Short-Form Video Statistics 2026: 50+ Verified Stats

Short-form video statistics in 2026 describe a format that has moved from experiment to default. YouTube Shorts averages over 200 billion views a day, Reels runs at a $50 billion revenue rate for Meta, and short-form video is the format marketers most often credit with ROI.

This page collects 55 figures on short-form video, from platform earnings calls, large marketer surveys and independent research. Every number was checked against its original publisher in September 2026. The source is named on every line, the year of the data is stated, and where a publisher sells the thing it measures, we say so.

Short-form video statistics at a glance

• 200 billion+ average daily views on YouTube Shorts (YouTube, 2026)
• $50 billion+ annual revenue run rate for Meta's Reels (Meta, Q3 2025)
• 49% of marketers name short-form video their top ROI format (HubSpot, 2026)
• 60% of marketers used short-form video in 2025, more than any other format (HubSpot, 2026)
• 78% of B2B marketers now use video (LinkedIn, 2025)
• 65% of viewers finish business videos under one minute (Vidyard)
• 37% of US adults use TikTok, up from 21% in 2021 (Pew Research Center, 2025)

Platform scale: Shorts, Reels and TikTok

Platform figures come from company earnings calls and official blogs. They are first-party measurements, not surveys.

From the YouTube official blog and Alphabet's earnings remarks:

1. YouTube Shorts averages over 200 billion daily views (YouTube, August 2026).
2. In the US, Shorts now earns more revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream video (Alphabet, Q3 2025).
3. Over 10 million channels publish Shorts every day, as of March 2026 (Alphabet, Q1 2026).
4. Over 1 million channels a day used YouTube's AI creation tools in December 2025 (Alphabet, Q4 2025).

From Meta's earnings calls, including the Q4 2025 transcript:

5. Reels has an annual revenue run rate of over $50 billion (Q3 2025).
6. Instagram Reels watch time rose more than 30% year over year in the US (Q4 2025).
7. Nearly 10% of Reels viewed each day are created in Meta's Edits app (Q4 2025).
8. Meta's AI video generation ad tools reached a $10 billion revenue run rate (Q4 2025).
9. Ranking improvements drove a 10% lift in Reels time spent (Q1 2026).
10. Same-day posts make up more than 30% of recommended Reels on Instagram and Facebook, more than double a year earlier (Q1 2026).
11. Facebook video time spent rose 9% year over year globally (Q2 2026).

From the Pew Research Center, surveying 5,022 US adults in 2025 and 1,458 US teens:

12. 84% of US adults use YouTube, and 37% use TikTok, up from 21% in 2021.
13. 24% of US adults use TikTok daily, and about half of 18 to 29 year olds do.
14. 21% of US teens say they are on TikTok almost constantly, and 61% use it daily.

Short-form video statistics for marketers

From HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report, based on 3,400+ marketers:

15. 49% of marketers name short-form video the format that drives the most ROI, first of any format.
16. 60% used short-form video in 2025, making it the most-used content format.
17. Short-form video is the top media format marketers plan to invest in for 2026.
18. 37% plan to increase their investment in video marketing this year.
19. 57% of marketers use TikTok, and 32% say it consistently delivers their highest ROI.

From Wyzowl's 2026 State of Video Marketing survey, based on 266 respondents. The sample is small and Wyzowl makes videos, so treat these as directional:

20. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
21. 93% of video marketers say video is an important part of their strategy.
22. 69% made social media videos, the most-created video type.
23. 82% say video gives them a good ROI, down from 93% the year before.
24. 42% rely on external video creators in some way: 10% outsource entirely and 32% mix in-house and external.
25. 82% use YouTube for video and 70% use LinkedIn, the two most-used channels.
26. Only 40% use TikTok, and just 29% rate it effective.

B2B and LinkedIn short-form video statistics

From the LinkedIn 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark, with Ipsos, based on 1,500 senior B2B marketers:

27. 78% of B2B marketers now use video, and more than half plan to increase video investment.
28. Marketers with mature video strategies are 2.2x more likely to say their brand is well trusted. That is a correlation, and LinkedIn sells video ads.

From Microsoft's earnings calls, including fiscal 2025 Q3:

29. Time spent watching video on LinkedIn rose 36% year over year (early 2025, the latest figure LinkedIn has disclosed).
30. Short-form video creation on LinkedIn is growing at twice the rate of other post formats (late 2024).
31. LinkedIn video uploads rose over 20% across Microsoft's fiscal 2025.
32. LinkedIn paid video ads grew 30% (October to December 2025).

From Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report, based on 900+ professionals plus Wistia's platform data. Wistia's audience skews B2B:

33. 8 in 10 teams say LinkedIn is their primary place to share video, ahead of YouTube.
34. 81% share video on LinkedIn against 76% on YouTube, and less than a quarter share on TikTok.
35. Over half of companies repurpose video into social clips, and 67% of those post clips on LinkedIn.
36. Of those teams, 60% use the clips to link back to their website.

From Sprout Social:

37. Only 27% of social users are most likely to interact with short-form video on LinkedIn, well below Instagram and TikTok. B2B teams post there anyway because that is where buyers are.

Viewer behaviour and video length statistics

From Sprout Social's 2026 research, based on 2,300+ consumers and 1,200 marketers:

38. 60% of TikTok users say short-form video under 60 seconds is the format they interact with most.
39. 52% of social users gravitate toward short-form video on Instagram, while only 19% favour long-form.
40. On YouTube, 52% are most likely to interact with short-form and 49% with long-form, so the two formats sit side by side there.
41. 53% of influencers prefer to make 15 to 30 second videos for brand partnerships (2025).

From Wyzowl's 2026 consumer survey:

42. 71% believe videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes are the most effective length.
43. 63% would most like to learn about a product by watching a short video.
44. 85% have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video.
45. 89% say video quality affects their trust in a brand.
46. 84% want to see more video from brands.

From Wistia's platform data and Vidyard's business video benchmarks, both vendor data:

47. Across Wistia-hosted video, the shorter the video, the higher the engagement rate.
48. Business videos under one minute hold 65% of viewers to the end, while videos over 20 minutes hold only 20% (Vidyard, nearly 1 million videos).

Production, repurposing and AI statistics

From Wistia's 2026 report:

49. 76% of teams resize videos for each platform, and half do it every time.
50. Vertical HD uploads rose 24% year over year on Wistia.
51. 57% of teams spend more time creating videos than promoting them.
52. More than a third already use AI in their video workflow, and nearly a quarter more plan to start soon.

From HubSpot and Wyzowl:

53. Nearly 75% of marketers use AI for media creation, including video and images (HubSpot).
54. 44% use AI video or animation generators, and 42% use AI video or audio editing tools (HubSpot).
55. 63% of video marketers have used AI to create or edit videos, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl).

What the short-form video statistics mean for B2B teams

Three patterns stand out. First, the platforms are still growing short-form hard: Shorts views, Reels watch time and LinkedIn video creation all rose in the last year, and YouTube now pays creators more per hour for Shorts than for in-stream ads in the US.

Second, B2B distribution looks different from consumer. Consumers engage with short video most on TikTok and Instagram, but B2B teams share on LinkedIn first and treat TikTok as optional. A clip that works for a consumer brand on TikTok is not the same asset a SaaS team needs on LinkedIn.

Third, the bottleneck is volume and formatting, not ideas. Teams resize for every platform, most spend more time making video than promoting it, and more than half now cut long videos into clips. That is editing work, and it is the part of the process most teams struggle to keep up with. Our guide to repurposing long-form video into Shorts covers the workflow in detail.

How we verified these figures

Each figure was taken from the publisher's own page, report or earnings transcript, not from a roundup. Short-form statistics travel widely and drift as they do, so several popular numbers were left out because we could not find them at the source they are credited to.

Three cautions. Wyzowl's survey has 266 respondents, which is small. Wistia, Vidyard, HubSpot, Sprout Social and LinkedIn all sell products connected to what they measure. And a few figures, such as LinkedIn's 36% watch-time growth, are older than 2026; they are labelled and kept only where no newer figure exists. For wider video marketing data, see our B2B video marketing statistics and product demo video statistics.

Where Pixel8 fits

Pixel8 Production is a video editing agency for B2B and SaaS teams. We do not film. We edit the footage you already have, from webinars, podcasts, demos and interviews, into platform-ready clips for LinkedIn, Shorts and Reels, which our short-form video editing service covers. Pricing is a $900 one-time trial, then $2,000 to $3,200 per month; see pricing.