84% of Retailers Use AI as Video and UGC Reshape Digital Commerce
New survey finds retailers scaling video, UGC and AI as mobile shopping, social commerce and personalisation compete for attention.
Retailers are entering the holiday season with more digital priorities competing for attention than ever.
Rather than a single trend defining the customer experience, Cloudinary’s second annual Global Retail Survey finds brands balancing 13 buyer priorities spanning mobile shopping, video, social commerce, personalisation, sustainability and omnichannel experiences.
The survey, conducted by independent research firm Researchscape International, polled 539 retail professionals across 14 countries. Mobile shopping emerged as a priority for 43% of respondents, followed by high-volume video at 42%, social commerce at 39%, hyper-personalisation at 35%, sustainable production at 26% and seamless omnichannel experiences at 25%.
The findings point to a broader shift in retail operations. Video libraries are expanding rapidly, retailers are opening digital experiences to more user-generated content, and AI is moving beyond experimentation into everyday content and asset workflows.
Retailers Increase Video Investment as Content Volumes Surge
Video has become a central part of the retail experience, but the scale of adoption is creating new operational demands.
Only 8% of ecommerce professionals hosted 1,000 or more videos in Cloudinary’s 2024 Video Survey. In the 2026 retail research, that figure reached 41%. At the upper end, 6% of retailers now manage video libraries containing 100,000 or more assets, creating a new group of large-scale video operators.
The expansion is expected to continue, with 62% of retailers planning to deliver more video this year.
Retailers also associate video with several commercial and customer-experience benefits. 70% said video helps build brand trust and confidence, while 69% said it improves product credibility. Another 63% reported that video helps drive product purchases, while 61% linked it to market awareness and SEO. 35% said video can help reduce product returns.
The challenge is that increasing the amount of video does not automatically make the underlying operation easier.
Site and app performance was the biggest operational challenge, cited by 45% of respondents. Another 42% pointed to the time required to manually create video variations for different devices and social channels.
Managing and finding video assets was cited by 40%, while 36% identified CDN bandwidth as a challenge. As video libraries expand, retailers therefore face a parallel infrastructure problem: producing more content while ensuring that it does not slow down the digital experiences where that content is delivered.
AI is increasingly being used to address part of that problem. 79% of retailers have adopted AI within their video workflows, suggesting that automation is becoming a practical requirement as content volumes increase.
UGC Becomes More Important, but Brand Safety Remains a Constraint
The expansion of visual commerce is also increasing retailers’ reliance on content created by customers.
37% of retail professionals identified UGC as a top buyer trend, while 75% have opened their platforms to accept different forms of user-generated content.
The opportunity comes with a corresponding moderation challenge. Customer-created images and videos can add authenticity to product experiences, but retailers also need to ensure that content complies with brand, legal and platform requirements.
Among retailers using AI, 44% integrate AI tools into video compliance and moderation workflows. This points to a growing role for AI beyond content creation, particularly in the processes required to review, classify and manage large volumes of third-party content.
For retailers, UGC is therefore becoming part of the content infrastructure rather than simply an engagement tactic. The ability to accept and distribute more customer content depends increasingly on moderation and workflow systems that can operate at the same scale.
Social Media Moves Closer to the Retail Storefront
Social platforms are also becoming a significant part of the visual commerce journey.
41% of retailers identified social media as their leading channel, while 39% cited social commerce as a buyer trend shaping customer experience.
Video distribution reflects that shift. 81% of retailers use social platforms to deliver video content, compared with 71% using websites and 64% using mobile apps.
Personalised visual content is also closely connected to social engagement. 42% of retailers said image and video personalisation leads to increased social sharing, suggesting that personalisation is extending beyond onsite experiences into the content consumers distribute themselves.
This puts greater pressure on retailers to produce visual assets that can be adapted across multiple environments. A single piece of content may need to work across a product page, mobile experience, social feed and other customer touchpoints, increasing the importance of automated transformation and delivery.
AI Moves Into 14 Retail Workflow Use Cases
AI adoption is no longer limited to isolated experiments in retail marketing and content teams.
Cloudinary found that 84% of retailers now use AI within their general workflows, with adoption distributed across 14 different use cases. Rather than one dominant application accounting for most adoption, the findings show AI being incorporated across the wider asset lifecycle.
The leading applications include:
- Creation and editing – 61%: Tasks include background removal, canvas expansion and smart cropping, allowing retailers to standardise visual assets more quickly.
- Workflow automation – 56%: AI is being used to move assets from production toward publication with less manual intervention.
- Copy generation – 50%: Retailers are using AI to create and edit supporting copy associated with visual assets.
The spread of adoption across multiple functions indicates that AI is increasingly being treated as part of the operational layer supporting content production, rather than as a standalone creative tool.
This is particularly relevant as retailers increase the number of images, videos, product variations and localised assets required across channels.
AI Concierges and Digital Stylists Enter Retail Roadmaps
The next phase of AI adoption is moving closer to the customer experience.
According to the survey, 71% of organisations plan to deploy AI concierges and digital stylists this year, making them the most widely cited next-generation digital experience on retailers’ 2026 roadmaps.
These experiences point toward a retail environment where AI can help consumers navigate product discovery and selection, while also connecting those interactions with the visual assets already being produced and managed by retailers.
That creates another reason for retailers to treat content infrastructure as part of the customer experience. AI-led shopping experiences depend on accurate, accessible and appropriately formatted product information and visual assets being available when needed.
Retailers Face a Content Scaling Problem
Cloudinary’s findings point to a common issue across the different trends shaping retail: the volume and variety of content required to serve customers is increasing faster than traditional workflows can comfortably support.
Retailers are simultaneously responding to mobile shopping, social commerce, personalisation, video, UGC and omnichannel expectations. Each requires content to be produced, adapted, approved and delivered across different platforms and devices.
The result is a growing gap between content creation and content operations.
Video illustrates the problem most clearly. Retailers are creating and managing substantially larger libraries, while performance, formatting, asset management and bandwidth remain significant challenges.
AI is being introduced across the workflow to reduce some of this manual work, but the underlying requirement is broader: retailers need systems capable of managing visual content at scale.
Visual Commerce Becomes an Operational Priority
Cloudinary’s 2026 Global Retail Survey shows retailers entering the holiday season with a broad set of competing customer expectations rather than a single dominant priority.
Mobile shopping remains important, but retailers are also increasing their investment in video, social commerce, personalisation, and UGC. At the same time, AI is moving into content creation, workflow automation, moderation and other operational processes.
The numbers also highlight the tension behind that transformation. 41% of retailers now host at least 1,000 videos, 84% use AI in general workflows, and 62% expect to deliver more video this year. Yet performance and workflow bottlenecks remain significant as content volumes increase.
For retail teams, the challenge is therefore shifting from simply producing more content to managing the infrastructure required to make that content useful across channels.
As retailers prepare for another high-volume holiday period, visual commerce is increasingly becoming an operational discipline spanning content production, AI, personalisation, moderation, delivery and customer experience.
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