Establishing Powerful Web 2.0 Foundations to Drive Trust
And after an initial jump in 2025, the percentage of people spending $45,000 or more monthly is holding strong: When looking at different industries, particularly, we saw that almost one-third (30%) of B2B material online marketers invest less than $5,000 per month, compared to 26% of B2C online marketers. However otherwise, in spite of the fact that they're extremely different markets, there isn't a significant difference in their budgets.
Around 1 in 6 (16%) content online marketers whose markets are both B2C and B2B invest $45,000 or more per month, compared to only 10% of B2C and 10% of B2B marketers. In spite of algorithm modifications and a quickly changing content market, content marketing is clearly still earning money. What's more, the data shows that the widespread usage of AI hasn't caused shrinking content budgets.
We all know that you can't put a keyword-stuffed blog post on your site and wait for the clicks to roll in anymore. Today, you can't spend all your focus chasing Google's algorithm, either.
Today, 21% of content online marketers contract out someplace between three-quarters to 100% of their content budget, up from only 5% last year. Still, most frequently, 26% of content marketers just outsource about a quarter to half of their content budget, a portion that hasn't altered significantly considering that 2023. Another 14% do not outsource any of their content budget plan at all, however that's really below 29% in 2023: While teams with tight budget plans frequently contract out work to fairly affordable freelancers, a few of this growth can be credited to people with bigger budgets who need more hands to help them meet due dates.
How Data-Driven Content Is a Crucial Growth Factor
More than 1 in 4 (27%) outsource someplace in between three-quarters to 100% of their content spending plan, compared to only 20% of B2B online marketers and 16% of B2C online marketers. In theory, contracting out material and analysis to AI might save cash and enhance content marketers' earnings margins. But while AI usage is now practically universal in marketing, the majority of are still giving their work a human touch.
Today, it's even simpler to forget that the increase of AI is still extremely current. In 2023, just 65% of content marketers said they prepared to utilize AI material generation tools, and 17% stated they didn't plan to utilize them at all. Times have actually altered. The portion of material marketing programs that utilize AI rose from 83% in 2024 to 90% in 2025.
That does not indicate that material today goes directly from ChatGPT to a CMS without any oversight. Many typically, 48% of material marketers say their program uses a moderate amount of AI. Simply put, AI touches about 11% to 40% of their work: All in all, only 1% of material online marketers state their work is 100% AI.
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Content always needs a human touch to make sure accuracy and to keep the variety of em-dashes to a minimum. When we say content marketers are using AI, we do not simply indicate they're utilizing ChatGPT for everything. But do not be mistaken more than three-quarters (80%) of content online marketers state ChatGPT is the most dependable and reliable tool for material marketing.
However, after several years as an undisputed market leader, ChatGPT now has some competition. However it's no longer the only dependable AI on the marketplace. The portion of people who say Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini are the most credible LLMs has actually roughly doubled YoY (From 28% to 55% for Claude and from 16% to 44% for Gemini).
Some individuals have specifically soured on ChatGPT.
How User-Centric Content Is the Crucial Growth Factor
But as most tech companies invest heavily in AI, others are catching up. We've found that individuals often use AI at the very starting and the very end of developing content, not throughout outlining or writing copy. However this wasn't constantly the case. The percentage of individuals using AI for conceptualizing and detailing fell from 72% in 2025 to 61% in 2026, and the percentage of individuals using it to draft content fell from 57% to 44%.
And 74% usage it for material ideation. Usually, content marketers are more versatile with using AI for style and research. Nearly one-half (47%) of participants use it for generating style ideas, up from 25% in 2025. And 55% usage it for strategy brainstorming, such as crafting audience personas. That's up from 42% in 2025.
