Social Media Marketing Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-authors: Elena Rodriguez & Alex Rivera | Last updated: October 20, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.
Social media became the largest category of U.S. digital advertising in 2025, at $117.7 billion and 40.0% of all internet ad revenue, per IAB and PwC. Yet the average U.S. marketing leader puts only 14.3% of the marketing budget into social, per The CMO Survey — and forecasts made a year ahead have historically overshot reality by 2.1 points.
Quick Answer
U.S. social media advertising revenue reached $117.7 billion in 2025, up 32.6% and ahead of search ($114.2 billion) for the first time in the 2020–2025 IAB/PwC series. Marketers allocate 14.3% of budgets to social (CMO Survey, January 2026). Axis Intelligence Research’s Social Scam Loss Ratio (SSLR) puts reported social-media scam losses at $1.8 per $100 of social ad revenue in 2025.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that U.S. social media ad revenue overtook search in 2025 — $117.7 billion versus $114.2 billion, a $3.5 billion lead — the first time in the IAB/PwC 2020–2025 series.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research’s Social Scam Loss Ratio (SSLR), Americans reported $1.8 in scam losses starting on social media for every $100 of U.S. social ad revenue in 2025, down from a $2.3 peak in 2023.
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates that reported social-media scam losses grew 8.0× between 2020 and 2025, while U.S. social ad revenue grew 2.8×, using FTC and IAB/PwC data.
- Axis Intelligence Research’s Forecast-Adjusted Social Share (FASS) estimates social media will reach about 15.0% of U.S. marketing budgets in early 2027, not the 17.1% marketers forecast in The CMO Survey.
- Per Eurostat, 63.6% of EU enterprises with 10+ employees used social media in 2025; Axis Intelligence Research measures a 28.5-point gap between large firms (89.1%) and small firms (60.6%).
axis-intelligence.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/
How Big Is Social Media Advertising in 2026?
Social is now the single largest line in the U.S. digital ad market. The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2025, conducted by PwC and released April 16, 2026, puts social media ad revenue at $117.7 billion — 40.0% of a $294.6 billion market — after growth of 32.6%, or about $29 billion in a single year.
Search, the category that led every IAB/PwC table from 2020 through 2024, finished 2025 at $114.2 billion after growing 11%. The order flipped.
U.S. social media vs. search ad revenue, 2020–2025
| Year | Social media ad revenue | Social YoY growth | Search ad revenue | Leader | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $41.5B | +16.3% | $59.0B | Search | IAB/PwC FY2020 release; FY2022 report |
| 2021 | $57.7B | +39.3% | $78.3B | Search | IAB/PwC FY2021 and FY2022 reports |
| 2022 | $59.7B | +3.6% | $84.4B | Search | IAB/PwC FY2022 report |
| 2023 | $64.9B | +8.7% | ≈$88.8B* | Search | IAB/PwC FY2023 and FY2024 releases |
| 2024 | $88.8B | +36.7% | $102.9B | Search | IAB/PwC FY2024 release |
| 2025 | $117.7B | +32.6% | $114.2B | Social | IAB/PwC FY2025 release |
2020 and 2021 search values come from the format table in the IAB/PwC FY2022 report. *The 2023 search value is an Axis Intelligence Research derivation from IAB/PwC’s FY2024 figures ($102.9 billion after 15.9% growth: 102.9 ÷ 1.159). Full rows in the dataset.
Elena Rodriguez: Read the 2022 row before you read the 2025 one. Social grew 3.6% that year — Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had been live for twelve months and PwC called it the slowest growth in a decade. Three years later the category is adding $29 billion annually. That rebound was not won back by creative; it was won back by measurement. Platforms rebuilt attribution inside their own walls, and advertisers followed the conversions they could see. If your incrementality testing still assumes 2021-era signal, the auction has moved on without you.
Where creator spend fits
IAB/PwC sized creator advertising at $37 billion in 2025 and projects $44 billion in 2026. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that projection as roughly 19% growth — below social’s 32.6%, which means creator budgets are scaling but are not yet the engine of the category. For deeper creator and disclosure data, see our influencer marketing statistics.
What Percentage of Marketing Budgets Goes to Social Media?
14.3%. That is the average share of marketing budget U.S. companies spent on social media in The CMO Survey’s 2026 edition, fielded January 7–29, 2026 among 308 marketing leaders and sponsored by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte and the American Marketing Association. The share rebounded 3.0 points from 11.3% a year earlier.
The full CMO Survey Highlights and Insights Report also shows how unstable the number has been:
| Survey wave | Social media share of marketing budget | Source |
|---|---|---|
| February 2022 | 15.4% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| September 2022 | 14.5% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Spring 2023 | 17.0% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Fall 2023 | 16.0% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Spring 2024 | 11.0% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Fall 2024 | 12.1% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| 2025 | 11.3% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| 2026 | 14.3% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Expected in 12 months | 17.1% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
| Expected in 5 years | 23.1% | The CMO Survey 2026 report |
Social media budget share by industry
The spread across industries is wider than the spread across time. Consumer Services companies spend 26.7% of marketing budgets on social; Energy companies spend 6.0%. B2C Product companies, the most bullish economic sector, spend 19.3% today and expect 29.4% within five years.
| Segment (CMO Survey 2026) | Current social share | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Services | 26.7% | The CMO Survey |
| Retail / Wholesale | 23.0% | The CMO Survey |
| Consumer Packaged Goods | 20.3% | The CMO Survey |
| B2C Product (economic sector) | 19.3% | The CMO Survey |
| Real Estate | 9.0% | The CMO Survey |
| Pharma / Biotech | 8.1% | The CMO Survey |
| Energy | 6.0% | The CMO Survey |
The Forecast-Adjusted Social Share (FASS)
Marketers have a long, documented habit of over-forecasting social. The CMO Survey’s own 2009–2026 record shows 12-month social spending projections have exceeded actual spending by 2.1 percentage points on average. Axis Intelligence Research built the Forecast-Adjusted Social Share (FASS) to apply that correction to the headline forecast:
FASS = CMO Survey 12-month social budget forecast − CMO Survey historical average overshoot
FASS = 17.1% − 2.1 pts = 15.0%
Axis Intelligence Research estimates social media will account for about 15.0% of U.S. marketing budgets in the next CMO Survey wave (January 2027), not 17.1%. Applying the same correction to the five-year forecast gives an indicative 21.0% — indicative only, because the overshoot was measured on 12-month forecasts.
Elena Rodriguez: A 2.1-point gap sounds small until you put a budget against it. On a hypothetical $10 million marketing plan, the distance between 17.1% and 15.0% is $210,000 of social spend that the plan expects and the actual year will not deliver — usually because finance pulls it in Q3. The CMO Survey says executives cut marketing first 45.4% of the time when profits miss. Plan to FASS, and treat anything above it as upside you have to earn mid-year.
How social fits inside total marketing spend
Social is gaining share inside a budget that is not growing. The CMO Survey puts marketing at 9.0% of company revenue in 2026, with overall marketing spending up just 1.7% over the prior 12 months against 8.2% growth in digital. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders, mostly at companies above $1 billion in revenue, measures budgets at 7.8% of revenue, up from 7.7%, with 56% of CMOs saying they lack the budget to deliver their 2026 strategy.
The two surveys measure different populations — The CMO Survey covers U.S. firms of all sizes; Gartner skews to large enterprises in North America, the UK and Europe — so Axis Intelligence Research publishes both figures and does not average them.
How Much Do Americans Lose to Social Media Scams — and What Does It Mean for Advertisers?
Americans reported $2.1 billion in losses to scams that started on social media in 2025, according to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Data Spotlight published April 27, 2026. Social media accounted for 28% of fraud reports indicating a loss, second only to websites or apps (31%), and produced more reported dollars lost than any other contact method.
That is a marketing statistic, not just a consumer-protection one. The FTC states that scammers buy the same ad-targeting tools legitimate businesses use, and that more than 40% of people who lost money on social media said it began with an order placed from an ad. Every fraudulent shopping ad competes in the same auction, borrows the same creative conventions, and spends down the same reserve of consumer trust that a brand’s paid social depends on.
The Social Scam Loss Ratio (SSLR)
The Social Scam Loss Ratio (SSLR) is an Axis Intelligence Research metric that measures reported consumer losses to social-media-originated scams per $100 of U.S. social media advertising revenue.
SSLR = FTC reported losses on fraud reports citing social media as contact method
÷ IAB/PwC U.S. social media ad revenue × 100
| Year | Reported social-media scam losses (FTC) | U.S. social ad revenue (IAB/PwC) | SSLR ($ lost per $100 of ad revenue) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $261M | $41.5B | $0.63 |
| 2021 | $789M | $57.7B | $1.37 |
| 2022 | $1.2B | $59.7B | $2.0 |
| 2023 | $1.5B | $64.9B | $2.3 |
| 2024 | $1.9B | $88.8B | $2.1 |
| 2025 | $2.1B | $117.7B | $1.8 |
Readings are rounded to the precision of the FTC inputs, which are published to one decimal of a billion from 2022 onward. Source rows: FTC Data Spotlight (April 2026) and IAB/PwC reports FY2020–FY2025.
Three findings come out of the ratio:
- The ratio rose 3.7× from 2020 to its 2023 peak. Reported losses grew far faster than the ad economy they travel through.
- It has fallen two years running. From 2023 to 2025, social ad revenue grew 81% (from $64.9 billion to $117.7 billion) while reported losses grew 40% (from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion).
- Over the full period, losses still outran revenue. Reported social-media scam losses grew 8.0× from 2020 to 2025; social ad revenue grew 2.8×.
Arithmetic for the second bullet: 117.7 ÷ 64.9 − 1 = 81.4%; 2.1 ÷ 1.5 − 1 = 40%.
Scope of the SSLR. Losses are what consumers chose to report to the FTC; the FTC itself notes that most scams are never reported, and reports were not collected during the 2025 government shutdown — both push the 2025 numerator down. The denominator is U.S. advertising revenue, while scam losses include fraud that began in organic posts and messages, not only paid ads. The SSLR is therefore a pressure gauge on the channel, not a measure of fraud inside ad inventory.
Elena Rodriguez: The falling SSLR is easy to over-read. Part of the 2024–2025 decline is denominator growth — $52.8 billion of new social ad revenue in two years — and part is a shutdown-shortened reporting year. What the ratio does show is direction: the auction you buy in is getting larger faster than the reported harm moving through it. For a performance marketer, the operational number is the 40%-plus of social-scam victims who started with an ad. That is the trust tax on every legitimate shopping ad — and it is why verified-merchant badges and clean landing domains are conversion-rate items, not compliance items.
Who loses money on social media, by age
| Age group | Share of loss reports that started on social media (2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 18–29 | 40% | FTC |
| 30–39 | 32% | FTC |
| 40–49 | 32% | FTC |
| 50–59 | 32% | FTC |
| 60–69 | 29% | FTC |
| 70–79 | 23% | FTC |
| 80 and over | 14% | FTC |
Investment scams drove $1.1 billion of the 2025 social-media losses; romance scams added $298 million, and nearly 60% of romance-scam loss reports started on a social platform. The FTC named Facebook as the platform with the most reported losses, with WhatsApp and Instagram a distant second and third. Against the FTC’s 2025 total of $15.9 billion in reported fraud losses (FTC testimony, March 2026), Axis Intelligence Research calculates social media’s share of reported losses at about 13%. For the full fraud picture, see our online scam statistics.
How Many Businesses Use Social Media for Marketing?
In Europe, the answer comes from the statistical office rather than a vendor survey. Eurostat reports that 63.6% of EU enterprises with 10 or more employees used social media in 2025, up from 61.1% in 2023, in its June 12, 2026 release drawn from the EU survey on ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises.
Social media adoption by company size (EU, 2025)
| Enterprise size | Share using social media | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Small (10–49 employees) | 60.6% | Eurostat |
| Medium (50–249) | 76.2% | Eurostat |
| Large (250+) | 89.1% | Eurostat |
Axis Intelligence Research measures a 28.5-point adoption gap between large and small EU firms — large enterprises are 1.47 times as likely to be on social media.
Social media adoption by EU country (2025)
| Country | Share of enterprises using social media | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Malta | 88.2% | Eurostat |
| Finland | 87.6% | Eurostat |
| Denmark | 86.1% | Eurostat |
| EU-27 | 63.6% | Eurostat |
| Hungary | 47.3% | Eurostat |
| Croatia | 46.0% | Eurostat |
| Bulgaria | 41.5% | Eurostat |
The spread between Malta and Bulgaria is 46.7 points.
Elena Rodriguez: The size gap is the more useful number for anyone selling into European SMBs. About four in ten small firms with ten or more staff — 39.4% — still report no social media use at all — that is the addressable market for every scheduling tool, agency retainer and “done-for-you” content package on the continent. And it is a cheaper sale than it looks: the large-firm adoption rate of 89.1% says the channel’s value is not in dispute. The objection in the small-firm segment is time and headcount, so the offer that wins is the one that removes hours, not the one that adds features.
How Are Marketers Using AI in Social Media Marketing?
AI now touches about a quarter of marketing work. The CMO Survey reports that AI is used in 24.2% of marketing activities in 2026, up from 13.1% in 2024, and companies project 55.9% within three years. Generative AI alone reaches 22.4%.
| AI use in marketing (CMO Survey 2026, % of companies) | Share | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Content creation | 73.9% | The CMO Survey |
| Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) | 41.5% | The CMO Survey |
| Listening and sentiment analysis | 28.2% | The CMO Survey |
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping content so it appears in AI-generated answers. Its 41.5% adoption rate matters for social teams because the same assets — posts, creator videos, community threads — increasingly feed those answers.
On spend, Gartner finds CMOs allocate 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives in 2026. Axis Intelligence Research notes that this is close to the share of budget The CMO Survey puts on social (14.3%) — though the two surveys sample different companies, so the comparison is directional.
Commerce is the other shift. In The CMO Survey, 38.8% of companies say they used social channels to sell more products and services over the last three years, and marketing holds formal responsibility for social media at 83.3% of companies. Only 5.4% of marketing leaders named social media as their most lacking capability — far behind AI analytics (14.3%) and simple under-resourcing (22.3%).
Elena Rodriguez: That 5.4% is the quiet finding. Marketing leaders believe their teams know how to run social. What they say they lack is people, analytics and AI fluency — and The CMO Survey rates “demonstrating ROI from marketing technologies” at 4.4 out of 7. The bottleneck in social marketing in 2026 is not the post; it is proving what the post did. Budget will follow whoever closes that loop, which is exactly why platform-native attribution keeps winning the share fight.
For channel-level comparisons, see our digital marketing statistics, Facebook ads statistics, LinkedIn statistics and the platform hub at social media statistics. Email benchmarks sit in our email marketing statistics.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure was taken from a document fetched on October 20, 2026: the IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report releases and reports for FY2020 through FY2025; the FTC Consumer Sentinel Data Spotlight of April 27, 2026 and FTC testimony of March 2026; The CMO Survey Highlights and Insights Report 2026; Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey release of May 11, 2026; and Eurostat’s June 12, 2026 release from dataset isoc_cismt. No aggregator or secondary summary was used for any figure.
Social Scam Loss Ratio (SSLR). FTC reported losses on fraud reports naming social media as the contact method, divided by IAB/PwC U.S. social media ad revenue for the same calendar year, multiplied by 100. Both inputs are U.S.-only and calendar-year. Readings are rounded to the precision of the FTC inputs.
Forecast-Adjusted Social Share (FASS). The CMO Survey’s 12-month social budget forecast minus The CMO Survey’s own published average overshoot of 12-month social forecasts (2.1 points, 2009–2026). FASS is an estimate, applied to a single forecast; it assumes the historical bias persists.
Other Axis calculations. The social-over-search gap (117.7 − 114.2), growth multiples (2.1 ÷ 0.261; 117.7 ÷ 41.5), the EU size gap (89.1 − 60.6) and the social share of total reported fraud losses (2.1 ÷ 15.9) are flagged axis_calculated = yes in the dataset with the formula in method_note. All arithmetic was run twice, in floating point and in exact rational arithmetic.
What we did not combine. The CMO Survey’s budget share and IAB/PwC’s revenue share both describe social’s weight in marketing, but one is a self-reported share of total marketing budgets across firm sizes and the other is a share of seller-side digital ad revenue. They are published side by side, never blended.
Scope. U.S. data covers advertising sold in the U.S. and fraud reported to the FTC. EU data covers enterprises with 10+ employees in NACE Rev. 2 sections C–J, L–N and group 95.1, as defined by Eurostat. Eurostat’s country list here is limited to the countries Eurostat named in its release; the remaining member states are in isoc_cismt and will be added at the next revision.
About This Dataset
social-media-marketing-statistics.csv holds 154 observations: U.S. social and search ad revenue (2020–2025), FTC social-media scam losses (2020–2025) with age breakdowns, CMO Survey budget-share waves and industry splits, Gartner budget and AI-spend figures, Eurostat enterprise adoption by size and country, and every Axis calculation. Each row carries source_org, source_document, source_url, retrieved_date, is_primary, axis_calculated and method_note. CMO Survey wave dates use the last day of the field month.
License: CC BY 4.0. Citation line: Axis Intelligence Research, Social Media Marketing Statistics 2026, 2026.
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research, & Rodriguez, E. (2026, October 20). Social media marketing statistics 2026: Budgets, ad revenue and the scam tax. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research, and Elena Rodriguez. “Social Media Marketing Statistics 2026: Budgets, Ad Revenue and the Scam Tax.” Axis Intelligence, 20 Oct. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research and Elena Rodriguez. “Social Media Marketing Statistics 2026: Budgets, Ad Revenue and the Scam Tax.” Axis Intelligence, October 20, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has social media overtaken search as the biggest digital ad channel?
In the U.S., yes, on IAB/PwC’s numbers. Social media ad revenue reached $117.7 billion in 2025 against $114.2 billion for search, after search led every year from 2020 through 2024. Search is still growing — 11% in 2025 — but social grew 32.6%.
What is a realistic social media budget for 2026?
The CMO Survey average is 14.3% of the marketing budget, but industry decides more than averages do: 26.7% in Consumer Services, 6.0% in Energy. If you plan from forecasts, Axis Intelligence Research’s FASS suggests discounting the survey’s 17.1% next-year expectation to about 15.0%, because 12-month social forecasts have overshot by 2.1 points on average.
Why do marketers keep over-forecasting social media spend?
The CMO Survey data points to budget pressure rather than optimism alone: executives cut marketing expenses first 45.4% of the time when profits disappoint, and marketing ROI remains hard to prove (4.4 out of 7 for demonstrating martech ROI). Planned social increases are the easiest line to trim mid-year.
Do social media scams make paid social less effective for legitimate brands?
They raise the trust cost. The FTC says more than 40% of people who lost money to a social media scam in 2025 started with an order from an ad, and scammers use the same targeting tools brands use. Axis Intelligence Research’s SSLR shows $1.8 in reported scam losses per $100 of U.S. social ad revenue in 2025 — lower than the 2023 peak of $2.3, but 2.8× the 2020 reading of $0.63.
Which age group is most exposed to social media scams?
Adults aged 18–29: 40% of their 2025 loss reports to the FTC started on social media. The share falls with age, to 14% for people 80 and over, who lose more through phone calls.
What share of European companies use social media for business?
Eurostat reports 63.6% of EU enterprises with 10+ employees in 2025. Adoption ranges from 88.2% in Malta to 41.5% in Bulgaria, and from 60.6% of small firms to 89.1% of large ones.
How much of the marketing budget goes to AI compared with social media?
Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts AI at 15.3% of marketing budgets among large enterprises; The CMO Survey puts social media at 14.3% across U.S. firms of all sizes. The figures come from different samples, so they show that the two lines are now similar in scale, not that one has passed the other.
How fast is creator advertising growing?
IAB/PwC measured U.S. creator advertising at $37 billion in 2025 and projects $44 billion in 2026 — about 19% growth, by Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation, below the 32.6% growth of social advertising overall.