Video Marketing Statistics Chicago Brands Can't Ignore in 2026

Chicago is one of the most competitive cities in the country for business. Every industry, from hospitality and retail to B2B services and e-commerce, is fighting for the same shrinking pool of consumer attention. And the brands winning that fight right now are the ones who have made a serious investment in video.

This is not opinion. The video marketing statistics available in 2026 paint a clear picture across every major report: video is the top driver of online traffic, brand awareness, and conversion in almost every industry. If your brand is not showing up on screen, you are not showing up at all.

Whether you are a video marketer refining an existing campaign or a business owner exploring video for the first time, this report breaks down the metrics that matter, maps out the key trends shaping video consumption, and gives Chicago brands a practical way to act on the data. There is something here for teams at every stage of video adoption.

The Big Picture: What the Video Marketing Statistics Tell Us in 2026

Start with the source data. Every major marketing report published in 2026, from Wyzowl and HubSpot to Nielsen and Statista, points to the same rise in video as the dominant content format. Here is a figure that sets the scene: 93% of marketers say video has helped them increase brand awareness. That number alone should be enough to start the budget conversation.

Across all video marketing channels, the impact on sales and conversion is measurable and growing. Brands that use video in their campaigns report up to 80% more conversions on landing pages, faster purchase decisions, and higher engagement rates than those relying on static content.

The percentage of total internet traffic attributed to video content has now crossed 82%, according to Cisco's annual internet report. That means the vast majority of everything your potential customers are consuming online is video. The rest, text, images, and audio, makes up a shrinking share of total media consumption.

Video marketing ROI has become one of the most closely tracked metrics in digital marketing, and the data consistently supports increased spend. For video marketers planning their 2026 budgets, these are not abstract figures. They are the clearest possible signal about where your investment needs to go.

Video Consumption Trends: How Viewer Behavior Has Shifted

Understanding viewer behavior is as important as understanding the raw numbers. The way people engage with video has changed significantly, and the brands that adapt their approach to match those changes will see the greatest return.

Here are the key trends shaping video consumption right now:

• Short-form video continues its rise. YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok are now among the top video marketing channels for brand discovery. People are watching more times per day but in shorter bursts, which means your hook matters more than ever.
• Live streams and on-demand streams are growing simultaneously. Past assumptions that live content and recorded content competed for the same audience have been replaced by data showing that people who engage with live streams are also the heaviest consumers of on-demand video. Brands that use both formats in a single campaign see significantly higher overall reach.
• Watch time on YouTube has increased by 37% year-on-year among 25 to 44-year-olds, a demographic that represents the core buying audience across most industries.
• Video consumption on mobile app platforms now accounts for over 70% of all video views. If your content is not optimised for mobile, you are losing more than half your potential audience before they even hear your message.
• Webinars and long-form educational video have seen a jump in engagement among B2B audiences, with nearly half of all business decision-makers saying they have watched a webinar in the past 30 days.
• AI-assisted video creation is on the rise, lowering the barrier to entry for companies of all sizes. The result is more competition in feeds, which makes production quality and content strategy more important, not less.

The information here matters because it changes the way you should plan across video platforms. A one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. Different video types perform differently across different channels, and understanding that split is part of building an effective strategy.

Video Marketing Statistics by Platform: Where Chicago Brands Should Focus

YouTube

YouTube remains the most powerful platform for long-term video marketing growth. As the second-largest search engine in the world, it is where internet users go with genuine intent, searching for information, tutorials, reviews, and local services. Over 2.7 billion logged-in internet users visit the platform every month, and that number continues to grow.

For Chicago brands, local search on YouTube is still an underutilised opportunity. YouTube Shorts has become an important part of the platform's ecosystem, allowing brands to reach new viewers through short, discoverable clips that drive subscribers back to their main channel. The popularity of YouTube Shorts among younger internet users has made it a key tool for brands targeting millennials and Gen Z in the Chicago market.

Captions and subtitles play a bigger role in YouTube performance than many brands realise. A significant percentage of people watch social media videos without sound, particularly in public or workplace settings. Videos with accurate captions consistently outperform those without, both in watch time and in shares.

Instagram Reels and TikTok

These two video platforms dominate short-form video consumption and are the top source of organic brand discovery for consumer-facing businesses. Social media videos on Reels and TikTok benefit from algorithmic reach that static content simply cannot match. New accounts and new videos can reach large audiences without paid advertising if the content connects with what people actually want to watch.

For Chicago brands in fields like food and beverage, fitness, fashion, and retail, these platforms offer a direct line to local audiences. The key is understanding what video type works on each platform and producing marketing videos that fit naturally into the feed. When a campaign is built around the native style of the platform rather than against it, shares and engagement follow.

LinkedIn Video

LinkedIn video is the most underused opportunity in B2B video marketing right now. For companies selling services or products to other businesses in Chicago, native video on LinkedIn reaches decision-makers in their professional context, which is the best possible moment to build credibility.

The metrics back this up. LinkedIn video generates five times more engagement than articles or static posts on the platform. Explainer videos perform particularly well here because they match the intent of LinkedIn's user base: people who want to learn, solve a problem, or evaluate a vendor. A well-produced explainer video embedded in a LinkedIn campaign can do more for pipeline than a week of cold outreach.

Video Ads Across Digital Channels

Paid video ads remain one of the highest-performing formats in digital advertising. Across all major video platforms, video ads outperform static image ads on click-through rate, brand recall, and purchase intent. For brands with advertising budgets to allocate, a shift toward video ads over display or banner formats is consistently supported by the data.

Video ad adoption among Chicago brands has accelerated over the past two years, driven by lower production costs and better targeting tools. The brands seeing the best video marketing ROI from paid campaigns are those who treat the ad as part of a larger campaign rather than a standalone piece. A video ad that connects to a dedicated landing page, a follow-up email stream, and retargeted social media videos will always outperform one that stands alone.

Video Marketing Statistics Specific to Chicago Brands

While global data sets the context, there are market-specific dynamics that Chicago brands should factor into their planning.

Chicago is the third-largest media market in the United States. That means your audience is sophisticated, has seen a lot of content, and has high expectations for production quality and relevance. Generic marketing videos will not move the needle here the way they might in smaller markets.

At the same time, local video content, content that shows real Chicago locations, speaks to local culture, and features familiar faces from the community, consistently outperforms national content in local engagement metrics. People respond to authenticity, and nothing signals authenticity faster than content that clearly comes from their city.

The industries seeing the highest video marketing ROI in the Chicago market include:

• Real estate, where video walkthroughs and neighbourhood guides are now expected by buyers and renters, and where video adoption among top-performing agents is near universal.
• Hospitality and food and beverage, where visual storytelling drives foot traffic and booking conversions better than any other content type.
• Professional services, including law, finance, and consulting, where explainer videos and educational content build the trust needed for high-value client relationships.
• Retail and e-commerce, where marketing videos that demonstrate products in use increase purchase confidence and reduce return rates significantly.
• Healthcare and wellness, where short-form educational content is rapidly replacing traditional advertising as the top source of new patient acquisition.

Regardless of which of these industries you operate in, the underlying principle is the same: video gives your brand a way to show up, build trust, and drive action at scale.

Practical Tips for Chicago Brands Building a Video Marketing Strategy

1. Start With Your Campaign Goal, Not Your Content Ideas

A lot of brands jump into video creation with ideas for content before they have defined what success looks like. Start with the metric you want to move. Is it traffic? Leads? Brand awareness? Conversion on a specific product or service? Your answer determines your video type, your platform choice, and the end goal of every piece you produce.

2. Understand Video Length by Platform

Video length is one of the most misunderstood variables in video marketing. People assume shorter is always better, but the data tells a more nuanced story. The right length depends entirely on the platform and the intent of the viewer. YouTube Shorts and TikTok reward brevity. Long-form YouTube content rewards depth. LinkedIn sits somewhere in between, with explainer videos in the two to five minute range consistently performing well. Match your length to the platform and to what your audience is actually there to do.

3. Always Include Captions

Captions are no longer optional. A significant portion of all social media videos are watched with the sound off, and platforms actively favour captioned content in their algorithms. Adding accurate captions to every video you produce is one of the simplest ways to increase watch time, improve accessibility, and lift your overall campaign performance. Most video tools now include automatic caption generation, so there is no reason to skip this step.

4. Build Streams of Content, Not One-Off Videos

The brands with the strongest video marketing ROI are not the ones that produced one great video. They are the ones that built consistent streams of content across their chosen video platforms. A content stream, whether that is a weekly YouTube series, a recurring Instagram Reels format, or a monthly explainer video campaign on LinkedIn, compounds in value over time. Each new piece builds on the audience and authority established by the past ones.

5. Use the Right Video Tools for Your Team

The range of video tools available to brands in 2026 is broader than it has ever been. From AI-powered editing platforms and automated caption generators to analytics dashboards that track shares, watch time, and conversion by video type, there is no shortage of options. The key is choosing video tools that match your team's actual capacity and workflow, rather than adopting every app that promises results. A small set of well-used video tools will always outperform a large set of underused ones.

6. Partner With a Production Team That Understands Strategy

There is a meaningful difference between a team that produces good-looking video and a team that understands how marketing videos perform across different channels, how to structure content for retention and conversion, and how to build content streams that compound in value over time.

This is where the right production partner becomes a genuine competitive advantage. If you are a Chicago brand looking for that combination, Trendy Grandad is worth a serious look. Trendy Grandad is a video production company that brings together creative quality and content strategy, helping brands build video presences that do not just look good but actually grow their business. The team understands YouTube strategy, short-form content, explainer videos, and brand storytelling across all major video platforms, and works with clients to develop a video approach that fits their campaign goals, their audience, and their budget.

For Chicago brands serious about using video to drive measurable growth, Trendy Grandad is the kind of partner that makes the investment worthwhile.

Other Video Tools and Resources to Know

Beyond production partners, here are some video tools and vendors that Chicago brands commonly use to manage their campaigns and track performance:

• VidIQ and TubeBuddy - YouTube optimisation tools that help you improve search visibility, track key metrics, and benchmark your performance against competitors in your industry.
• Wistia - a video hosting platform built for business use, with strong analytics on viewer behavior. Ideal for companies embedding marketing videos on their websites or in email streams.
• Descript - a transcript-based editing app that makes video creation faster for talking-head content and automates caption generation for accessibility and SEO.
• Canva Video and Adobe Express - accessible options for brands that need to produce short social media videos quickly without a full production setup.
• Sprout Social and Hootsuite - social media management platforms that include scheduling and performance tracking for marketing videos across multiple channels, with useful data on shares, reach, and engagement by video type.

These video tools are well-suited to in-house teams managing a lighter content load. For brands building more substantial content streams, combining the right tools with a dedicated production partner gives you the best of both, operational efficiency and creative quality.

The Bottom Line: What These Video Marketing Statistics Mean for Your Brand

Pull back from the individual numbers and the picture is clear. Video marketing is no longer a campaign type you can treat as optional. It is the primary way people discover, evaluate, and make decisions about the brands they spend money with.

The 93% of video marketers who report increased brand awareness from video are not outliers. They are the mainstream. The brands not seeing those results are typically dealing with a lack of strategy, inconsistent content streams, or marketing videos that do not match the platform or the audience.

Video adoption among Chicago brands has accelerated significantly over the past two years, but there is still meaningful ground to cover. Local video content remains underproduced relative to demand. Internet users in this market are actively searching for businesses on YouTube and across social media video platforms, and many of those searches return weak or no video results.

The brands that step into that gap, with consistent content streams, the right video tools, and a clear campaign strategy, will build a measurable advantage over those that do not. The video marketing statistics are telling you something. The question is whether your brand is ready to act on them.

Ready to Make Video Work for Your Chicago Brand?

Whether you are mapping out your first campaign or looking to scale what you already have, the combination of clear goals, the right video type for each platform, and consistent content streams is what separates brands that grow from brands that stall.

Past results in video marketing have shown, consistently and across every industry, that the brands willing to commit to video and treat it as a core channel rather than an afterthought are the ones that end up owning their market.

Trendy Grandad works with brands that are serious about video. If you want to build a video presence that drives real traffic, real conversions, and real growth for your business, reach out and start the conversation.