Ask a retailer what their top priority is in 2026 and you won’t get one answer. You’ll get 13. Ask shoppers what they expect from modern retailers and you’ll understand why there are 13.
Shoppers expect more video. More authenticity. More personalization. More seamless experiences across every channel they touch.
To meet this growing list of demands, retail leaders are adopting strategies that range from scaling their video libraries to deploying AI across an increasing list of workflow tasks.
The result is a retail experience that’s more dynamic and capable than ever, and also far more complex to run.
To understand how retailers are navigating this challenge, Cloudinary partnered with independent research firm Researchscape International to survey 539 retailers across 14 countries. Here’s what we found:
- 13 buyer trends are competing for retailers’ attention simultaneously — with shopping (43%), high-volume video (42%), and social commerce (39%) topping the list.
- 84% use AI across 14 different tasks, including image and video creation and editing, workflow automation, and copy generation.
- 41% of retailers now host 1,000 videos or more, up from just 8% in 2024.
- 48% of videos hosted on retailer websites are user-generated content (UGC).
View this infographic for the full survey results.
Nearly two-thirds of retailers plan to publish more video this year, and it’s easy to understand why:
- 70% say video builds brand trust.
- 69% say it improves product credibility.
- 63% say it drives purchases.
- 61% say it increases organic search visibility and market awareness.
- 35% say it reduces returns.
What’s not as easy to understand is how to scale a library efficiently to maximize video’s effectiveness.
Each new asset has to be reformatted for a dozen screens and platforms, and every new file adds weight to a site that shoppers expect to load instantly. Retailers are caught between wanting more video and needing their sites to stay fast.
- 62% are looking to deliver more video this year.
- 45% cite the performance impact on sites and apps as their biggest operational challenge.
- 42% struggle with the time required to manually format video variations to fit different devices and social media channels.
- A new “mega-host” category has emerged: 6% of retailers now manage libraries of 100,000 videos or more.
Shoppers trust other shoppers, and retailers know it. Nearly three-quarters now accept UGC in just about any form it comes in.
But letting customers into the content pipeline means someone has to keep an eye on what comes through it. At scale, that can’t be done without a massive team, which is why AI-powered moderation has become an expectation rather than a bonus capability.
- 75% of retailers accept all types of UGC.
- 37% identify UGC as a top buyer trend.
- 44% rely on AI tools for video moderation and compliance.
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More retailers now name social media as their single most important channel than any other. Customers aren’t just discovering products there anymore. Today, they’re buying on social media, too.
That’s raised the bar on what a piece of social content needs to do, and personalized image and video are picking up more of that load.
- 81% deliver video content across their social media platforms. That outpaces every other channel — 71% deliver video on their websites, and 64% on mobile apps.
- 41% identify social media as the most important channel to their business.
- 42% report increased social sharing as a direct benefit of their image and video personalization efforts.
AI has moved well beyond the pilot phase. The vast majority of retailers now run it inside their actual workflows, not next to them, and the next frontier — AI concierges and digital stylists talking directly to shoppers — is already on the roadmap for most.
- 84% of retailers use generative AI tools within their general workflows.
- 56% use generative AI for workflow automation.
- 71% plan to employ more AI concierges and digital stylists this year.
Retail in 2026 doesn’t reward brands that solve one problem at a time. It rewards the ones who can move on video, UGC, social, and AI all at once, without their operations buckling under the weight of it.
Cloudinary gives retailers the infrastructure to do exactly that: automating video production and formatting at scale, moderating UGC before it ever reaches a shopper, and turning generative AI from a side project into a core part of the workflow.
Retailers want to publish more video because it builds trust and drives purchases, but every new asset has to be reformatted for multiple devices, screens, and platforms without slowing down page load. Cloudinary’s e-commerce video hosting guide covers how automated transcoding, adaptive streaming, and CDN delivery solve this at scale.
AI-powered moderation tools can automatically flag, approve, or reject UGC images and videos based on brand and policy rules before they ever reach a shopper, removing the need for manual review at scale. Cloudinary’s UGC management solution covers how this fits into a broader upload-to-publish workflow.
Generative AI is now used across retail workflows well beyond content review, including image and video creation, editing, and automation, with many retailers also planning to expand AI concierges and digital stylists that interact directly with shoppers. Read more about Cloudinary AI’s capabilities available across the asset lifecycle, including generation, tagging, and moderation.
More retailers now consider social media their single most important channel, since shoppers are discovering and buying products directly on social platforms rather than just browsing there. That raises the bar for how quickly and consistently retailers can adapt video and image content for each platform’s format and audience. Cloudinary’s video solutions page covers how AI-powered cropping and format variants help retailers keep pace across channels.
The common thread across video scaling, UGC moderation, social delivery, and AI adoption is automation: handling formatting, moderation, and delivery through one platform instead of stitching together manual processes for each channel. Cloudinary’s retail solutions page outlines how retailers use a single platform to manage, optimize, and deliver product visuals across every channel.
