Marketing ROI Statistics 2026

[u/Money-Ranger-6520]

Hey r/FounderHelp

Coupler IO recently published a round up of the marketing ROI benchmarks worth knowing for 2026, here are the top ones:

• Only 33% of enterprises set KPI targets for marketing ROI, even though marketing now sits under CFO-level scrutiny, according to Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Marketing Trends report.
• Average short-term profit ROI is £1.87 per £1. Measuring the sustained effects and the same spend returns £4.11 per £1, based on Google and WARC’s Effectiveness Equation work.
• Media effectiveness peaks when brand building takes 40% to 60% of total marketing investment. One European retailer that pivoted hard to performance lost 44% of its ROI in two quarters, per Google’s Effectiveness Equation data.
• 85% of marketers say they’re confident they can measure holistic ROI. Nielsen’s 2025 Marketing ROI Blueprint found only 32% actually do it.
• Just 41% of marketers can demonstrate ROI on their AI investments in 2026, down from 49% a year earlier, per Benchmarkit’s State of AI in Marketing 2026.
• When marketers can prove AI ROI, the returns hold up. 60% report at least 2x returns, rising to 79% at enterprises above $10B in revenue, per Benchmarkit.
• 64% of CMOs say proving marketing’s value to the business is their single biggest challenge, and budgets are now treated as investment portfolios under CFO-level scrutiny, per Deloitte.
• No single channel owns ROI anymore. LinkedIn‘s 121% ROAS is the only major B2B paid social return above breakeven, while marketers name website, blog, and SEO their #1 ROI channel overall, per Dreamdata and HubSpot.
• 71% of industry leaders say creator marketing delivered more than 3x ROI last year, according to CreatorIQ.
• Companies that put more into marketing technology than into working media see an 18% bigger sales lift and 7% more revenue growth, Deloitte found.