Semrush's State of Content Marketing 2023 research, published February 7, 2023, found that 52% of surveyed companies created their content in-house without outsourcing. The survey covered more than 1,700 marketers and business owners in 34 countries, so the split looks close to even rather than tilted toward outsourcing.
That is a useful starting point for anyone weighing in-house vs outsourced content marketing, but it isn't the whole picture. Using an outside writer now and then is different from handing off the whole production operation, and most published surveys count those two situations differently. Below, the outsourcing content production statistics are grouped by the question each one answers, with the publisher, the date and the sample next to every figure so you can see what it does and doesn't tell you.
Do most companies keep content production in-house?
In the published surveys reviewed here, a slight majority did. Semrush's 2023 report put the in-house-only share at 52% and the share that outsourced content at 48%.
A separate Semrush Marketplace survey on content writing, released in 2021, reported 51% entirely in-house. Databox surveyed more than 140 companies and found that 67% handled all content marketing and SEO tasks internally. That sample was unusual, though. Half of the companies were in marketing and advertising, and just under 80% had fewer than 50 employees. Databox's page shows an update label of "Mar 4" with no year, so we the year of that number isn't clear.
It helps to keep one thing in mind while reading these. "In-house" means different things in different surveys. A writing-only survey can count a company as entirely in-house even if that company buys video or design from outside. A survey of in-house marketers can include people who hire freelancers. So the figures describe each survey's own sample and question, and they don't add up to one rate for all companies.
How common are hybrid and fully outsourced production?
The clearest three-way split comes from the Semrush Marketplace writing survey released in 2021, which reported 700 completed surveys. Semrush Marketplace was a content-writing service at the time, so this is a vendor's research and worth reading that way.
| Production model | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Entirely in-house | 51% |
| Hybrid (internal production plus outsourced writers) | 37% |
| Entirely outsourced | 12% |
If you add the last two rows you get 49% using some outsourcing, which is arithmetic from the published numbers and not a figure the survey states by itself. Most of that group also kept producing content internally. That is the point of a hybrid content team model: some work stays inside the company and some goes outside, so a company that "outsources" can still be mostly an in-house operation.
Two cautions come with this table. The 37% for hybrid production does not mean 37% of content is outsourced, because it counts companies and not articles. And 12% fully outsourced means the writing was fully outsourced, not that those companies handed over their whole marketing function.
What is the real content marketing outsourcing rate?
It depends on what the survey asked. The Semrush 2023 report found 48% outsourcing content. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs asked B2B respondents whether they outsource any content marketing activities for their Insights for 2022 research, and 50% said yes. That report analyzed 810 qualifying respondents from a larger global survey of 1,275, and the accompanying article was published on October 13, 2021.
Those two numbers sit close together, but they are not measuring the same thing. The CMI question covers any activity, which could be design, editing, distribution or writing. It does not say how much of a company's content goes outside. So when you see a content marketing outsourcing rate quoted somewhere, the first thing to check is the activity behind it.
The Semrush 2023 report also showed that the work being outsourced often isn't writing. Among commonly outsourced services, it listed graphic design at 47%, video design or animation at 43% and copywriting at 37%. A company can write everything itself and still count as outsourcing because it buys visuals.
Does company size change the outsourcing rate?
Yes, in the one survey that broke it out. CMI's Insights for 2022 reported the share of organizations outsourcing at least one content marketing activity, by company size.
| Company size | Share outsourcing at least one activity |
|---|---|
| Small (1 to 99 employees) | 37% |
| Medium (100 to 999 employees) | 54% |
| Large (1,000 or more employees) | 75% |
| All qualifying respondents | 50% |
Larger organizations were more likely to use some outside help. The same article said large-company outsourcing had risen from 61% in the prior edition to 75%, which is a comparison of two survey editions and not proof of a lasting trend.
This table measures how many organizations outsource something, not how much of their content is outsourced. It also doesn't show why small companies outsource less. Cost might be part of it, but no test in the survey checks that, so it would be a guess.
CMI's report also said the most successful content marketers were more likely than respondents overall to outsource. That is an association, and company size, resources and program maturity could all be behind it. It doesn't show that outsourcing causes better results.
Are companies using agencies or freelancers?
Semrush Marketplace's 2021 survey asked which resources respondents preferred for content creation, and people could pick more than one.
| Resource | Share of responses |
|---|---|
| Independent freelance writers with established personal brands | 47% |
| Digital and content marketing agencies | 27% |
| Content-writing services or marketplaces | 24% |
| Freelance writers on gig sites | 17% |
Established independent freelancers were chosen most often. Because people could choose several options, these shares overlap and can't be added together or read as slices of one market. 47% does not mean 47% of companies use freelancers, and 27% does not mean 27% hand production to agencies.
Agencies also buy outside help themselves. In the primary 2022 report from Verblio, a content-production provider, 25% of the agency respondents produced all of their content in-house and 75% got outside help from freelancers and content marketplaces. Digiday's October 21, 2022 write-up of that survey reported that 71% of in-house marketers and 68% of agencies outsourced content needs to freelancers. So when a brand hires an agency, the writing may still be done by a freelancer one step further down.
What pushes companies toward outside help, and what makes it hard?
The surveys are better at measuring the difficulties than the motivations.
For difficulties, CMI found that among respondents who outsourced at least one activity, 65% named finding partners with enough topical expertise as a challenge, and 40% named budget. Respondents could choose up to five items from a list.
The Semrush Marketplace release reported that 49% cited difficulty finding writers with hands-on experience and subject knowledge, and 41% cited insufficient content quality. Among companies using outsourced writers, 44% said quality was the only factor they considered when choosing vendors. One in ten had stopped outsourcing because they were unhappy with the results. The same release noted that technology and SaaS respondents generally had a harder time finding quality writers, though it gave no percentage for that.
On the motivation side, Verblio linked agencies' greater use of outside help to producing more content. That is the publisher's interpretation and not a measured share of agencies who outsourced for that reason.
There is also a gap worth stating plainly. The published outsourcing surveys reviewed here do not give a comparable breakdown of why companies choose to keep production entirely internal. Brand control, confidentiality, speed and cost might all matter, but nobody in this set of studies put a percentage on them, so this piece doesn't either.
Why do outsourcing content production statistics disagree?
When you line these numbers up they can look contradictory, and most of the time they aren't. The differences come from a few places.
- The activity. Semrush Marketplace asked about writing, Semrush 2023 about content creation, CMI about any content marketing activity, and Databox about content marketing and SEO combined.
- The threshold. Verblio reported that half of in-house marketers outsourced between one-quarter and all of their content needs. That is a share-of-production cut, and it is not the same as asking whether a company outsources at all.
- The sample. Databox leaned toward small companies and marketing firms. CMI covered B2B organizations. Verblio split respondents into agencies, freelancers and in-house.
- The date. The 2021 and 2023 Semrush figures come from different surveys, so the similar in-house percentages don't make a trend line.
- The label. Identical percentages can mean different things. CMI's 75% is for large companies, and Verblio's 75% is for agencies receiving outside help.
Report titles can also mislead on freshness. Minuttia's State of Content Marketing page carries a 2026 title, but its methodology points to a 2023 survey of 685 in-house content marketers. A new title on the page is not new fieldwork.
No verified, universal 2026 split between in-house, hybrid and outsourced production turned up in this research, and the strongest comparable evidence is a few years old. Treat all of the figures above as dated, sample-specific results and keep the year attached when you quote them.
What do these numbers mean for your own decision?
They don't pick a model for you, and they don't show that one model performs better than another. What they do give you is a way to read any benchmark you come across: ask what activity it measures, what share of companies or content it counts, who ran it and when.
For your own team, the useful version of the question is narrower than "should we outsource?" You can write down which parts of production stay inside, which parts go outside, and who is accountable for quality on both sides. The surveys suggest that expertise and quality are the places outsourcing most often gets difficult, so that is a sensible place to look first.
If you are mapping that out and want to see what a production pipeline with research, linking, a cover image and metadata built in looks like, you can start a DeepSmith free trial and run a piece through it with your own brand context.
