Keeping Up The Content: The Best Metrics For Measuring Content Success

More than three-quarters (77%) of content creators expected increases in their 2025 content volume, and thanks to AI’s ascendancy over the year, more than that (82%) actually saw that increase.

“In fact,” says Canto’s The State of Digital Content report for 2026, “75% of content professionals say AI has increased their content volume, including 30% who attribute a significant boost directly to AI. … As AI-driven workflows mature, this upward pressure on volume is likely to grow.”

Canto asked content professionals how they evaluated success of these growing programs, finding 40% using audience engagement as their leading metric, followed by brand awareness (38%), web traffic or lead generation (38%), and sales revenue (also 38%).

(Source: Canto)

“Investments in content and creative production are paying off, with the share of organizations reporting a significant ROI increase jumping from 19% last year to 28%,” the report says. “Teams reporting the strongest ROI growth are significantly more likely than others to prioritize AI-driven analytics or predictive performance insights (42% vs 24%).”

As for difficulties, simply keeping up with increased content demands remained the top challenges, though, as the report finds, “the intensity has eased slightly from last year” (40% in 2025, down from 45% in 2024).

“Nearly half of widespread AI users (49%) find it extremely easy to maintain consistency across channels,” the report says, “far higher than those using AI in limited ways (36%) or not at all (6–9%).”

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