PostlyResearchContent formats · October 2026 findings
Content formats: images carry the production load
Images dominate stored source media. Video remains a substantial workload; format popularity does not establish a performance winner.
Source: Postly Research. Anonymized retained publishing data: 72,883 documents inspected; 47,388 posts with verified publications; 165,158 deduplicated destination deliveries; 3,645 destination accounts. Observation cutoff: 2026-10-04 22:35:49 UTC.
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Content formats: images carry the production load
Images dominate stored source media. Video remains a substantial workload; format popularity does not establish a performance winner.
Retained eligible publications up to October 4, 2026; October is partial.
The finding
Image-only source records account for 116,400 deliveries (70.5% of the total), while video-only records account for 35,534 (21.5%). Another 12,846 deliveries have no source attachment. One source asset can contribute multiple deliveries. The chart measures distribution workload, not the number of original assets created.
Current source attachments associated with verified destination deliveries; not native placement or unique creative assets.
| Observed group | deliveries | Accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Image | 116,400 | 2,311 |
| Video | 35,534 | 1,713 |
| No attached media | 12,846 | 641 |
At least 30 accounts and 100 observations per displayed group. Account counts overlap. Small groups are withheld; absence from this table does not mean zero usage.
What this means for content planning
A video-only production plan would overlook most recorded delivery work in this sample. Image preparation, accessibility descriptions, crop checks and destination adaptation deserve an explicit place in the workflow. Equally, the video volume is large enough to justify a separate production checklist. Text or link-based publishing should remain a distinct workflow rather than being treated as a failed media upload.
Recommended actions
Build reusable image and video briefs for the same customer question. Record the production time for each format and evaluate comparable outcomes after a fixed interval. For a product demonstration, compare a short demonstration with a step-by-step image explanation using the same offer. Keep accessibility checks in both workflows. Choose the format that produces useful audience response at a sustainable production cost.
Reading formats correctly
A stored video does not prove that a destination publication was a Reel, Short or Story; an image does not prove a carousel. Media overrides and later edits may differ from the stored source attachments. These results cannot establish which content format earns more views or engagement. That requires native placement and comparable outcome observations for the same publications.
Source and counting rules
The census reads retained Postly production records in bounded batches from a database secondary. Receipts require platform, destination account, publication identifier and timestamp. TikTok also requires confirmed success. Repeated provider identifiers are counted once per destination. This is a live retained-data census, not a random sample or an atomic snapshot. Deleted records and publishing outside Postly are absent. Small groups are withheld: every displayed row requires at least 30 destination accounts and 100 observations. Accounts are not necessarily independent businesses; their counts overlap between rows.
Citation: Postly Research, Content formats: images carry the production load, October 2026.