2026 Update – Long-Term Adoption Rates for Franchise Development Lead Generation Sources
March 25, 2026 – Looking back at usage rates of the top franchise development lead generation channels from 2022-2026, it is clear that after diversifying supply sources over the last several years, franchise teams have made significant adjustments in view of shocks to the supply ecosystem.
The chart above shows changes in usage among top paid sources by franchise development teams, not the volume of leads or size of budget by channel. An expanded version can be seen below.
While achieving 82.5% penetration in 2024, Google dropped to fourth place in usage among the top four channels in expected 2026 usage. After more than four years as the most widely-used lead generation source, changes at Google and competition from other sources used by consumers for research likely led to the usage rankings change.
The year 2025 saw significant reallocations among the top lead sources. While 87% of franchise development teams in the January 2025 survey expected to use Google for lead generation, in the 2026 survey this past January, actual reported usage dropped to 75.6%.
While 87% of franchise development teams in the January 2025 survey expected to use Google for lead generation, actual reported usage dropped to 75.6% in 2025.
To understand this remarkable shift, consider the condensed timeline below.
2022
- OpenAI releases ChatGPT (November)
- Google search market share ends year at 87.62%, Bing at 7.71% (Statcounter)
- Meta rolls out Reels globally along with a Reels developer API
2023
- Microsoft Bing adds ChatGPT (February)
- Perplexity launches
- Anthropic’s Claude introduced
2024
- Google rolls out AI Overviews (May)
- ChatGPT passes 200 million weekly users
- Organic click traffic declines are documented
2025
- AI Overviews seen in 47% of search results
- Google reports 50% increase in searches year-over-year since AI Overviews
- Meta renames Facebook video tab to Reels
- Perplexity browser reaches 120 million registered users
- Meta announced that Instagram had amassed 3 billion monthly active users (September
- Meta reports that Reels has reached a run rate of $50 million business annually (October) and that most of Meta ads run on Reels
- Google search market share ends year at 84.48%, Bing at 9.63% (Statcounter)
- Referral traffic to sites from all LLMs is still only about 2% of total, but growing
2026
- U.S. consortium acquires majority of TikTok parent ByteDance (January)
Franchise portals, after more than thirty years of providing franchise leads, are still employed by most franchise development teams, and grew from 74.4% in 2025 to expected usage of 78.8%, the greatest usage rate and the highest growth rate among the top four sources in expected usage in 2026. Franchise Insights is sponsored by Franchise Ventures, a leading supplier of leads from franchise directories.
Franchise portals, after over thirty years of providing franchise leads, are expected to be utilized by the highest percentage of franchise development teams in 2026.
Meta Platforms is forecast to be a close second in usage 78.5% in 2026. This growth comes despite the “ask apps not to track” feature introduced to devices using Apple’s iOS in April 2021 which cost Meta $10 billion in ad revenue in that year. The loss of tracking hampered targeting for all 3rd party sources, but Google and Meta enjoy the advantage of their own internal tracking options and high consumer penetration.
With its revenues and traffic threatened by the growth of TikTok and YouTube, Meta introduced reels in 2020, launched Facebook Reels in the U.S. in 2021, and globally in 2022, along with a developer Reels API. In 2025, Meta renamed Facebook’s video tab to Reels.
In October 2025, Meta reported that Reels became a $50 billion business annually; this is significant because most of Meta’s ads run on Reels.
Will Meta continue to be an effective medium to reach franchise prospects, given the nature of content that drives reach? Further, on March 23, 2026, a New Mexico jury found that Meta was guilty of misleading users about the safety of its platforms and allegedly enabling child sexual exploitation and awarded a $375 million verdict. Coincidentally, one day later, jurors unanimously found both Meta and Google (YouTube) negligent for operating products that harmed kids and teens, and failed to warn about those dangers.
Changes at Google have driven usage of franchise directories (portals), Meta Platforms, and brokers (referral networks) to the top three sources, and experimentation with LinkedIn and TikTok .
After stalling in usage in 2024, 57% of franchise development teams used LinkedIn in 2025, and 60.3% expect to use the platform in 2026 for lead generation. LinkedIn has clearly moved from the “experimental” stage into the mainstream.
Finally, TikTok is expected to grow the most among top sources from 2025 to 2026 despite the imminent banning from U.S. app stores and a growing number of state-by-state bans over insufficient content controls over content pushed to children. This issue was resolved in late January after our 2026 survey. Before the resolution, about 25.6% of franchise systems expected to experiment with TikTok in 2026.
Supporting the validity of data from the Franchise Insights 2026 Franchise Development Lead Generation Sources survey, a broad cross-section of franchise development teams participated, from emerging systems to well-established franchises with many thousands of units.
FranchiseInsights.com surveys franchisors periodically to get a pulse on the industry, provide benchmarking and identify franchise development best practices. This survey was conducted in January 2026.
We will continue to share more nuggets about optimizing your franchise development lead generation results in upcoming articles at Franchise Insights.
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Published on Wednesday, March 25th, 2026.