Last year, we made the case for video as a cornerstone of your go-to-market strategy. We talked about retention, multi-channel reach, the power of a tight 90-second narrative, and why your next trade show is basically a content studio waiting to happen.
Turns out, the research agrees with us, and then some.
Over the past several months, data from Wyzowl, Wistia, Vidyard, and a handful of other industry sources has painted a pretty clear picture: video isn’t just a nice-to-have in your GTM toolkit anymore. It’s where B2B buyers are making decisions, where deals are accelerating, and where the gap between brands that get it and brands that don’t is widening fast. So let’s dig into what the data is actually saying right now.
B2B Buyers Are Using Video to Make Purchase Decisions — Full Stop
This is the part that should get your attention if nothing else does.
According to recent data compiled from Google and Vidico, 70% of B2B buyers actively watch video content during their purchasing journey. Not after the decision. During it. They’re using video to evaluate vendors, understand solutions, and decide who gets a follow-up call.
That’s not a stat you skim past.
What this means for your GTM motion is that video is no longer just a top-of-funnel awareness play. It’s a mid-funnel evaluation tool that your buyers are actively seeking out. Levitate Media’s 2026 data backs this up: 78% of buyers say watching a short video is their preferred way to learn about a product or service, compared to any other content format. And 65% of B2B companies have gained new customers through video marketing on LinkedIn (Social Media Today / Levitate Media, 2026).
That’s a warmed-up, inbound lead who came to you because of a video. In a world where cold outreach is getting harder and buyer attention is getting shorter, that pipeline path matters.
The ROI Case Has Never Been Stronger
We’re not just talking about soft metrics here. The business outcomes from video are stacking up across the board.
Wyzowl’s 2026 State of Video report (the only one with 12 consecutive years of longitudinal data) found that 91% of businesses are now using video as a marketing tool, matching an all-time high. More importantly, 82% of video marketers report a positive ROI from their investment. Not “it feels like it’s working.” Positive ROI.
Vidico put a growth number on it: B2B marketers who use video report 49% faster revenue growth than those who don’t. And for anyone still skeptical about whether video actually converts, Wyzowl also found that 85% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads, while 83% say it has directly increased sales.
These aren’t outlier results. Report after report, the consensus is the same: video is one of the highest-leverage marketing channels available to B2B teams right now.
Where Your Video Needs to Live (LinkedIn Is Leading the Pack)
Here’s something that shifted noticeably in the last year: LinkedIn is now the #1 video-sharing channel for B2B teams, according to Wistia’s 2026 State of Video report. Eight in ten B2B marketing teams say it’s their primary platform for distributing video, ahead of YouTube. LinkedIn video watch time also grew 36% year over year (LinkedIn, 2025).
For the B2B marketers reading this who are still treating LinkedIn as a text-and-blog channel, that’s a meaningful signal worth acting on.
But the distribution story doesn’t stop there. Video is proving its value across every channel in the funnel. Embedding video on landing pages improves conversion rates by up to 86% compared to pages without it (Hostinger/EyeView, 2025).
Think about what that means for a product launch sequence. The outbound email, the landing page, the LinkedIn post. Every touchpoint performs better when video is part of the mix. That’s the multi-channel compounding effect we’ve always talked about, and now there are hard numbers behind it.
Over half of B2B teams are already capitalizing on this by repurposing their video content into social clips (Wistia, 2026), with 67% of those teams posting clips to LinkedIn and 60% using those clips to drive traffic back to their website. One production, multiple distribution moments. That’s how you stretch a video budget.
Keep It Short, But Know When to Go Long
This one has nuance, and the data actually tells a pretty interesting story.
Vidyard’s 2025 Video in Business Benchmark Report, which was based on analysis of nearly a million B2B videos, found that videos under one minute retain 65% of viewers to the end. Once you cross 20 minutes, that drops to just 20%. Average video length has already fallen from 168 seconds in 2016 to around 76 seconds, and some projections suggest it could reach 39 seconds by the end of 2026 (Bynder, 2024).
So yes, keep your product teasers, social cuts, and launch announcements tight. For GTM content hitting someone mid-scroll on LinkedIn, brevity wins.
But here’s the counterintuitive part: Wistia found that long-form video, like webinars and original series, actually drives higher conversion rates, particularly when there’s an interactive element built in. The logic makes sense: someone who voluntarily watches 30 minutes of your content is already deep in consideration mode. They’re primed to take action.
The practical takeaway for your GTM strategy? You probably need both. A 60-second hook for awareness and social distribution. A longer, richer format for prospects who want to go deeper before booking that demo.
Events Are Back And Video Is the Multiplier You’re Missing
Trade show and in-person event attendance is surging. U.S. trade show attendance jumped roughly 15% year over year in 2025 (Wave Connect), and according to Bizzabo’s 2026 State of Events Benchmark Report, 54% of attendees say they plan to attend more in-person events compared to last year. The room is filling back up.
Here’s the part that still gets underutilized: 71% of attendees believe in-person B2B conferences are the most effective way to learn about new products or services (Bizzabo, 2026). And 92% of trade show attendees say their primary reason for attending is to see new products (Trade Show Labs, 2026).
Your audience is in the room, they’re in a buying mindset, and your product team, leadership, and key stakeholders are all in the same place. That’s not just a trade show moment, that’s a content production opportunity that most teams walk away from empty-handed.
Between booth demos, product walk-throughs, candid customer reactions, and B-roll of your brand in action, all of it is fodder for assets that your sales team will use in follow-ups for months. A ready-made video cuts down your follow-up time and makes every rep’s outreach sharper.
The data on events ROI is compelling on its own. 52% of business leaders say events deliver the highest ROI of any marketing channel (Wave Connect, 2026). Pairing that investment with strategic video capture is how you double down on an already strong channel.
What the Research Is Really Telling Us
The theme running through all of this data is simple: video has moved from “marketing nice-to-have” to “GTM infrastructure.”
It’s accelerating pipeline and outperforming static content on every channel where B2B marketers operate. And more importantly, it’s how your buyers prefer to learn. The teams winning in 2026 aren’t just producing more of it, they’re being smarter about when, where, and how they deploy it.
If video has been sitting on the back burner of your GTM plan, the research just handed you the business case to move it front and center. And if you’re already investing in live events, your video ROI is sitting right there on the show floor, waiting to be captured.
There’s more data coming every quarter, and the story is only getting clearer. If you’re building your GTM plan for the back half of this year, this is the research worth keeping in your back pocket. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions on how you can transform your GTM strategy with video.
Sources: Wyzowl State of Video Marketing 2026 | Wistia State of Video 2026 | Vidyard Video in Business Benchmark Report 2025 | LinkedIn Marketing Solutions 2025 | Bynder Video Length Research 2024 | Levitate Media B2B Video Marketing Statistics 2026 | Bizzabo State of Events Benchmark Report 2026 | Wave Connect Event Marketing Statistics 2026 | Hostinger/EyeView Landing Page Research 2025 | Vidico B2B Video Marketing Statistics 2026 | Trade Show Labs Trade Show Statistics 2026
