Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How often U.S.-listed software companies put customer testimonial video on their homepages, in our own count of 131 homepages; how much reviews and testimonials move buyers, in Northwestern, Pew, BrightLocal and PowerReviews data; how many marketers make testimonial videos and how much shoppers value video from other customers; how far B2B buyers rely on peer evidence; how common fake reviews are, by Google, Amazon, Yelp, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor's own counts; what the FTC's Endorsement Guides and Consumer Review Rule allow in a testimonial video; and where the popular testimonial numbers came from.
12.2% of the 131 large U.S.-listed software-company homepages we read in October 2026 showed a customer testimonial video, though 81.7% showed customer proof of some kind. (Our count)See details
Customer video sits a click deeper: 22.8% of the customer-stories pages they link to had a video player. (Our count)See details
57% of video marketers in Wyzowl's 2026 survey said they make testimonial videos. (Wyzowl)See details
74% of U.S. shoppers told PowerReviews a product video from another customer is worth more than one from the brand. (PowerReviews)See details
A product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none, in Spiegel Research Center data from one retailer. (Spiegel Research Center)See details
49% of U.S. consumers trusted reviews as much as personal recommendations in 2026, against 79% in 2020, though BrightLocal widened the answer options in between. (BrightLocal)See details
Tripadvisor caught 2.7 million fraudulent reviews in 2024; Trustpilot removed 7.4% of submissions as fake. (Tripadvisor; Trustpilot)See details
Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides, people shown as actual consumers must be real customers or the ad must say they are not. (FTC)See details
The '34% more conversions' line is one VWO test of three text testimonials on one UK website. (Origin trace)See details
How often do software companies put customer testimonial video on their homepage?
Rarely. On October 31, 2026 we read the homepages of the U.S.-listed software companies with at least $100 million in annual revenue, and 12.2% of the 131 we could read showed a customer testimonial or customer-story video, checked by hand. Counting only players that were themselves labelled or placed as a testimonial, the share was 6.1%. Customer proof in other forms was nearly universal: 81.7% of the homepages showed at least one kind, and of those, 15.0% used video for it.
So these companies use video on their homepages; they mostly do not use it for customers. More than half had a player of some kind, but most of those players carry product footage or brand loops. Of the 53 homepages with a named written testimonial, 13 also showed a customer video. Video sits one click deeper: 22.8% of the 92 customer-stories pages we followed had at least one video player. Capterra was the most common review badge, on 14 homepages, with G2 on 12.
Surveys describe production, not placement. In Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 57% of video marketers said they make testimonial videos. That counts surveyed marketers who make one at all, not large listed companies that feature one on the homepage, so the two figures are not comparable and we do not put a ratio on them.
How we counted. The frame is every SIC 7372 (prepackaged software) company on SEC EDGAR with at least $100 million in latest annual revenue that files a 10-K: 145 companies, the same sample as our product demo video statistics. We loaded each homepage once in headless Chromium on a desktop screen, scrolled it and recorded customer-logo sections, named quotes, customer-story links, review-site badges and video players with their surrounding section. 11 homepages sat behind bot walls (including Oracle, Salesforce and Adobe) and 3 could not be read; they are left out of every percentage, and nothing was done to get around them. We checked every flagged video by hand and removed two false positives, and checked 25 random homepages by hand for the testimonial rule with no errors. Players that load only after a click inside a carousel are missed, so the video share is a floor. The data, one row per company, is in software-homepages.csv (CC BY 4.0).
Do reviews and testimonials increase sales?
Yes, measurably, though by far less than the popular figures suggest. In the most-cited study, published in 2017, Northwestern's Spiegel Research Center found that a product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none, using a high-end gift retailer's data supplied by PowerReviews, which sells review software (Spiegel Research Center). Displaying reviews raised the conversion rate 190% for a lower-priced product and 380% for a higher-priced one. The retailer's data covered about 15.5 million page views. Purchase likelihood peaked at average ratings of 4.0 - 4.7 stars and fell as ratings approached 5.0, a warning against testimonial pages that show only perfect praise. A "verified buyer" badge improved the odds of purchase by 15%, and verified buyers' reviews averaged 4.34 stars against 3.89 for anonymous ones, across about 65,000 verified-buyer reviews.
Independent research finds smaller, steadier effects. A 2015 meta-analysis of 51 studies (published up to 2014) in the Journal of Marketing put the average sales elasticity of review volume at .236 and of review rating at .417 (Journal of Marketing). At Harvard Business School, a one-star increase in a Seattle restaurant's Yelp rating, in revenue data from 2003 to 2009, meant 5-9 percent more revenue (Harvard Business School), and in UC Berkeley research published in 2012, moving from 3 to 3.5 stars raised a San Francisco restaurant's chance of selling out at prime time from 13% to 34 percent (UC Berkeley).
How many people read reviews before buying?
Almost everyone, by every survey owner's count. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 U.S. adults, 97% read online reviews for local businesses and 41% "always" did, up from 29% a year earlier (BrightLocal). In 2020 the figure was 87%. Pew Research Center, which sells nothing, found in its late-2015 survey that 82% of U.S. adults at least sometimes read reviews before buying something for the first time, and 40% always or almost always did (Pew Research Center); among 18- to 29-year-olds it was 53%. PowerReviews' 2023 survey of 8,153 shoppers put regular review readers at 91% (PowerReviews). In the UK, the government said in 2025 that reviews were used by 90% of consumers (UK Department for Business and Trade), and the Competition and Markets Authority estimated in 2015 that more than half of UK adults used them (CMA).
What U.S. consumers told BrightLocal in 2026
Share
Positive reviews make them more likely to use a local business
85%
Have made a purchase after reading reviews
93%
Ready to buy after a positive review, without further research
34%
Will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews
47%
Only use businesses rated 4 stars or more (55% in 2025)
68%
Only use businesses rated 4.5 stars or more (17% in 2025)
31%
Have spent more than $1,000 after reading reviews
27%
Have regretted a purchase made after reading reviews
70%
Used ChatGPT or other AI tools for local recommendations (6% a year earlier)
45%
BrightLocal sells review management software, and it publishes no field dates for its 2024 to 2026 editions. PowerReviews also asked about volume and age: 64% of U.S. consumers in its November 2021 survey were more likely to buy a product with more than 1,000 reviews than one with 100, and 62% would not buy if the only reviews were a year or more old. In its 2023 survey, 45% would not buy a product with no reviews at all, and 78% read more reviews the more a product costs.
Do shoppers who read reviews really convert more?
They do, but much of the gap is selection. On PowerReviews client sites, visitors who interacted with reviews converted 128.0% more often than average over 12 months, while visitors merely shown review content converted 19.8% more (PowerReviews). Other PowerReviews editions give 108.6% (2022) and 120.3% (2021) for the same comparison. Even shoppers who filtered to one-star reviews converted 71.9% more often. Shoppers who dig into reviews are already further along, so these figures show the shoppers who read reviews, not what adding reviews to a page will do.
Bazaarvoice, another review-software vendor, found in its six-country survey fielded in January 2025 that 52% of shoppers named real customer reviews as the biggest factor in their final purchase, and that they trusted short-form video (46%) and customer reviews (43%) most among content formats (Bazaarvoice). They were most wary of overly positive, generic reviews (44%). In a U.S. survey dated January 2023, 60% had bought something after watching a video on social media (Bazaarvoice). In early 2026, 64% of consumers said reviews written with AI are not authentic (Bazaarvoice), and 57% of AI users said reviews and star ratings are what make them trust an AI's product recommendation.
How many marketers make testimonial videos?
A little over half, by the survey owners' counts. In Wyzowl's 2026 survey of 266 video marketers, fielded in late 2025, 57% said they make testimonial videos, the third most-made type after social media videos (69%) and explainers (Wyzowl). More made testimonials than video ads (48%). Wyzowl sells video production, including testimonial videos.
Neither series is a clean trend. In Wyzowl's 2024 report every video type scored between 22% and 39%, then up to 73% the next year, which points to a change in how the question was asked rather than a collapse and recovery. Wistia, which sells video hosting, asks about plans, not output. Both show testimonial video as a standard part of a video program, not a niche.
Wyzowl's wider 2026 figures: 91% of businesses use video in marketing, 82% of video marketers say it gives a good return (down from 93% a year earlier), 51% mainly make live-action video, and 59% make their videos in house. Among consumers, 85% said a video had convinced them to buy something, 96% had watched an explainer, 63% would most like to learn about a product from a short video, and 89% said video quality affects how much they trust a brand. These are self-reports from a vendor's survey, not measured behaviour.
Do shoppers want video from other customers?
Yes, and they value it above brand-made video. In PowerReviews' survey of 15,870 U.S. shoppers in December 2023, 74% said a product video from another customer is more valuable than one from the brand, retailer or an influencer, and 70% called customer videos necessary research (PowerReviews); 81% of Gen Z said so. 91% were more likely to buy when reviews include photos or videos, 61% much more likely, 48.5% always look for them, and 23% won't buy without them (36% of Gen Z). The sample was 88% women. PowerReviews sells review and photo/video collection software.
The older baselines point the same way. In PowerReviews' 2016 survey, 72 percent were more likely to buy when reviews had photos or videos and Sixty-five percent trusted products with customer content more, and video reviews in its network rose 140% in a year. Bazaarvoice found in 2022 that 75% of shoppers worldwide look at other shoppers' photos and videos (Bazaarvoice), 68% of Americans called that content important, and in a separate survey 75% preferred customer photos and videos to professional ones. In 2020 only 16% named customer videos as the content they most wanted more of. Its recent reports say more than 65% call other consumers' videos critical, and 46% of 5,658 social-influenced shoppers say short videos affect what they buy. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 36% of U.S. consumers feel more positive about a business when a review has an appealing photo or video, and 36% count it among the factors that matter; in 2025, 31% watched videos from everyday people on social media when researching local businesses.
Where do people watch reviews?
Increasingly on social video platforms. Pew Research Center found in March 2024 that 62% of U.S. adult TikTok users use it to look at product reviews or recommendations, against 44% of Instagram users (Pew Research Center); among women aged 18 to 49 on TikTok it was 74%. In Pew's late-2015 survey, 55% of U.S. adults had watched product review videos online, rising to 68% of those under 50. Google reported in January 2018 that 40% of YouTube users had used YouTube to research a product in the past year, and that watch time of "shop with me" videos had grown 1,000% over the past two years (Google). In later Think with Google data covering two years to about 2019, more than 50,000 years of product review videos had been watched on mobile, and watch time of "does it work" videos grew 11X.
Is video more persuasive than a written testimonial?
Not by much, in the controlled research. In two experiments with 7,609 Americans published in PNAS in 2021, video made people more likely to believe an event happened than a transcript did, but its added effect on attitudes was small (PNAS). The clips were political, not testimonials. At UT Austin's McCombs School, a 2026 study of an experiment with 120 students found that shoppers who saw text reviews while narrowing options and video reviews at the final choice had 18% stronger purchase intent and rated review quality 9% higher (McCombs School of Business). In a 2023 experiment with 967 respondents, a health video testimonial narrated by a doctor was more credible but less relatable than one narrated by a patient (Communication Research Reports). Animoto, which sells video tools, found in September 2025 that 77.9% of U.S. consumers aged 22 to 64 who had watched a brand video in the past month trust videos featuring real people and 36% say AI-generated video lowers their trust in a brand (Animoto).
Do people trust customers more than advertising?
Yes, consistently, though trust in online reviews is lower than trust in people you know and has fallen. In Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising Study of more than 40,000 consumers online, 88% said they trust recommendations from people they know, the most trusted form of advertising (Nielsen); Nielsen's German release on the same study gives 89%. Nielsen said 50% more people trust recommendations than lower-ranked channels such as online banners, and only 23% trusted influencer advertising.
In the 2015 edition, a survey of more than 30,000 people in 60 countries, consumer opinions online ranked third, behind recommendations and branded websites (70%), and ahead of TV ads (63%) and online video ads (48%). The 2012 "earned media" figure groups word of mouth with other recommendations, so it is not the same question as later years.
Edelman's 2025 brand trust survey of more than 15,000+ people in 15 countries, fielded in April and May 2025, found 84% trust friends and family to give accurate information about a brand, 80% trust "customers like me" and 68% trust customer reviews (Edelman). Before buying, 59 % are at least moderately influenced by other people's experience of a brand. Its 2020 report put "a person like yourself" at 59 percent as a voice people listen to, peer conversation at 39 percent as a way trust is won, and found 78 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds use one or more ways to avoid ads.
In the U.S., Pew Research Center found in late 2015 that 77% of adults think advice from people they know is important when buying (Pew Research Center), that 46% feel reviews help consumers "a lot" to be confident in what they buy, but that 48% of review readers find it hard to tell whether reviews are truthful. Among those readers, 51% said reviews generally give an accurate picture of quality.
BrightLocal's series shows the fall in trust most clearly. In its survey fielded in November 2020, 79% of U.S. consumers said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal); in the survey fielded in November 2021 it was 49%, in January 2023 46%, in the 2024 edition 50%, in 2025 42% and in 2026 49%. That is a drop of 30 points from 2020, but BrightLocal widened the answer options in its 2022 edition, which accounts for much of it.
How much do B2B buyers rely on reviews, references and case studies?
Heavily, and more than on vendors or analysts. In TrustRadius's 2026 survey of 1,862 technology buyers, 74% used reviews to inform their purchase, while only 13% used analyst reports (TrustRadius), down from 16% in 2024. In the 2024 edition, with 2,164 buyers, 56% sought conversations with peers, and 73% believed they regularly or sometimes see fake reviews (TrustRadius). Back in 2017, 58% did not believe the claims of the vendor they bought from. TrustRadius, now part of HG Insights, is a review site paid by software vendors.
G2 found review sites gained 5 points in importance between 2021 and 2022. G2 and Gartner Digital Markets (which owns Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice) both run review marketplaces paid by software vendors, so their surveys come from interested parties. Research now often starts with AI: in G2's April 2025 survey of 1,169 B2B decision-makers, 29% started research in tools like ChatGPT more often than in Google, rising to 51% in its March 2026 report, in which 45% said a citation from a review site is what most raises their confidence in an AI answer (G2). In TrustRadius's 2026 survey, 94% of buyers who used AI fact-checked its answers at least some of the time.
Buyers increasingly decide without a salesperson. Gartner's survey of 632 B2B buyers in August and September 2024 found 61% prefer a rep-free buying experience (Gartner) and 69% found inconsistencies between a supplier's website and its sellers; in 2025, with 645 buyers, the rep-free preference was Sixty-seven percent, and Sixty-nine percent wanted to check AI-generated insights with a rep. Gartner put the time buyers spend, in 2020, meeting suppliers at 17% of the purchase process. When the vendor is not in the room, customer evidence on the vendor's site and on review sites does more of the persuading.
Forrester's 2024-2025 B2B trust research finds coworkers and management the most trusted sources, at 82%, with influencers last at 44% (Forrester). Its 2023 figure that over 90% of buyers trust peers is what marketers said buyers trust, not what buyers said.
How common are fake reviews and testimonials?
Platforms that publish removal rates take down well under a tenth of submitted reviews as fake, and independent estimates run higher. Tripadvisor counted 2.7 million fraudulent reviews among 31.1 million submitted in 2024 (Tripadvisor), about 8.7%, against 4.4% of submissions in 2022. Trustpilot removed 4.5 million fake reviews in 2024, 7.4% of all submissions (Trustpilot), and 7.8m in 2025, about 2.4 times its 3.3 million of 2023. Research for the UK government estimated that 11% to 15% of reviews in three common product categories are fake, 12.9% for Amazon electronics, and 25-35% on eight other platforms studied (Department for Business and Trade).
Google's count rose 72% from 2023 to 2025, but it includes spam and off-topic content, not only fakes, and a rising removal count can mean better detection as much as more fraud. Yelp's recommended share fell 8 points in a year; in 2025, 17% of reviews were not recommended, and its software filtered nearly half a million reviews that looked AI-generated. Yelp placed 128 Compensated Activity Alerts and 363 Suspicious Review Activity Alerts on business pages in 2025 (against 120 and 427 in 2024), closed nearly 2,000 accounts tied to review rings, and reported review-trading content to other platforms: over 1,020 reports on its report page, or more than 1,100 suspicious groups, posts or individuals in its press release, two counts that do not match. 60% of those reports led the other platform to remove the content.
Detection is mostly automatic now. Trustpilot's systems caught 90% of the fakes it removed in 2024, up from 82% in 2023, and Tripadvisor stopped 72% of 2022's fakes before they were posted. At Tripadvisor in 2024, "review boosting" by owners, staff or affiliates made up 54% of fraud; 360,000 removed reviews were tied to staff incentive schemes, about 9,000 businesses were warned, and 214,000 AI-written reviews were removed. Amazon took legal action against more than 150 review abusers in 2023 and in 2025 won a case against the operators of more than 75 fake-review websites.
What do fake reviews cost buyers?
About 12 cents on the dollar, in the estimate the FTC used. In a 2023 NBER experiment with 10,000 UK respondents, fake reviews cost buyers about $.12 for every dollar spent where reviews were fake, and a short education step cut that harm by 44% (NBER). The FTC adopted the $0.12 estimate in its 2024 rule (Federal Trade Commission), noted that studies of products or businesses find about ten percent have some manipulated reviews and that estimates of the fake share run from the single digits to over twenty percent, and put the rule's yearly benefit to U.S. consumers at $6.64 billion to $17.52 billion. In the UK government's experiment, well-written fake reviews made shoppers 3.1% more likely to buy, and 9.2% more likely for products over £80; fake review text costs UK consumers an estimated £50 million to £312 million a year. The CMA estimates that up to £23 billion of UK spending a year is potentially influenced by reviews.
Academic tracking shows how the market for fakes works. A study published in Marketing Science in 2022 followed about 1,500 Amazon products that bought fake reviews through Facebook groups; roughly half of their reviews were eventually deleted, on average more than 100 days after posting (INFORMS). An older Harvard Business School study, with data to 2012, found about 16% of Boston restaurant reviews on Yelp were filtered as suspicious (Harvard Business School).
What does the FTC allow in a testimonial video?
A testimonial video must show real customers saying what they actually experienced, with any paid or personal connection disclosed, under rules the FTC revised in 2023 and backed with civil penalties in 2024. The revised Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) took effect on July 26, 2023 (Federal Register), after a 3-0 vote; they define an endorsement to include a person's likeness, so an on-camera customer is an endorser. The Consumer Review Rule (16 CFR Part 465) took effect on October 21, 2024 (Federal Register), approved 5-0.
Rule
What it means for a testimonial video
Source
§ 255.2(c)
People presented as "actual consumers" must be real customers in both audio and video, or the ad must clearly say they are not
Two details matter for video in particular. The Guides give the example of a disclosure in small white text on a light background, on a post shown for only five seconds, as easy to miss and so not clear and conspicuous. And the 2023 revision added § 255.2(d): advertisers that procure, suppress, boost, upvoting, downvoting or edit reviews must not distort what consumers think, which reaches a montage that keeps only the best clips if it misrepresents customers' views overall. In the 2024 final rule, the FTC dropped a proposed ban on repurposing a review written for one product, leaving 465.3 reserved.
The penalties are per violation. A knowing violation of the review rule can cost up to $53,088 per violation, the 2025 level (Federal Register), which the FTC kept for 2026 because the inflation index it adjusts by was never published for October 2025 (Federal Register), and which the eCFR lists at $53,088. In 2021 the figure was $43,792, a rise of 21%. The FTC's 2024 economic analysis estimated $1.461 trillion of U.S. sales in 2022 where buyers use reviews, about ten percent of products or businesses with some manipulated reviews, and roughly $111.9 billion of U.S. e-commerce sales touched by review manipulation.
How has the FTC enforced it?
Mostly with notices, warning letters and a few large settlements. In October 2021 the FTC sent a Notice of Penalty Offenses on endorsements and reviews to more than 700 companies (Federal Trade Commission). Fashion Nova paid $4.2 million in 2022 over blocking reviews below four stars, the FTC's first case of its kind, and the FTC wrote to 10 review-management firms at the same time. Roomster's 2023 settlement carried a $36.2 million judgment, largely suspended. In September 2024 the Commission voted 3-2 to charge Rytr, an AI tool with a testimonial and review generator. The first action under the review rule came on December 22, 2025, when FTC staff sent warning letters to 10 companies (Federal Trade Commission), each told that violations can carry penalties of up to $53,088 each. The Guides' 2023 revision drew One hundred eight comments in 2020 and Thirty on the 2022 draft; the review rule drew 42 on its advance notice and 100 on the proposal. FTC staff added 40 questions to its endorsement FAQ in 2023.
What about the UK and the EU?
Both now ban fake reviews outright. Under the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, submitting or commissioning a fake review, or hiding that a review was incentivised, has been banned since 6 April 2025 (legislation.gov.uk); a fake review is one that claims to be, but is not, based on a genuine experience. The CMA can now fine up to 10% of global turnover (CMA). In March 2026 it opened investigations into Five businesses over fake and misleading reviews, bringing the number under its new direct powers to 14, after Amazon gave undertakings on fake reviews on 6 June 2025.
In the EU, the Omnibus Directive added points 23b and 23c to the blacklist of unfair practices: claiming reviews are genuine without checking, and submitting or commissioning fake reviews or endorsements (EUR-Lex). Member states had to apply them from 28 May 2022, with maximum fines for widespread infringements of at least 4 % of turnover. When EU authorities checked 223 major websites in 2021, they could not confirm on 144 that reviews came from real customers, found at least 55% potentially in breach, and saw 176 say nothing about incentivised reviews (European Commission). A 2023 sweep of 576 influencers found only 20% consistently disclosed advertising, and 38% did not use platform labels such as Instagram's paid-partnership tag.
What do the popular testimonial statistics really say?
Most of the testimonial figures repeated in marketing blogs trace to one vendor test, one retailer, or an old survey question that did not mention testimonials. Here is where each came from and what to use instead.
"2 out of 3 people are more likely to buy after watching a testimonial video"
This one is real but narrow. It comes from Wyzowl's survey of 238 consumers in late 2019, in which 2 out of 3 said they would be more likely to buy after watching a testimonial video showing someone like them (Wyzowl). The earliest Internet Archive capture of the page, from August 2020, already has the 2 out of 3 wording. Wyzowl sells testimonial videos. Repeaters drop the "someone like them" condition, as Trustmary does (2 out of 3, Trustmary), or turn it into a percentage, as Teleprompter does (66%, Teleprompter); CUInsight calls it "two out of three" from "one study" (CUInsight). It is a stated intention from a small vendor survey. Use it as that, not as a conversion rate.
"Testimonials increase conversions by 34%"
This is a single A/B test on one website. VWO, which sells A/B testing software, published a case study in which adding three lines of customer testimonials to WikiJob, a UK graduate-jobs site, raised purchases 34% (VWO), with no sample size published. VWO's write-up also describes WikiJob as drawing over 500,000 visits a month and says an earlier test of the same testimonials, placed lower on the page, had no measurable effect. Repeaters turned it into a general rule (WiserReview, 34%, WiserReview), an average (Testimonial.to, 34%, Testimonial.to), a BigCommerce finding (Inblog, 34%, Inblog), a cited "study" (Adwave, 34%, Adwave) and a video statistic (Levitate Media, 34%, Levitate Media). The test involved no video. (The 34% on our legal video page is a different figure, from Aberdeen.)
"Testimonials increase revenue by 62%"
This one came from reviews data, not testimonials. WiserReview says testimonials on a product page can raise annual revenue 62% (WiserReview). The figure matches Bazaarvoice network data reported in January 2015: shoppers who interacted with product reviews brought 62% more revenue per visit (and converted 58% more often), per Retail Dive (Retail Dive), and Internet Retailer ran the same headline (62%, Digital Commerce 360). It compares shoppers who choose to read reviews with those who do not, which is the same selection problem as the PowerReviews conversion figures above.
"88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations"
This is BrightLocal's 2014 survey, and the current figure is about half. In 2014, 88% of 2,104 panel members, 90% in the U.S. and 10% in Canada, said they trust reviews as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal), a figure that included people who trust them only under conditions. BrightLocal's own 2015 report gave 80% for 2015, counting people who trust reviews if they meet their requirements, and restated 2014 as 83%, not 88%. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 U.S. adults the figure is 49%. Invesp still opens its reviews article with the 88% (Invesp); Boast rewrites it as trust in testimonials (88%, Boast), and so does WiserReview (88%, WiserReview). The 2014 question never mentioned testimonials. Use 49% (2026) instead.
"92% of consumers read online reviews" and "customers spend 31% more with excellent reviews"
The 92% is BrightLocal's 2015 survey: 92% of 2,354 North American panel consumers said they regularly or occasionally read reviews of local businesses (BrightLocal). The 2026 figure is 97%. Boast repeats the 92% as a BigCommerce statistic (Boast). The 31% has no source we could find. Invesp's infographic says customers will spend 31% more with a business that has excellent reviews (Invesp), and the line was already in its July 2015 post with no source (31%, Invesp, Internet Archive); Wisernotify moves it to products (31%, Wisernotify). We searched the figure and older wordings, Invesp's archived pages and the trade press of the time. The nearest real study, by comScore and The Kelsey Group in October 2007, found consumers willing to pay 20 percent to 99% more for a 5-star than a 4-star service, depending on category (comScore).
"Displaying reviews increases conversion by 270%"
The 270% is purchase likelihood at one retailer, not a conversion lift. Northwestern's Spiegel Research Center found in 2017 that a product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none, and its report says the figure is based on the high-end gift retailer's data (270%, Spiegel Research Center). In the same study the conversion lift from showing reviews was 190% for a cheaper product and 380% for a pricier one. WiserReview restates it as "5-star reviews and testimonials" lifting conversion 270% (WiserReview), and Wisernotify as "up to 270%" (Wisernotify), though Spiegel found purchase likelihood falls as ratings approach 5.0 and did not study testimonials.
"Video testimonials increase conversions by 80%"
This came from a 2009 landing-page test with no testimonial in it. EyeView, which sold landing-page video, reported in November 2009 that an autoplay video on one TutorVista landing page lifted conversion over 80 percent (EyeView). Its 2010 white paper called 80% a best case, and the one test it describes in full, on eToro, found about 32 percent. Wisernotify presents it as "video testimonials can increase conversion rates by 80%" (Wisernotify) and WiserReview as "up to 80%" (WiserReview). Our fact-check index traces the same EyeView figure as it appears in general video statistics.
"72% of customers trust a business more because of positive reviews and testimonials"
BrightLocal's 2014 survey found 72% said positive reviews make them trust a local business more (BrightLocal); the question did not mention testimonials. WiserReview adds them (72%, WiserReview), Boast credits the figure to BigCommerce (72%, Boast), and Wisernotify turns it into a figure about video reviews (72%, Wisernotify). For a current figure, BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 85% say positive reviews make them more likely to use a business.
"Up to 50% of online reviews are fake"
The UK CMA's March 2026 press release repeats a vendor's claim that up to 50% of online reviews are fake (CMA), credited to Truth Engine with no method, sample or date. The measured figures are far lower: 11% to 15% in three categories in the UK government's own study, and from 4.4% (Tripadvisor, 2022) to 8.7% (Tripadvisor, 2024) of submissions on the platforms that publish removal rates.
We started from the questions people search for about testimonial video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 338 figures from 48 publishers.
On October 31, 2026, each of the sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: the FTC's rules in the eCFR and Federal Register and its press releases; UK legislation and CMA and Department for Business and Trade releases; EUR-Lex and the European Commission; Google, Amazon, Yelp, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor reports on their own platforms; Pew Research Center, Nielsen, Edelman, Gartner, Forrester and the survey owners' own pages (BrightLocal, PowerReviews, Bazaarvoice, Wyzowl, Wistia, G2, TrustRadius, Animoto); Northwestern's Spiegel Research Center and the journals and universities named. Pages that refuse scripts (ftc.gov, Gartner, Edelman, Pew, TrustRadius, EUR-Lex, Think with Google) were checked against Internet Archive captures. Our own figures come from a headless-browser read of 145 software-company homepages on the same day; the data is published with the page. We left out gated reports (PowerReviews' visual UGC report, HubSpot), figures with no stated sample, and roundup figures we could not trace to a producer.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Most review and testimonial data comes from companies that sell review or video tools. BrightLocal, PowerReviews, Bazaarvoice, Trustpilot, G2, TrustRadius and Gartner Digital Markets sell review software or run review marketplaces; Wyzowl, Wistia and Animoto sell video. Each is labelled where it is cited.
Conversion figures from review platforms are correlational. Shoppers who choose to read reviews are already more likely to buy, so 'interacted with reviews' lifts overstate what adding reviews will do.
Little controlled research isolates testimonial video. The experiments here test video against text in general, video reviews, or health testimonials, with small or student samples.
Our homepage count covers large U.S.-listed software companies only, on one desktop read, with 11 of 145 homepages behind bot walls (several of the largest firms). Video players that load only after a click are missed, so the video share is a floor.
Fake-review counts measure enforcement, not fraud. Removal totals rise with better detection, and Google's count includes spam and off-topic content.
This page describes the rules; it is not legal advice.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics#DRV-006. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Testimonial Video Statistics." Last verified Oct 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, October 31). Testimonial video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics
MLA
“Testimonial Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 31 Oct. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Testimonial Video Statistics.” Last modified October 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_testimonial_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Testimonial Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/testimonial-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-10-31}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is January 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Oct 31, 2026: First published with 338 figures from 48 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
Do testimonial videos increase conversions?
There is no general figure. The widely quoted 34% is one VWO test of three text testimonials on one UK website, and the 80% video figure is a 2009 EyeView landing-page test with no testimonial in it. The best broader evidence is on reviews: a product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none in Spiegel Research Center data from one retailer.
How many companies use testimonial videos?
In Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 57% of video marketers said they make testimonial videos. In our October 2026 count of 131 large U.S.-listed software-company homepages, 12.2% showed a customer testimonial video on the homepage itself.
Do people trust testimonials more than ads?
They trust people they know most: 88% in Nielsen's 2021 study. Trust in strangers' reviews is lower. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 49% of U.S. consumers trusted online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 80% in Edelman's 2025 survey trusted customers like them to give accurate information about a brand.
Is the '2 out of 3 people are more likely to buy after a testimonial video' statistic real?
It comes from a Wyzowl survey of 238 consumers in late 2019, in which 2 out of 3 said they would be more likely to buy after a testimonial video showing someone like them. It is a stated intention from a video producer's survey, not a measured conversion rate.
Can I use actors in a testimonial video?
Only with a clear disclosure. The FTC's Endorsement Guides say people presented as actual consumers must be real customers in both audio and video, or the ad must clearly disclose that they are not. A disclosure in a video should appear in both the visual and audible portions.
What is the penalty for fake testimonials?
In the U.S., a knowing violation of the FTC's Consumer Review Rule can bring civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. In the UK, the CMA can fine up to 10% of global turnover under the DMCC Act.
How common are fake reviews?
Tripadvisor counted 2.7 million fraudulent reviews among 31.1 million submitted in 2024, and Trustpilot removed 7.4% of submissions as fake that year. UK government research estimated 11% to 15% of reviews in three product categories are fake.
