The Top Marketing Channels in 2026 (By Ad Spend & Customer Type)

Choosing the right marketing channels for your brand requires time and patience, with some inevitable failed experiments along the way. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to build or optimize your marketing mix blindly; there are many data points and best practices you can follow to narrow down your options.

To help you allocate your marketing spend more wisely, our own Kevin Lord Barry (GM of Right Percent) helped us put together a list of the top channels in 2026, based on ad spend and customer type.

The top marketing channels based on customer type

Above, we’ve got a chart outlining every channel we researched and who they’re best for depending on your customer type. Here’s exactly how to read it:

• Bubble size: This one is pretty straightforward, but the size of the bubbles is the rough scale of the channel based on ad spend. Usually, it’s best to start with the bigger channels, as they have the most potential to scale. Once those are established, you can start thinking about diversifying your channel mix. 
• Vertical axis: How actively a customer typically looks for a product like yours. Do you have to mostly create the demand or just capture it? Or both?
• Horizontal axis: How specific your target market is. Is this a product most households or companies would use or is it pretty niche?

B2C brands will more often fall into the left half, whereas B2B ones typically belong on the right.

One important caveat: this chart, while usually accurate in our experience, should be treated as a directional guide—not the holy grail. Many factors not represented on the chart could affect how likely a channel is to work out for you.

The biggest marketing channels in 2026 (by ad spend)

Below is our full table of marketing channels in 2026, listed by current or estimated ad spend obtained via public data.

How each marketing channel works

Now we’ve covered the scale of these channels, let’s take a look at how they work and how they can fit into your marketing strategy. These brief descriptions should be especially useful for smaller businesses, but Kevin’s insights can be useful regardless of how scaled your team is.

We’ll sort the channels by quadrant to keep things organized. Channels denoted with an asterisk are in multiple quadrants.

Active + broad audience (top left quadrant)

• Google SEM*: Paying for ads on the search engine results page for Google. Google can work for almost any audience and targeting, as long as your product category is one that people are likely to search for.
• Bing SEM*: Similar to Google, but on a smaller scale (roughly 15% of Google’s).
• SEO*: Trying to appear on the search engine results pages of Google, Bing, and Yahoo by creating content and optimizing it for keywords. You have less control over the keywords compared to SEM, so it’s a little less targeted. In the same vein, there’s been the emergence of GEO, the practice of influencing answers for select LLM prompts and keywords (i.e., optimizing and increasing brand presence within ChatGPT, Glaude, Google AI Overview, etc.). 
• Amazon Ads: Amazon Ads is now a full-funnel advertising channel and can be effective for many ecommerce brands. 
• Pinterest*: Place ads on Pinterest. Typically most effective for targeting young people and women.

Active + niche audience (top right quadrant)

• Integrated partnerships: Make an arrangement with a company that has an audience of in-app users to offer your product. For instance, if Dun and Bradstreet customers often want HR software, you appear on their list of HR vendors.
• Tradeshows: Get a booth at a tradeshow. Tradeshows and conventions get a very targeted audience in one place where everyone is looking for new products to use.
• Review sites: Capterra, GetApp, SoftWare advice, etc. These can be a great source of leads in specific verticals, as long as you ensure they don’t cannibalize leads that are searching for your branded search terms.
• Google SEM*:  Paying for ads on the search engine results page for Google. Google can work for almost any audience and targeting, as long as your product category is one that people are likely to search for.
• Bing SEM*: Similar to Google, but on a smaller scale (roughly 15% of Google’s).
• SEO*: Trying to appear on the search engine results pages of Google, Bing, and Yahoo by creating content and optimizing it for keywords. You have less control over the keywords compared to SEM, so it’s a little less targeted. In the same vein, there’s been the emergence of GEO, the practice of influencing answers for select LLM prompts and keywords (i.e., optimizing and increasing brand presence within ChatGPT, Glaude, Google AI Overview, etc.). 

Passive + broad audience (bottom left quadrant)

• Pinterest*: Place ads on Pinterest. Typically most effective for targeting young people and women.
• Display networks (GDN, DSPs, etc.): Place banner ads on various display networks. Display networks are when thousands of sites use the same advertising server to serve ads to customers. So by going through Google Display Network (GDN), you can place banner ads on thousands of sites. The targeting is not great at scale.
• Content amplification (Taboola, Outbrain): Place ads on news sites where you pay to show people your own piece of content. Cheap clicks, and the ads you use make a huge difference, but targeting is not great at scale.
• Facebook + Instagram*:  Place ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook can work for almost any audience, broad or targeted, as long as your market size is over 200,000 people.
• Affiliate*: Historically, affiliate marketing consisted of paying partners—usually on a commission basis—for driving clicks to your website. Nowadays it’s a true growth channel, with endorsement marketing playing a role in owned, earned, and paid channels.
• YouTube: Great scale, and the targeting is the 2nd strongest major online channel after Facebook.
• TV/Radio: Advertise on TV and Radio. You have to test big on this channel, but TV and Radio can both drive new customers at acceptable prices, even compared to every other channel. The targeting is very broad.
• Podcast advertising*: An increasingly important channel that offers niche targeting capabilities by choosing podcasts that cater to different audiences. Well-executed podcast ads, especially host-read ones, can seamlessly fit into the listener’s experience—providing an authentic experience rarely found in other channels.

Passive + niche audience (bottom right quadrant)

• Facebook + Instagram*: Place ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook can work for almost any audience, broad or targeted, as long as your market size is over 200,000 people.
• LinkedIn: Place ads on LinkedIn. Good for some categories of B2B where the target customer uses LinkedIn a lot, like recruiters. Otherwise the scale is low.
• Direct Mail: One of the most precise marketing methods: get a database of people you know would be good customers, and mail them.
• Outbound (calling + email): Also a very precise marketing method: get a database of people you know would be good customers, and call them or email them.
• Podcast advertising*: An increasingly important channel that offers niche targeting capabilities by choosing podcasts that cater to different audiences. Well-executed podcast ads, especially host-read ones, can seamlessly fit into the listener’s experience—providing an authentic experience rarely found in other channels.
• Affiliate*: Historically, affiliate marketing consisted of paying partners—usually on a commission basis—for driving clicks to your website. Nowadays it’s a true growth system, with endorsement marketing playing a role in owned, earned, and paid channels.

Want to discuss which channels make sense for your business? 

Our marketing talent has deep experience with all the channels mentioned in this article, and we'd love to chat—reach out to us today! And if you’re spending $50k+ monthly on B2B advertising, get in touch with our Right Percent team to get a free audit of your ad accounts.

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