Video marketing trends 2026: what actually works for your SME?

In 2026, video is no longer a separate channel but the default form of online communication: 91% of businesses use it as a marketing tool and 84% of consumers want to see even more video from brands this year (Wyzowl). At the same time, trend articles are full of figures nobody can trace back, and channels that stopped existing three years ago.

This guide does the opposite. Every figure below comes from a primary source with a year attached, and anything that could not be verified simply is not here. You will read what actually changed by August 2026 in format, AI production, selling live and European rules, and what that means for an SME without a video team.

Last checked: August 2026. Figures in trend articles age fast, so every claim below names its source and year.

What do the figures say about video marketing in 2026?

Video is mainstream, but the euphoria has passed. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 84% of consumers want to see more of it. The share of marketers reporting a good ROI from video did drop, from a record 93% in 2025 to 82% in 2026. AI now sits inside production: 63% use AI tools to create or edit videos (Wyzowl).

Figure	2026	Source
Businesses using video as a marketing tool	91%	Wyzowl
Marketers reporting good ROI from video	82% (93% in 2025)	Wyzowl
Video marketers using AI tools	63% (51% a year earlier)	Wyzowl
Consumers wanting more brand video	84%	Wyzowl
Consumers preferring to learn about a product via short video	63%	Wyzowl

Read those figures with the right glasses on. Wyzowl surveyed 266 marketers in late 2025, so these are self-reported perceptions rather than measured effect. A drop from 93% to 82% could be a real cooling off, or equally well sampling noise. The direction is recognisable though: everyone does video now, so average returns fall back to something normal. That makes the question “which video, for which moment” more important than the question of whether you do video at all.

Which video format do you use where, and how long should it be?

Choose your format on the moment in the customer journey, not on the platform. Short-form drives discovery, mid-form does explanation and persuasion, long-form builds trust with people who already know you. 71% of marketers consider videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes most effective (Wyzowl 2026), but that average hides exactly the distinction you need.

Format	Where	When to use it
Vertical short-form, 15-60 s	TikTok, Reels, Shorts	Discovery among people who do not know you yet
Short-form with product tag	TikTok Shop	Selling visual, impulse-driven products
Product video, 15-45 s	Your own webshop	Removing doubt on the product page
Explainer, 60-120 s	Homepage, service page, email	Explaining what you do and why it differs
Customer or case video, 1-3 min	Site, LinkedIn, sales conversation	Delivering proof right before the decision
Long-form or webinar, 15-45 min	YouTube, LinkedIn	Building authority with a warm audience
Livestream, 20-60 min	TikTok LIVE, LinkedIn Live	Selling or answering questions in real time

Three rules apply across every format. Put your promise in the first seconds, because the attention curve is steepest at the start on every platform. Subtitle your videos, so they work for people scrolling with the sound off and so the text is searchable. And reuse: one properly recorded conversation yields a long-form video, three shorts and a set of quotes. How to set up that production process is covered by our content production service; the platform choice itself is covered in our guide to TikTok marketing in Belgium.

What does AI actually change about your video production?

AI lowers the barrier to production, not to strategy. 63% of video marketers use AI tools to create or edit videos, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl 2026), and the tools are moving into the place where you already work: on 20 May 2026 Google announced multimodal AI video creation inside Asset Studio in Google Ads, rolling out globally in English.

The scale this happens at is no longer small. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan reported in January 2026 that in December, an average of more than one million channels used the platform’s AI creation tools every day. He draws the line himself:

“AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement.”

— Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube

What AI reliably does for you today: subtitling, translation, rough editing, cleaning up background noise, and producing variants of a video that already works so you can test them. Tools like invideo agent’s AI video generator turn a script or a rough idea into an AI-generated first cut without a full production setup. What it does not do: work out what occupies your customer, why they buy from you and which story carries that. That remains the work where the return sits.

Do not bet on a single tool either. OpenAI discontinued Sora (app on 26 April 2026, API on 24 September 2026) less than a year after the model was being described as the future of AI video. Build your process around your own source material and your own templates, so replacing a tool is a move rather than a restart. Which tools are worth it right now, we track in top AI tools for marketers.

Want video without your own video team? ClickForest sets up content production with AI where it fits and human editing where it matters. Book a no-obligation video call.

Do you really have to film vertically?

For anything that lives in a feed on a smartphone: yes, and there is research behind it. A Ghent University study in the Journal of Interactive Marketing (Mulier, Slabbinck and Vermeir, 2021) found in a large-scale field study that vertical video ads on mobile generate more consumer interest and engagement than horizontal ones, and in two experiments that people process them more fluently.

The explanation is plain: someone watching a vertical video does not have to turn their device to see it full screen. That small effort explains the difference, and the effect was strongest among Gen Z. In practice this means filming natively vertical instead of cropping horizontal footage, and keeping text and logos out of the zones where the platform interface sits on top.

Be careful with what you read elsewhere. The figure “9:16 delivers 58% more engagement” appears in dozens of trend articles, but cannot be traced back to a study, a dataset or a method. A peer-reviewed study from a Belgian university is a sturdier argument than a number whose origin cannot be found. What vertical video means for the rest of your site is covered in our guide to mobile optimisation for e-commerce.

Where can you actually sell live with video from Belgium?

In August 2026, TikTok Shop is the only live shopping channel a Belgian webshop can use directly. It went live in Belgium on 15 June 2026, with product tags in videos and in LIVE broadcasts in the For You feed. Live shopping on Instagram ended in March 2023, on Facebook back in October 2022, and YouTube’s shopping programme is not yet available in Belgium.

That gap between hype and availability is exactly where trend articles go wrong: “Instagram Live Shopping” still shows up in listicles, while Meta scrapped that feature three years ago to focus on Reels. Check every channel you read about in a trend article against the platform’s own newsroom before you invest time in it.

The figures put it in perspective. In the United States, livestream commerce grew by almost 50% to USD 14.64 billion in 2025, yet only 21.7% of US digital buyers actually bought something via a livestream that year (eMarketer, January 2026). Selling live is growing fast from a small base, and that base is American on top of it. The sober reading for a Belgian webshop: test it if your audience is already on TikTok and your margins carry the commission and the content effort, and treat your own webshop as home base. The wider context sits in our guides to social commerce and live shopping for Shopify.

Which rules apply to AI video since August 2026?

Article 50 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026. Providers of AI systems generating synthetic video must mark that output in a machine-readable format as artificially generated or manipulated. Anyone using such a system and publishing deepfakes must disclose that in a clear and distinguishable manner, at the latest at first exposure.

Two nuances belong with it. AI systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026. And for work that is evidently artistic, creative, satirical or fictional, a more limited form of disclosure suffices, so a deliberately stylised commercial is not treated the same way as a realistic imitation of a real person.

Practically, for an SME using AI in video: keep track of which videos contain AI-generated images, voices or avatars, make the disclosure visible on screen or audible rather than only in metadata, and agree internally who checks this before publication. This article is not legal advice; if your specific setup raises doubt, put it to a lawyer.

How do you measure whether video pays off for your business?

Measure in three layers. Attention: average watch time and completion rate per video, not loose views. Action: clicks to your site, saved videos and replies from your own audience. Revenue: conversions and ROAS from video traffic in your analytics. Views without action are reach, not results.

Two agreements make that workable. Put UTM tags on every link out of a video so the traffic shows up recognisably in your reports, and give the channel a fair test period of a few months at a steady rhythm before drawing conclusions. Then compare cost per result against your other channels.

And ignore the benchmarks doing the rounds. Claims like “video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined” or “personalised video achieves 35% higher retention” have no traceable source, no method and no dataset; they have been copied from blog to blog for years. Your own numbers from your own audience are the only benchmark worth anything. If your traffic still does not pay off, the problem usually sits after the click: our conversion optimisation roadmap and our conversion optimisation service handle that part.

Where do you start as an SME without a video team?

Start small and repeatable. In the first month you pick one format and publish weekly. In the quarter after that you put ad budget behind what already works organically. Only then do you think about livestreams, personalisation and scale. Doing it the other way round means buying expensive production for content nobody knows will land yet.

Phase 1, the first month: foundation

• Pick one recognisable format you can repeat twenty times without burning out
• Film vertically, on the phone, with a real face from your business on camera
• Subtitle every video and put UTM tags on every link
• Publish weekly on one platform where your audience already is

Phase 2, the first quarter: gathering evidence

• Measure watch time per video and compare formats rather than individual videos
• Put your best-performing organic video behind ad budget
• Add product videos to your most visited product pages
• Use AI for subtitling, translation and variants, not for the idea

Phase 3, after that: scaling up

• Test live shopping if your audience and your margins carry it
• Build a library of customer videos and user-generated content
• Personalise where your data allows it, starting with email
• Make AI labelling a fixed step in your publishing process

What should you remember about video marketing in 2026?

Video has become the default, and that is precisely why the question is no longer whether you do video, but which video for which moment and whether you measure what it returns. Three shifts are real in 2026: AI inside production (63% of video marketers use it), selling live which has only been possible in Belgium since 15 June 2026 via TikTok Shop, and European transparency rules for AI video since 2 August 2026. Much of what else gets sold as a trend is a figure without a source.

For the channel choice itself, our guides to TikTok marketing in Belgium and LinkedIn marketing for B2B leads are the logical next step. ClickForest helps SMEs in Flanders use video where it pays off, from content production to the performance management of the ads around it. Plan a no-obligation video call and we will look together at which video format is worth your hours.