State of Digital Content Report 2024

In May of 2024, we surveyed 125 marketers about the current state of content marketing. We wanted to know what the industry looks like right now, what’s working, what isn’t, and how marketers feel about all of it.

This report shows what we found.

We talked with a mix of agency marketers, in-house marketers, and freelance writers to understand what different groups are seeing. When the difference between those groups is relevant, we’ll show you the breakdown among those three segments. We’ve also asked many of the same questions in previous years, so for certain data points, we can show you what the trend has been over time.

Here’s what to expect:

The state of content marketing in 2024

Let’s start with some good news.

Over half of marketers say content marketing is more effective than it was a year ago.

We also see an increase in non-content marketers understanding the value of content.

There is a clear increase here among agencies and freelancers, while the number of in-house marketers who believe their company understands the value of content has held steady since 2023. Overall, this is good news: It means content marketers can spend more time doing their work, and less time educating shareholders.

As many of our respondents observed, however, this increased awareness of content doesn’t mean marketers are off the hook for proving ROI. If anything, it’s as though content has finally gotten a seat at the big kids’ table and is now under more pressure to meet metrics:

As more business leaders begin to see content’s value, content marketers need to be able to speak to business metrics and content’s impact on them. It’s the only way to prove that content is a value add and not a cost center.

Tying content to KPIs is one area that I’ve become much more adept in

Increased pressure to prove content converts, with fewer resources to do so

Wait, what’s that about fewer resources?

Unfortunately, more companies and clients understanding the value of content doesn’t always translate to increased resources to do it. Since 2022, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in marketers reporting reduced budgets for content, or, in the case of agencies, having to lower their prices to stay competitive.

At the same time as they’re getting fewer resources, though, marketers are facing a rising quality standard.

To be clear, rising quality standards are a good thing for the world. Higher standards = better, more valuable content for all of us as searchers and consumers. It also means, though, that marketers’ jobs are getting harder. 

The biggest jump here was among freelancers: Last year, only 54 percent agreed the bar for quality was going up, which was the lowest of any segment. This year, 89 percent of freelancers agreed with this statement—the most of any segment.

Marketers had thoughts on this aspect of their job, too, and how it’s changed in the last two years:

It requires more adaptability, robust analysis, and flexibility. With AI content skimming over the surface, I find that I have to be more thorough by pulling out data and stats to provide authentic, authoritative content.

Authenticity and subject matter expertise are more important – differentiating from tourist-level content.

Consumers, especially the younger generations, are more wary of emotionless content

Writing content today is not just about researching info from other articles, doing keyword research, and regurgitating all of it in a new, original content page. It’s becoming more about subject matter expertise. It’s OK if you’re not an expert as the author, but you need to find someone who is, interview them, and use those insights to steer great, on-point content. Quality and trust in content is the name of the game.

Now, you might think the need to do more with fewer resources would mean an increased use of tools. (At least, I might think that.) And by tools, I mean AI.

What’s the data say?

How marketers are dealing with it

We asked the same question we asked last year to learn how content teams are actually using AI:

Yes, the number of marketers using AI at all has gone up, though not as dramatically as you’d expect for a technology that should still be on the steep part of its adoption curve. The percentage of marketers actually using AI internally for content creation, though, has gone down since 2023. 

This is interesting. Nor is it explained by a significant percentage of marketers outsourcing their AI usage.

The percentage of marketers creating the majority of their content in-house has gone down slightly since last year, from 69 percent to 62 percent. When we look at the growing percentage who are outsourcing at least some of their content, we learn more about what matters and why. 

You can see that deep subject matter expertise continues to be the most important consideration for marketers outsourcing their content creation, though by a smaller margin than last year. Price, meanwhile, has risen from being the most important factor for only one in 12 marketers, to almost one in five. This makes sense, given that we already saw that 44 percent of marketers have had to cut their content costs over the last year.

Certainty that it was written by a human has also become more important, while style guide adherence, SEO, and speed have all become slightly less important.

What we’ve seen in this combination of graphs is that even as price has become more important, marketers haven’t been rushing to cheap AI solutions. Why not?

The top three reasons—factual inaccuracies, repetitiveness, and not matching the brand voice—all speak to the perceived quality of AI content. As the bar for quality is going up, marketers don’t trust that AI can deliver what they need, even if it would be a cheaper option for their potentially reduced budget.

Many marketers also called out AI’s weaknesses when commenting on the biggest changes in content marketing over the last two years:

Making it clear to people that while AI can help, it isn’t the be-all-end-all. It has made it harder to prove our value (and thus, pricing) when a lot of potential clients think we don’t do the writing ourselves. Content is still important, but it has to be GOOD content. Putting out whatever AI spits back at you isn’t always that.

AI has allowed a lot more content to be pushed online and it can drown out unique, research-based content

I have to compete with unoriginal, low quality AI content

And more than one respondent acknowledged the inherent tension in needing to use AI for efficiency’s sake, without letting quality suffer:

You need to use AI to do your work, but not let AI do all the work. Marketers two years ago didn’t have to worry about this.

Today, content marketing increasingly uses AI. Marketers must adapt to new tools and regulations while still creating engaging and personalized content.

A few other stats provide additional color to the AI situation:

38 percent of our respondents agreed with the statement “I’m under pressure from my boss to use AI to produce content faster and cheaper.” Among those respondents, this sentiment was all too common:

With the proliferation of AI, I think there’s a belief (especially amongst leadership) that anyone can create content. So often I hear in my day-to-day that AI can write something just as quickly, or AI was used to create a document that’s circulated internally. For me, the biggest difference is not only do I have to routinely defend the importance of content marketing (and doing it the ‘right way’) but I also have to make the case for why we can’t just outsource everything to AI because it’s ‘cheaper.’

The bright side of that graph: Over half of marketers disagreed with that same statement. It means most marketers have bosses who understand AI isn’t a silver bullet—or they at least trust their team enough not to pressure them one way or another.

And finally: The relatively low degree of AI adoption does not appear to be a result of not knowing how to use the technology. (At least, not consciously.)

Across every segment, the majority of marketers (over 70 percent in 2024) believe they have a good understanding of how to use AI in content creation. 

That number has risen among freelancers and in-house marketers since 2023. Interestingly, it has dropped among agency marketers. Does this mean agency marketers know less about AI than they did a year ago? I doubt it. 

We work with a lot of agencies, and what we often see is that they’re quicker to experiment with new technologies than their in-house counterparts. When we asked this question a year ago, ChatGPT had been released only six months prior, and anyone experimenting with AI at all was ahead of the game. In the year since, as new tools, models, and strategies have proliferated, there’s a lot more you need to know about the technology in order to feel like you’re ahead of the curve. While agency marketers’ absolute knowledge of AI has likely gone up, the bar for what they consider a “good understanding” may have risen even faster, resulting in the slightly decreased confidence shown in the graph.

The content of their content

With that larger industry context established, let’s get into the meat of what content marketers are doing in 2024.

First, we asked about what types of content have been getting the best results:

Blog posts continue to be the most successful content type in 2024. Social media and videos have steadily risen in the rankings over the last two years, while landing pages have dropped. Responses in the “Other” category included podcasts, email content, webinars, and content refreshes.

Next, we wanted to look ahead. Given the changing standards and budgets we’ve already discussed, we were curious to know where marketers are planning to focus their resources going forward.

“Shorter, targeted posts for specific points in the customer journey” wins handily with 31 percent of the vote compared to only 19 percent for the next two types: top-of-funnel skyscraper posts, and thought leadership. 

We haven’t asked this question in past years, but my educated guess is that skyscraper posts would have ranked higher previously.

Gone are the days, though, when a long blog post answering every question a reader might have about a topic was the best result for Google to show. Thanks to ChatGPT, consumers are getting used to being able to ask a specific question to get a specific answer. If they want to know more, they’ll then ask a followup question—they don’t need to wade through an enormous post that answers every possible question they might have just to find the single answer they want.

As that experience becomes more commonplace, it makes sense for brands to follow suit by making their content more targeted and specific—and for Google to reward that content, too.

One respondent said it well:

Two years ago, content marketing was more about keywords. Today, it’s all about the user. Marketers gotta make sure their content is what people actually want and keep them engaged. Think short videos and personalized content, not just stuffing keywords in a blog post.

This brings us to our final area of interest: search.

Content and SEO

First, do marketers think SEO still matters?

Despite all the flux from AI, algorithm updates, and Google’s SGE, etc., most marketers do believe SEO will continue to be an important part of their content strategy for at least the next three years.

It’s not unanimous, though. Compared to last year’s results, there is a small but distinct crack in the long-time view of Google as the god to whom all content is sacrificed:

In 2023, 100 percent of agency marketers believed SEO would continue to be important over the next three years. In 2024, as you can see above, nearly one in five changed that vote to “Not sure.” Combined with the nine percent of in-house marketers who outright disagree with that statement, it’s worth asking: Are we currently living through the beginning of the end for SEO as we know it?

Many comments suggest yes:

SEO seems to be a thing of the past and marketers are much more concerned with using AI to their advantage.

SEO is no longer top priority since we are focusing on other traffic channels now.

Less focus on SEO (though still a box to be checked) and more on speaking to your specific audience

And my personal favorite take: “Dancing to the whims of Google seems more and more crazy.” 💃

Algorithm updates 

Speaking of Google’s whims…

55 percent of in-house marketers have seen their site negatively impacted by Google updates over the last year, while 41 percent of agencies have seen their clients’ websites impacted. (Another 33 percent of agencies answered “I don’t know,” so take that 41 percent as the lower bound of how many agencies’ clients have been affected.)

When asked why they thought their site’s rankings had been hurt, there was a lot of uncertainty:

Not a clue!

Due to March algorithm update, but we aren’t sure exactly why.

No idea besides interest rates rising?

There were also some contradicting reasons:

“Niche content sites got hit” versus “Site was too big and broad—Google is favouring niche websites“

Among the plurality of respondents, however, there was one main theme: Bad content.

A lot of low quality and outdated content

They published duplicated content across many pages across their website. Content that was created was not helpful and just mass-produced.

I inherited a lot of old SEO content that followed the practice of keyword stuffing and these pages were never removed or updated during prior audits.

Not enough rich and quality user-intent content on our website

They published a lot of AI content

Too much past content that wasn’t helpful. Current on-page content is quite thin

Obviously none of us are Google, so it’s hard to say exactly why a given site may have been impacted. But we were curious to see if there was any correlation between whether a site was penalized, and how that team uses AI.

What’s worth noting here is that the only type of AI usage with a substantial difference between the two groups—penalized and not penalized—is using AI internally in content creation. 

As plenty of the earlier comments explained, AI used poorly can virtually guarantee shitty content. But, as the 27 percent of marketers using AI in content creation whose sites haven’t been penalized shows, it is possible to use AI well, too. (Or at least to use it in a way that doesn’t upset Google.) It just requires committing to understanding the technology and its limitations (and staying up with changes as it evolves), and making sure you have humans steering and editing it every step of the way. 

(Yes, we do this, and I keep up with the tech so you don’t have to. We’re all marketers here—I don’t have to feel guilty about a CTA, right?)

tl;dr

To recap the above, here’s the current lay of the land for content marketers: 

Companies and clients largely understand the value of content, and content marketing is perceived to be increasingly effective, year-over-year. In spite of this, more marketers are facing reduced resources for content creation than in previous years. 

At the same time, content has to be better than ever to be effective. This rising standard has outweighed budget considerations to keep AI adoption in content creation relatively low, due to quality concerns around AI outputs.

Blog posts continue to be the most effective type of content, but the trend is moving away from comprehensive skyscraper posts to focus much more on the user: What will engage them at this specific point in their journey? Part of the rising quality standard means our content has to be more targeted to cut through the increasing noise from AI.

And finally, a lot of marketing sites were impacted by algorithm updates this year. The good news, depending on how you look at it, is that the supremacy of SEO might be on the decline. Other content channels are rising in importance as Google’s updates leave marketers increasingly uncertain of the future of their organic rankings.

That’s the report. Thanks for reading, and, if you filled out our survey, thanks for contributing. If you want to look at previous years’ results, check out the 2023 report.

Bonus: Data literacy fun with Claude

Just to be clear, there are no new stats about the state of content marketing in this section. Consider this a friendly PSA about the limits of AI.

Anytime we share graphs, I want to be sure there’s a shared understanding of what conclusions can (and can’t) be taken from them. A conversation I had with Claude illustrates the traps we can easily fall into:

There are two takeaways from this conversation:

1. Correlation doesn’t equal causation
2. Claude can get things wrong. If I thought I could use AI to do my data analysis for me, I would have taken its initial comment that “This information could indicate that sites are adjusting their AI usage strategies based on whether they’ve faced Google penalties, possibly to avoid further penalties or to improve their standing” as gospel. When I pushed back, Claude recognized its mistake and demonstrated a good “understanding” of basic data literacy concepts—but it didn’t do that in its first response. I had to challenge it, and only then did it recognize the data’s limitations.

Moral of the story: Don’t use AI to help you in a domain you know nothing about. You need to know enough to know when it’s wrong.

Not to anthropomorphize, but I also find it adorable that Claude’s initial assumption was that it (meaning AI) was the solution to Google penalties. Like oh honey, you thought you were the hero here? Highly doubtful. But, as it pointed out, there’s not enough context to determine the direction of causality, if any—regardless of what common sense (common among humans, that is, not AI) may suggest.

If you’re still reading, you’re the real hero.