media for increased investment, 37.1% selected video marketing and 35.4% selected website, blog and SEO. That last category is a combined one, so it isn't a blog-only figure, and video may overlap with paid social, since video gets promoted there.
What does video investment actually cover?
Because video leads the priority lists, it is worth knowing what is inside the word. Wyzowl, which sells video production services, ran its Video Marketing Statistics 2026 survey in late 2025. The total sample was 266 people, a mix of marketing professionals and consumers, and the marketer-only subgroup was not specified, so these are vendor-run figures and not a market-wide measure. Among video marketers, 69% said they create social media videos, 68% explainer videos, 57% testimonial videos, 48% presentation videos, 48% video ads, 45% teaser videos and 39% product demos.
Wistia, which sells video software, published its State of Video 2026 report on April 22, 2026, based on a survey of more than 900 professionals. It names educational videos, product videos, social videos and webinars as the main formats where teams are investing and doubling down, and it reports that 48% of companies plan to increase video promotion budgets, with fewer than 10% cutting them. Wistia lists LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok as the paid promotion platforms, in that order, without a spending split.
Promotion is a separate cost from production. Wyzowl found that 41% of marketers had spent money on video ads, which tells you how many spend on promotion, not what share of a video budget it takes.
The two sources also disagree on where videos get shared. Wyzowl has YouTube first, used by 82% of respondents, then LinkedIn at 70%, Instagram at 69%, Facebook at 66%, webinars at 56% and TikTok at 40%. Wistia has LinkedIn first, with 81% of teams sharing there, then YouTube at 76%, and fewer than a quarter on TikTok. The respondent pools and the research setups are different, so there's no reason to average them. A B2B team that sells to professionals could reasonably find that LinkedIn matters more than the general ranking suggests.
The closest thing to an allocation figure for video is also from Wyzowl. It found that 46% of marketers put one-third of their budget or less into video, and that 17% don't track how much they spend. The public text says "their budget" without saying whether that means the whole marketing budget or only content marketing, so this describes a range that respondents fall into, not an average share and not a target.
Where do AI tools and software fit?
Tools are the clearest priority in the data, and also the hardest to turn into a budget share. CMI's 2026 report puts AI-powered marketing tools at 45% and broader technology infrastructure at 21%. In the 2025 report, 40% expected to increase investment in AI for content optimization and performance, and 39% in AI for content creation. Wyzowl found that 63% of video marketers use AI video tools to create or edit marketing videos, and that figure is about use, including free tools, not about paid subscriptions.
These pieces shouldn't be added up. Creation, optimization and infrastructure are separate answers, and the same people may have picked more than one, so a combined AI percentage would be invented. None of the sources we reviewed gives a reliable content-only share of budget that goes to software.
Does industry change the picture?
It can. On October 1, 2026, CMI and MarketingProfs published a technology-sector analysis of the same 2026 survey, with 266 technology marketers, mostly in North America, answering between June and August 2025. It is a cut of the same data and not a second survey, and the answers describe 2025 plans, not spending in 2026. Both columns below are the share picking each category in their top three areas for increased investment.
| Category | Overall B2B (1,015 marketers) | Technology (266 marketers) |
|---|---|---|
| AI-powered marketing tools | 45% | 51% |
| Events and experiential marketing | 33% | 45% |
| Paid media | 25% | 31% |
| Owned media | 32% | 27% |
| Content personalization | 24% | 19% |
| Technology infrastructure | 21% | 18% |
| Social and earned media | 20% | 14% |
Significance testing was not established for these differences, so we won't call any of them real or large. The simple lesson is that the order of priorities moves with the group you look at, and a general list is not a mix you have to match.
How should you compare your own mix to these benchmarks?
It helps to match the question before you compare anything. If you track spending shares, you need a benchmark with the same budget base to see where marketers invest content budget in the strict sense, and the sources above mostly don't provide one. If you track where you are putting new money, the priority lists work as a content marketing priorities benchmark. If you track which formats and channels you run, the adoption tables are the right comparison.
A short way to do this is to write your own mix in the same four terms as the table at the top: what you spend, what you plan to increase, what you use and how you rank them. Then set each against the matching benchmark and look for anything that stands out. Maybe video is your top planned increase, as it is for most of the surveyed marketers, or maybe you are paying for promotion of videos you haven't yet seen perform. Either one gives you something specific to check.
If you want to see how your own library breaks down before you decide, you can start a free DeepSmith trial and look at your site's content mapped by topic and funnel stage. That is a view of what you have published, which is a useful input next to the benchmarks on where marketers invest content budget.
