The Content Waste Problem by the Numbers
SiriusDecisions (now Forrester) first published the 60–70% statistic in their landmark content utilization study, and subsequent research from Gartner, Forrester, and industry practitioners has consistently confirmed the finding. The problem isn't getting better — it's getting worse as content volume increases. Content performance analytics is the first step toward understanding exactly where your investment is actually going.
Three Reasons Content Goes Unused
After working with over 200 B2B companies, we've found that unused content falls into three categories: unfindable (teams don't know it exists), untrusted (teams aren't sure it's current), and unaligned (teams find it doesn't match what they need to say). AI-powered content search solves the findability problem; version control solves the trust problem.
Key Takeaways
- 60–70% of B2B marketing content goes unused — a finding consistently confirmed across multiple research studies.
- The three root causes are findability, trust (version currency), and alignment (does the content match what teams need to say).
- Increasing content production without fixing these root causes makes the problem worse, not better.
