Every figure in the Social Commerce Intelligence Report 2026 is grounded in a single dataset of 1,000 active US social commerce buyers, fielded in April 2026 via an independent consumer research panel. No platform funding. No sponsor input on questions or analysis.
Social commerce is the fastest-growing — and most poorly measured — frontier in retail. The major platforms publish their own data, but every platform has an interest in the answer. Brand marketers, agency strategists, and retail leaders are making nine-figure investment decisions on platform mix, content strategy, and merchandising — without an independent benchmark to anchor against.
The questions we kept hearing in the field — which platforms do consumers actually trust, where does checkout really happen, which categories convert where, what drives repeat buying — couldn't be answered from existing data. Platform-published numbers measured platform-published metrics. Industry reports often used qualitative panels of fewer than 100 people. Academic research lagged the market by years.
We built ScrollSignal to fill that gap with one principle: independent consumer research, fielded at scale, published transparently, and unfunded by the platforms whose performance we measure. The 2026 report is the first in a recurring series — each new report examines a specific question in depth.
Have a research question we should tackle next? Email hello@scroll-signal.com.
Every figure in this report reflects people who are already inside the social commerce purchase funnel — not the general US population. That distinction matters when reading any number.
Approximately half of all panel members invited had not made a social media purchase in the past six months. Filtering them out is what makes the remaining 1,000 a clean read on active social commerce behavior — the population every brand marketer making platform allocation decisions needs data on.
Made at least one social media purchase in the past six months on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest.
Questions are written to avoid leading respondents toward any particular platform preference. Where possible, we use behavioral framings ("Where did you complete your most recent social media purchase?") rather than attitudinal ones ("Which platform do you trust the most?"), and we randomize platform option order to remove sequence bias.
No question wording was reviewed or edited by any platform partner, brand sponsor, or external commercial party.
The Team and Enterprise licenses include the full data tables — every question, raw and stratified frequencies, and demographic cross-tabs by age, gender, income, and education. The Enterprise license adds a cross-tabs supplement covering education, region, and gender × age, plus one custom cross-tab on request.
Reach hello@scroll-signal.com for cross-tab definitions or to request a custom cut.
ScrollSignal does not accept money, sponsorship, data partnerships, or in-kind support from any social platform. No platform partner reviewed questions before fielding or had access to results before publication. The Social Commerce Intelligence Report 2026 was funded entirely by ScrollSignal.
Questions about methodology — including detail beyond what's published here — are welcomed. Contact hello@scroll-signal.com.
Three themes. Nine signals. Platform-by-platform benchmarks and the complete category × platform matrix.
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