Marketers’ value, AI complexity, retail media: 5 interesting stats to start your week
We arm you with all the stats you need to tackle the week ahead.
· Marketing WeekBy Emily Manock 2 Nov 2026 2:41 pm
More than three quarters of marketers under pressure to justify their value
Over three quarters (80%) of marketers say they feel at least moderate pressure to justify their value, with nearly one in three marketers (31%) reporting they feel significant pressure to justify their value.
Alongside this, according to new research from Funnel, pressure is on the rise, as more than half (58%) say that pressure is increasing compared to a year ago.
This is also having an impact on the work marketers feel they are able to complete. Among those reporting at least moderate levels of pressure, nearly half (48%) say it makes them less willing to take risks.
Amidst great pressure, more than half (59%) of marketers prioritise specific marketing activities because they are easier to measure, (58%) while a similar proportion having rejected a marketing idea because they couldn’t estimate its impact in advance, and around a third (36%) said they continued investing in a channel we believed wasn’t working because the numbers looked too good to cut.
Source: Funnel
AI is adding complexity for nearly three quarters of UK brand marketers
Almost three quarters (71%) of UK brand marketers say that AI is creating a new complexity problem, despite improving efficiency for their teams, reveals a report from SBS.
Additionally, more than half (57%) of brand marketers say accessing and adopting marketing technology is more challenging than it was 12 months ago.
Brand marketers identify budget constraints (18%) as the primary obstacle to acquiring and implementing new technologies. This was closely followed by limited internal expertise (14%), a shortage of talent or expertise (14%), and insufficient resources (13%).
At the same time, the balance between agencies and in-house teams is shifting, with two thirds (66%) of brand marketers expect their organisations to bring more marketing capabilities in-house over the next three years.
Source: SBS
Retail media spend grows by almost a third last quarter
The amount advertisers invest in retail media grew by almost a third (31.2%) year-on-year last quarter, according to Advertising Association (AA)/WARC data.
Retail media accounted for 8.4% of total UK advertising investment in the second quarter of 2026, meaning that around £1 in every £12 invested in advertising now goes into the channel. That represented significant growth of 31.2% versus the same period last year.
Spend on retail media grew around three times as quickly as UK advertising investment as a whole, which rose 11% in the same period. Retail media was also, by some margin, the fastest growing individual channel captured in the AA/WARC expenditure data. The next fastest growing channels were cinema, which grew 24.5% year-on-year, aided by a strong slate of releases, and social media, which grew 22.2%.
Retail media was also one of the fastest growing channels in the first quarter of 2026, increasing 17.9%.
Looking ahead to the golden quarter, the AA/WARC figures forecast retail media growth to slow to 16.2%. Heading into next year, estimates are the channel will grow by 13% year-on-year for the full year 2027.
Source: AA/Warc
Emotional connection drives four times lift in purchase intent
Ads placed around content with strong emotional connection, fandom and enduring appeal are significantly more likely to drive purchase intent, research from Disney Advertising suggests.
Viewers who emotionally connect to a programme demonstrate four times greater purchase intent off the back of advertising versus those who do not. These emotionally connected viewers also demonstrate two and a half times higher ad recall.
Emotional connection was tracked through natural ad exposure, eye tracking and facial emotion tracking on 1,104 ad-supported platform users in research carried out in partnership with media and advertising research firm Eye Square.
The research also found that consumers who consider themselves “fans” of the content they are watching are almost twice (1.9 times) as likely to demonstrate purchase intent than average viewers on streaming platforms.
When comparing advertising effectiveness across Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, ITVX and YouTube, ad recall and purchase intent are highest when advertisements appear on Disney+, the research found, which streams all of Disney’s portfolio alongside tv successes like Rivals and Grey’s Anatomy.
Audiences that return to the same programme regularly have 4.7 times greater ad recall and five times greater purchase intent.
Source: Disney Advertising
Four in five B2B websites have at least one barrier to conversion, study finds
Over three quarters (82.6%) of B2B websites have at least one conversion barrier, finds new research from DigitalSilk. Poor site structure (43.5%) and unclear messaging (41.3%) are the most common conversion barriers, the data finds.
B2B businesses rank websites (45%) as their top marketing channel, meaning a poor structure can pose serious problems.
A credibility gap is a conversion barrier for 21% of B2B websites. This means that the website is making the company appear smaller, newer or less established than it is.
This can undermine brand trust. Brand trust is the main reason vendor relationships deepen for 52% of B2B buyers, with personal relationships and responsiveness following closely behind at 45%.
Source: DigitalSilk