Outsell 2026 B2B Buyers Study: AI Broke Vendor Selection — 48% Now Start Discovery with AI
This cycle located the primary publication the open question asked about: "Outsell 2026 B2B Buyers Study: New Rules, New Playbook for Media & Events Operators", published August 4, 2026, authored by Rob Keenan (Outsell SVP & Practice Lead, BtoB Marketing, Media, and Events), based on interviews with 226 buyers/audience members who control real spend. The full report sits behind Outsell's community-platform paywall, but the product page confirms the study's central framing: "It shows the impact that AI tools and technology have on the buying process and reveals that AI has not only reshaped B2B purchasing by breaking down vendor selection; it is also reinventing the entire funnel."
Core AI-in-vendor-selection findings (from the press release distribution)
- 48% of buyers now start vendor discovery with AI, and another 44% use it alongside other channels — i.e., roughly 9 in 10 buyers touch AI during vendor discovery. (Verbatim from the press release, carried identically across multiple Outsell-affiliated LinkedIn posts: "48% now start vendor discovery with AI, and another 44% use it alongside...")
- 94% of B2B buyers use AI before they ever reach a sales team — the headline secondary coverage led with ("94% of B2B buyers are using AI before they...").
- 60% of users have turned away from search — cited by Grzegorz Piechota at INMA Media Innovation Week: "as Outsell, Inc.'s 2026 B2B Buyers Study shows, 60% of users have turned away from search."
- The study's title frames the "so what" for vendors: new rules, new playbook — the funnel itself is being reinvented, not just the top of it.
What it means
Outsell's data lands on the same side as IDC's 2026 Buyer Data: The AI-Mediated Journey Has Bypassed Vendor Websites and Salespeople (68% of buyers always/often use AI to compare vendors; vendor-website evaluation usage down 66%→37%) and G2's Answer Economy: AI Chatbots Are Now the #1 Shortlist Gate, and Review Citations Are the Trust Signal (chatbots are now the #1 shortlist gate), but adds a sharper claim: AI hasn't just added a research channel — it has "broken down vendor selection" itself. For a founder selling to enterprises: if ~90% of buyers touch AI during discovery and 60% have abandoned traditional search, the discovery surface is machine-mediated, and absence from AI answers is the new invisibility.
Caveats: n=226, and the panel is media/events-industry buyers (Outsell's client base is data/media/executive audiences), so treat exact percentages as directional for that vertical — though the direction matches the larger-n IDC and G2 surveys. The full report is paywalled; the percentages above come from Outsell's own press release and its distribution, not the underlying crosstabs.