Bannerflow’s latest analysis of anonymised data from more than 300 brands puts a number on a familiar problem: video production has outpaced video activation. Published on 14 September, the report covers activity from 1 January to 31 August 2026.
The 32-point gap
In that window, brands on the platform produced 2.33 million creative assets and served 155.1 billion impressions. Yet 78% of brands made at least one video ad, while only 46% served any video impressions.
That is a 32 percentage point gap between producing video and actually running it. At minimum, 234 brands produced video and 138 served impressions, though the total sample is described only as “300+” brands.
One nuance: a brand counts in the 78% if it made any video during 2026, and in the 46% if it served any video impressions. The data does not confirm the second group is a subset of the first, so the gap is directional rather than proof that every brand left its own videos unused.
Why this shifts from production to distribution
Video made up just 10.5% of creative assets, with static assets taking the remaining 89.5%. So video adoption is wide but shallow.
The context is important. Generative AI has made video cheaper to produce. IAB research from July 2025 found 86% of buyers use or plan to use generative AI for video ads, and tools from Google, Amazon and Microsoft have made static-to-video creation routine. When video assets are cheap to create, idle assets are easy to overlook—but they still represent wasted budget, time and creative capacity.
Bannerflow’s Jamie Day, Head of Marketing and Lead Generation, puts it directly:
“Production is not the same as adoption. If 78% of brands are producing video but only 46% are actually serving it, then output alone is no longer a meaningful measure of whether a video strategy is working.”
Benchmarks need vertical context
The sector data shows why a single platform average can mislead.
- iGaming: 76.1% of impressions but 63.8% of clicks, implying a click-through rate around 0.090%.
- Travel: only 4.3% of impressions but 11.0% of clicks, with the highest blended CTR in the dataset at 0.274%.
- Telecom: video made up 24.1% of impressions, with a blended CTR of 0.208%.
iGaming’s weight pulls the platform-wide CTR down to 0.108%, so travel’s outperformance is partly a comparison against a base shaped by a single regulated vertical. Travel also had a lower video share than telecom but a higher CTR, so the data cannot prove video caused the stronger click performance.
What to do about it
The action for creative and media teams is not to make more video. It is to connect creative and media workflows, plan distribution alongside production, and assess video against campaign objectives rather than clicks alone.
Before producing the next asset, ask where it will run, how it will be versioned for social feed, display or CTV, and what metric matches the placement. Otherwise you may be adding to the pile of video that never serves an impression.
Source: PPC Land
