143 Social Media Marketing Statistics October 2026

Social media marketing statistics for 2026 describe a channel where budgets keep rising while organic returns thin out. Buffer's analysis of more than 52 million posts found that Instagram's median engagement rate fell from about 7.3% to 5.4% in a year, the steepest drop of any major network (Buffer, Mar 2026).

This page covers the brand and marketer side: spend, platforms, formats and posting rhythms, what paid social costs, social search and shopping, and whether teams can prove the return. For platform users and time spent, see our social media statistics page. Video and creator budgets are covered in video marketing statistics and influencer marketing statistics.

Every number links to the organisation that produced it. Vendor studies describe the accounts that use the vendor's tools, and each defines engagement in its own way, so compare a figure only with others from the same study.

How much do brands spend on social media, and which platforms get it?

Spend is still climbing faster than any other channel, but forecasters agree the climb slows from 2027. Marketers put that money mostly into Instagram and Facebook, and LinkedIn is the platform B2B teams rate highest despite lower overall use.

How fast is social advertising spend growing?

Fast, and faster than the ad market as a whole. The 2026 forecasts differ in size because they count different things, so each is attributed to its publisher.

• US media buyers project social media ad spend to grow 14.6% in 2026 (IAB, Jan 2026).
• The same buyers estimated 14.3% growth for social in 2025 (IAB, Jan 2026).
• IAB links social's growth to 18% growth in creator ad spend (IAB, Jan 2026).
• Global ad spend is forecast to grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026 (WARC, Oct 2026).
• WARC expects total ad growth to slow to 8.4% in 2027 (WARC, Oct 2026).
• WPP Media calls social the largest single advertising channel in its forecast, with growth slowing to single digits from 2027 (WPP Media, Jun 2026).

What share of the marketing budget goes to social, and what do marketers want from it?

Between a tenth and a fifth of the marketing budget at the typical US company, and rising. Marketers want awareness first, and they are adding creators and video while telling surveys that organic reach is harder to earn.

• The median company spends 10% of its marketing budget on social today, expects 15% in 12 months and 20% in five years (The CMO Survey, Mar 2026).
• Most companies plan to keep their 2026 social budgets unchanged, and 31% hope to increase them (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• App promotion campaigns have the highest average spend per campaign, $7,036.07 across TikTok and Meta (Metricool, Jun 2025).
• 59% of social media teams name increasing brand awareness as their number one goal, more than double its share a year earlier (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• 91% of marketers worldwide now work with creators (Kantar, Oct 2026).
• 56% of marketers plan to increase their organic activity on Instagram (Social Media Examiner, May 2026).
• 49% of marketers say video is the single most important content type, and 70% plan to increase their use of it (Social Media Examiner, May 2026).

Which platforms do marketers use most?

Four platforms are used by more than half of marketers. The rest are niche, and the year's movement is toward Instagram, TikTok and Reddit.

• Facebook is used by 66% of social media marketers, YouTube by 59.9% and TikTok by 56.7% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• LinkedIn ranks a distant fifth for adoption, at 42.08% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Reddit is used by 10.52% of marketers, Threads by 6.41% and Bluesky by 2.40% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Instagram usage among companies rose 5% year over year, while LinkedIn usage fell 7% (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• The number of social teams posting on Reddit once or twice a week rose 42% (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• TikTok moved from third to second place among platforms companies want to spend more time on in 2026 (Meltwater, Jan 2026).

Which platforms do marketers credit for awareness, engagement and revenue?

Instagram, in every category. The gaps between Instagram and the rest are wide for awareness and engagement and narrower for revenue.

• Instagram leads for awareness at 31%, ahead of Facebook at 25%, TikTok at 14% and LinkedIn at 8% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• For engagement, Instagram scores 29%, Facebook 23%, TikTok 14% and LinkedIn 8% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• For revenue, Instagram scores 25%, Facebook 21%, TikTok 13% and LinkedIn 11% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Facebook Groups are the most popular community platform among marketers, used by 54.31% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Nearly 54% of YouTube marketers say long-form video earns the highest engagement on the platform (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• TikTok marketers use paid ads and boosted posts (68%) more than organic content (45%) or sponsored influencer posts (38%) (HubSpot, Aug 2026).

Which networks send traffic back to brand sites?

Facebook sends most of it, and platforms make linking out hard. Reach inside the app and visits to your own pages are separate goals.

• Facebook generated 71.23% of the traffic that social media sites refer to other websites in September 2026 (Statcounter, Sep 2026).
• X (listed as Twitter) generated 7.44%, Instagram 7.43% and YouTube 7.26% (Statcounter, Sep 2026).
• Pinterest generated 3.39% and Reddit 2.43% (Statcounter, Sep 2026).
• 35.94% of marketers name platform limits on linking out as a barrier to proving social ROI (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• 54% of TikTok views come through the For You Page (Dash Social, Sep 2026).
• 44% of TikTok accounts with fewer than 100,000 followers grew between 2025 and 2026 (Metricool, May 2026).

Social reach is rented, and links are the first thing platforms discount. Pages on your own site that rank in search keep sending visitors after a post stops being shown.

Which content formats and posting schedules work best?

No format wins everywhere, and the same format can win on reach and lose on engagement. Posting at all matters more than posting at the perfect time.

Which formats earn the most engagement on each platform?

It depends on the platform, and Buffer's data shows the order flips between networks. Engagement here is each platform's own rate, so compare formats within a platform only.

• On LinkedIn, video earns a 7.35% median engagement rate, images 6.52%, link posts 3.81% and text posts 3.18% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• On Instagram, carousels earn 6.90% of reach, single images 4.44% and Reels 3.31% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• Reels reach 1.36 times as many people as carousels and 2.25 times as many as single images (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• On Facebook, live video earns a median 37.5 interactions per post, nearly four times the engagement of links (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• In Buffer's data, Facebook formats sit within one point of each other: images 5.20%, video 4.84%, text 4.76% and links 4.43% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• On X, text posts lead at 3.56% and link posts trail at 2.25% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• Video earns 5.75% on Pinterest against 3.15% for images, and 3.39% on TikTok against 1.92% for images (Buffer, Mar 2026).

Do Reels and carousels beat single images on Instagram?

Both beat single images, and the studies disagree on which comes first. Reels win on reach, and carousels tend to win on saves and per-follower engagement.

• Reels earn a 2.7% engagement rate, against 1.4% for carousels and 1.3% for static posts (Dash Social, Apr 2026).
• In Q2 2026, carousels averaged 0.50% engagement per follower, Reels 0.48% and images 0.33% (Socialinsider, Jul 2026).
• Reels generate more than four times the interactions of single-image posts, and their average watch time more than doubled to 8.5 seconds (Metricool, Jun 2026).
• Single-image posts lost 21.96% of their reach and 45.98% of their engagement in a year (Metricool, Jun 2026).
• Carousels and Reels draw about 44% more median interactions than image posts (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• Viewers watch a Reel for only about four seconds before scrolling (Dash Social, Apr 2026).

How often should brands post?

Often enough to avoid silent weeks, and no more than the team can keep good. Brands are posting less on Facebook and more on X.

• Accounts that posted 10 or more times a week gained an average of 32 more followers a week than in weeks with no posts (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• Brands post about five times a week on Instagram and on TikTok (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• Brand posts on Facebook fell from 47 to 24 a month, while posts on X rose from 50 to 70 (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• Growing Instagram accounts post about four times a week and large brands up to 17 times (Dash Social, Apr 2026).
• Most companies post either once or twice a week or three to four times a week (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• LinkedIn posts perform best from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, peaking on Wednesday at 4 p.m. (Buffer, Mar 2026).

What engagement rates should brands expect?

Lower than the old rules of thumb, and not comparable across studies. A rate that looks weak on LinkedIn is strong on X, and one that looks strong in a per-reach study is tiny in a per-follower study.

What is a typical engagement rate on each platform?

Buffer groups platforms into three tiers by median engagement rate in 2025, measured on engagements over reach where it could be.

• LinkedIn has a median engagement rate of about 6.2%, Facebook about 5.6% and Instagram about 5.46% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• TikTok sits at about 4.6%, Pinterest about 4.0% and Threads about 3.6% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• X is the lowest at about 2.5% (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• X rose 44%, Pinterest 23% and Facebook 11% from 2024 to 2025 (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• Threads fell 18% and LinkedIn 5% over the same year (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• The median YouTube Short published through Buffer earned about 268 views, up from about 86 a year earlier (Buffer, Mar 2026).

How do engagement rates look when measured per follower?

Far smaller, because followers are a much larger base than the people who actually saw a post. TikTok is the exception on every measure.

• Instagram's engagement rate per follower slipped from 0.50% to 0.48% in 2025, and X's from 0.15% to 0.12% (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• TikTok's rate rose 49% in 2025 from 2.50%, then dropped 20% in the first half of 2026 to 2.70% (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• The average TikTok post earned 3,492 likes in 2025, against 335 on Instagram, 255 on Facebook and 15 on X (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• TikTok comments per post fell 24% to 50, while shares per post rose 45% to 248 (Socialinsider, Jan 2026).
• On Emplifi's own measure, TikTok's median engagement peaked at 35.9% in Q3 2025 and eased to 27.6% in Q4 (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• Instagram's median on that measure fell from about 17% in early 2024 to under 10% by late 2025, and Facebook stayed at 1% to 2% (Emplifi, Feb 2026).

What lifts engagement beyond format?

Talking back, asking for comments and posting content that looks like only your brand. Hashtags have stopped helping on Instagram.

• Replying to comments is linked to 30% more engagement on LinkedIn and 21% more on Instagram (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• The lift is 9.5% on Facebook, 8% on X and 5% on Bluesky, across nearly 2 million posts from more than 220,000 accounts (Buffer, Mar 2026).
• Posts that ask a question earn 36.70% more comments on Instagram, and comment-focused calls to action earn 202.78% more (Metricool, Jun 2026).
• Instagram posts with a hashtag get 31.70% fewer views than the platform average (Metricool, Jun 2026).
• Distinctive, on-brand posts earn 35% more saves than generic content (Dash Social, Sep 2026).
• Marketers say humorous content drives the highest engagement, at 30.12% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).

How well does paid social perform?

Cheaper clicks and higher click-through rates than a year ago in every region Smartly measures, with large gaps between platforms and industries. Paid social is also where scammers buy the same tools real brands use.

What do Facebook ads cost and convert?

Lead campaigns cost more per click than traffic campaigns. These are averages across 20 industries.

• Facebook lead campaigns average a 2.70% click-through rate (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).
• Cost per click on lead campaigns averages $1.80, down 6.25% from $1.92 (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).
• Physicians and surgeons see the highest lead-campaign click-through rate, 4.18%, just ahead of real estate at 4.17% (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).
• Education and instruction converts 15.87% of lead clicks, against 4.15% for cars for sale (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).
• Beauty and personal care has the highest traffic-campaign click-through rate, at 2.73% (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).
• Finance and insurance pays the most per click on traffic campaigns, at $0.86, and has the lowest click-through rate, at 1.46% (LocaliQ, Sep 2026).

How do click-through and cost per click differ by region and industry?

Every region improved on both, and the winners were consumer categories. Creative choices also moved results by a wide margin.

• Asia-Pacific had the fastest regional growth in click-through rate in Q1 2026, 33.6%, from a lower base than EMEA (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• In North America, cost per click fell 29.9% (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• Latin America had the lowest median cost per click in Q1 2026, at $0.10 (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• EMEA had the highest regional median click-through rate in Q1 2026, 0.72%, ahead of Asia-Pacific at 0.61% (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• Consumer packaged goods posted the largest industry gain in click-through rate, 50.4% (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• E-commerce click-through rose 40.7% while cost per click fell 30.1% (Smartly, Sep 2026).
• In technology and telecom, people-focused creative earned 34.43% higher click-through on Meta, and product-focused creative earned 168.71% higher on Snapchat (Smartly, Sep 2026).

How do ad costs and budgets compare across platforms?

Instagram is the most expensive place to buy impressions, X the cheapest, and TikTok combines the largest budgets with mid-priced reach.

• Instagram CPMs peaked near $2.50 in Q4 2025, and Facebook CPMs typically ran $1.40 to $1.70 (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• TikTok CPMs ran $1.00 to $1.30 and X CPMs $0.90 to $1.00 (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• TikTok accounts had the highest median paid spend, $14.9K in Q4 2025, against $5.1K for Instagram (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• Instagram Reels ad investment nearly tripled between Q1 2024 and Q4 2025 (Emplifi, Feb 2026).
• TikTok traffic campaigns had a 4.93% click-through rate, against 2.54% on Meta (Metricool, Jun 2025).
• TikTok reach campaigns cost as little as $0.32 per thousand impressions (Metricool, Jun 2025).

Do scam ads put trust in social advertising at risk?

Yes. Social media is now the contact method with the largest reported scam losses, and many start with an ad that looks like a real brand's.

• Reported losses to scams that began on social media were $261 million in 2020 and $1.9 billion in 2024 (FTC, Apr 2026).
• 28% of fraud reports that indicated a loss named social media as the contact method (FTC, Apr 2026).
• More than 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media said it began when they ordered something they saw in an ad (FTC, Apr 2026).
• Investment scams accounted for $1.1 billion, more than half of reported losses (FTC, Apr 2026).
• Nearly 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform (FTC, Apr 2026).
• One in three people who lost money to a job or business-opportunity scam said it started on social media (FTC, Apr 2026).

Are customers searching, shopping and asking for help on social?

Yes for discovery and service, less so for checkout. Google still comes first for search, social wins for experiences and reviews, and consumers expect brands to answer in direct messages.

How much searching happens on social?

A fifth of first searches, concentrated in categories where people want to see something rather than read about it. Younger consumers use TikTok and Instagram, older ones use Facebook.

• Consumers prefer social media over search engines for restaurants, bars and things to do (38%) (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• 30% prefer social for product reviews and recommendations, and 30% for travel ideas (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• Gen Z searches most often on TikTok (47%) and Instagram (41%) (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• Gen X searches most often on Facebook (53%) (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• A third of consumers (33%) already research brands and products through AI assistants (Kantar, Oct 2026).
• 32% of Boomers do not regularly use any social network to search (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).

How many customers buy inside social apps?

Nearly four in ten have, and three in ten say they never will. Promo codes move more shoppers than targeted ads do.

• 38% of consumers have bought inside a social app and would do it again (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• A further 19% would try it for the first time, and 30% will not buy directly in a social app (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• Promo codes shared by a brand or influencer are the most likely purchase driver, at 30% (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• 28% say a post showing the product in action makes them more likely to buy, and 18% say targeted ads do (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• 69% of marketers expect more shopping to happen on social than on brand websites or marketplaces (HubSpot, Sep 2026).
• 39% of marketers already sell products directly inside a social platform (HubSpot, Sep 2026).

What do customers expect when they contact a brand?

Direct messages, a reply the same day, and a public answer when something goes wrong.

• 55% of consumers contact a brand on social through direct messages, 31% through the comment section (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• 32% expect a reply the same day and 19% within two business days, while 11% say speed does not matter (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• 64% of consumers say a brand should answer a crisis publicly on social media, not through a press release or website statement (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• Only 16% of consumers say response speed does not change how they judge a crisis reply, and only 10% of Gen Z (Sprout Social, Jun 2026).
• 79% of marketers expect social to become consumers' preferred channel for customer service (HubSpot, Sep 2026).

Can marketers prove social ROI, and what do teams and AI change?

Most cannot connect social to revenue easily, and the pressure to do so is rising. Small teams, split strategy and execution, and fast AI adoption are the context.

How many marketers can tie social to business results?

Few find it easy, and B2B teams find it hardest. Measurement budgets are moving toward methods that work across platforms.

• 41% of B2B marketers say tying social activity to business outcomes is hard, against 31% of B2C marketers (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• 69% of social teams say pressure to prove ROI is rising (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• 51% of social media professionals struggle to prove business impact, and 49% struggle to measure what truly works (Agorapulse, Mar 2026).
• 43% of campaign impact comes from channels working in combination, against 18% before 2014 (Kantar, Oct 2026).
• 72% of US media buyers plan to focus more on cross-platform measurement in 2026, up from 64% (IAB, Jan 2026).
• Only 10% of businesses can turn a social signal into an action within hours, and social data informs decisions outside marketing just 36% of the time (Sprout Social, Apr 2026).

How are social teams staffed and equipped?

Mostly mid-maturity, thinly staffed and short of a shared strategy. Tool stacks are growing without becoming integrated.

• 45% of companies describe their social program as intermediate and 29% as advanced (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• 52% of companies use social listening, and brand reputation monitoring is its top goal for 87% of marketers (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• Demand for outsourced community management services fell 28% year over year (Meltwater, Jan 2026).
• 65% of teams say the same people define the content strategy and execute it daily (Agorapulse, Mar 2026).
• Only 32% have clearly defined audience personas, and 10% have no method to identify audience needs (Agorapulse, Mar 2026).
• 48% of marketers expect their social tool stack to grow, but only 36% call their current stack cohesive or fully integrated (HubSpot, Aug 2026).

How are social marketers using AI?

Widely, for drafts and ideas, with uneven results and a split audience. Consumers accept AI for service faster than for content.

• 72% of marketers say social content created with AI performs better than content made without it (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• The top AI uses are ideation (42.9%) and captions or short text (41.5%) (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Image generation is where marketers say AI falls short most, at 40.2% (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• Only 13.54% use AI for social listening and trend monitoring (HubSpot, Aug 2026).
• 62% of marketers use generative AI tools daily (Social Media Examiner, May 2026).
• 70% of consumers are at least somewhat comfortable with companies using AI chatbots to speed up service on social media (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).
• Labelling a post as AI-generated makes 23% of consumers view the brand more positively and 23% more negatively (Sprout Social, Sep 2026).

Methodology and Sources

We collected these figures in October 2026. Each number links to the organisation that produced it: WARC, IAB, WPP Media, The CMO Survey, Kantar, the Federal Trade Commission and Statcounter, plus named studies from Buffer, Socialinsider, Metricool, Emplifi, Dash Social, Smartly, LocaliQ, Sprout Social, HubSpot, Meltwater, Agorapulse and Social Media Examiner. Vendor studies reflect the accounts and respondents each vendor reaches, and engagement is defined differently in each, so the page compares figures within a study and states the denominator where it matters. Marketer surveys record what marketers say, which is different from measured results. Every URL was opened and the number checked on the page before publishing. The page is reviewed monthly, and figures are replaced when a newer edition of a source is published.

Glossary

• CPM: cost per thousand ad impressions.
• CTR: click-through rate, clicks divided by impressions.
• CPC: cost per click.
• Engagement rate: interactions divided by followers or by reach, depending on the study.
• Median: the middle value, which is less affected by a few very large accounts than an average.
• Social listening: tracking mentions of a brand, competitors or topics across social platforms.
• Social commerce: buying inside a social app instead of on a brand's website.
• For You Page: TikTok's algorithmic feed, which shows posts from accounts a user does not follow.

Sources

• WARC, Global Ad Spend Outlook Q3 2026
• IAB, 2026 Outlook Study
• WPP Media, This Year Next Year 2026 Midyear Forecast
• The CMO Survey, Topline Report 2026
• Kantar, Media Reactions 2026
• FTC, Data Spotlight: Reported losses to scams on social media eight times higher than in 2020
• Statcounter Global Stats, Social Media Stats Worldwide
• Buffer, The State of Social Media Engagement in 2026
• Socialinsider, 2026 Social Media Benchmarks
• Socialinsider, 2026 Instagram Organic Benchmarks
• Metricool, 2026 Instagram Study
• Metricool, 2026 TikTok Study
• Metricool, Social Ads Study 2025
• Emplifi, Social Media Benchmarks 2026
• Emplifi, 2026 Social Media Benchmarks Report (PDF)
• Dash Social, 2026 Instagram Benchmarks
• Dash Social, 2026 Social Media Trends Report
• Smartly, Paid Social Insights and Trends Report
• LocaliQ, Facebook Advertising Benchmarks for 2026
• Sprout Social, Q2 2026 Pulse Survey Analysis
• Sprout Social, Q3 2026 Pulse Survey Analysis
• Sprout Social, The 2026 Social Intelligence Report
• HubSpot, 2026 Social Media Marketing Report
• HubSpot, AI's impact on social media
• HubSpot, The Future of Social Media
• Meltwater, Global State of Social Media Report 2026
• Agorapulse, Most social media content should not exist
• Social Media Examiner, 2026 Social Media Marketing Industry Report