Authority & Trust

Analyst Reports Have Lost 63% of B2B Buyer Trust Since 2022

TrustRadius finds only 13% of B2B buyers now use analyst reports to vet vendors, down 63% since 2022, as reviews and live demos take the lead.

By The Pull Desk·Today·5 min read
Authority & Trust

Analyst Reports Have Lost 63% of B2B Buyer Trust Since 2022

The short version

THE SHORT VERSION: TrustRadius's 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report finds analyst reports are now used by only 13% of buyers researching software purchases, a 63% decline since 2022. Meanwhile 74% of buyers say reviews inform their purchase decisions, and product demos, free trials, and prior experience all rank above analyst validation. For founders chasing a Gartner or Forrester mention, the ROI on that effort has quietly collapsed.

What happened

TrustRadius's 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report, released July 15, surveyed software buyers on how AI adoption has reshaped, and not reshaped, what they trust. Sixty-three percent of buyers used AI somewhere in their purchase journey and 94% of those fact-check AI-generated answers at least some of the time, but the report's sharper finding is about analyst reports specifically: usage has fallen from a meaningful research input in 2022 to just 13% of buyers today. Reviews, demos, trials, and prior direct experience now dominate the trust hierarchy instead. Rajat Bhatnagar, SVP of Growth at HG Insights, summarized the shift: buyers are using AI to move faster, not to think less, and they still want verified sources alongside AI synthesis, not instead of it.

Why the collapse in analyst reports matters now

From the publisher

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Analyst reports were built for a research cycle that took months and involved a handful of gatekeepers. Buyers now move faster and trust sources they can verify themselves: a reviewer they can cross-check on G2, a demo they can watch personally, a peer they can message directly. A category report costing tens of thousands of dollars to commission is now competing for attention against a five-minute product demo video, and it's losing decisively. That reallocates where a founder's limited trust-building budget should actually go this year, especially for companies too early-stage to be included in most analyst categories anyway.

  1. Redirect analyst-relations budget toward review site density
    If your team has been spending on analyst briefings or category report inclusion, compare that cost against what the same budget buys in structured customer review campaigns on G2, TrustRadius, or Capterra, where 74% of buyers actually look.
  2. Build a demo buyers can watch without booking a call
    With product demos ranking above analyst validation, a gated "request a demo" form is now a bigger drop-off risk than it looks. Publish a short, unscripted product walkthrough buyers can watch on their own time before they ever talk to sales.
  3. Ask happy customers for specific, verifiable reviews this month
    Generic five-star reviews carry less weight than ones citing a specific outcome or number. Reach out to three customers who've had a clear win and ask them to name the result in their review, since specificity is what buyers say they cross-check for.

"Buyers are using AI to move faster, not to think less. They want speed, but they still want the efficiency of AI synthesis and the confidence of verified sources, and those two things have to coexist." — Rajat Bhatnagar, SVP of Growth, HG Insights

What to do this week

Check how many active customer reviews your product has on the two review sites your buyers actually use, and set a target to add five verified reviews this month if that number is thin. That single move now competes directly with, and likely beats, whatever an analyst report inclusion would have cost you in both budget and time to secure, without needing to wait for an analyst's category cycle at all.

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