Content marketing success falls to 12-year low: Survey

Content marketing performance fell to its lowest level in 12 years, even as AI adoption topped 92%, according to Orbit Media’s latest annual blogging survey.

Just 14% of marketers said their blogs delivered “strong results.” That’s six percentage points below the previous 12-year low and nearly half the 26% reported in 2022.

The decline reflects marketers abandoning tactics historically linked to stronger results, not AI adoption itself, the report concluded

Why the decline? The proven content marketing practices most closely linked to strong results became less common over the past year, the survey found. These included influencer collaboration, original research, keyword research, paid content promotion, formal human editing, and consistent use of analytics.

• Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs, called the findings “a wake-up call.” Marketers need to be “much (MUCH!) more discerning about which effort we remove, and which we keep,” she said.

AI use doesn’t predict success. AI adoption reached 92.4% this year. But using AI showed no relationship with stronger results. And AI did reduce production time:

• The average blog post now takes 3 hours and 20 minutes to write, down from more than 4 hours in 2022.
• This saves the typical marketer about 50 hours of writing a year, even as reported content performance continues to decline, Orbit estimated.

Keyword research and collaboration. The findings challenge the idea that SEO has become less relevant in the AI era. Marketers who conducted keyword research were more likely to report strong results, even though fewer respondents said they research keywords before publishing.

• Influencer collaboration showed the strongest relationship with success. Marketers who regularly worked with experts were 2.6 times more likely than the benchmark to report strong results. Yet adoption fell from 25% of marketers in 2017 to just 7% this year.
• Traffic has become a less meaningful performance metric as AI changes how people discover information online. Instead, marketers who measured qualified leads, deals, and revenue were more likely to report strong results, the survey also said.

Why we care. Faster content production with AI didn’t lead to better results in this survey. The marketers reporting the strongest outcomes were more likely to invest in keyword research, original research, expert collaboration, and human editing.

About the data. Orbit Media surveyed 1,042 content marketers for its 2026 Blogging Statistics report. The survey examined blogging practices, AI adoption, and self-reported content performance. None of the respondents reported using all eight strategies Orbit associated with its strongest-performing content programs.

The report. Blogging Statistics 2026: What 1,042 Content Marketers Told Us About What Works [New Research]