What this means: The numbers make clear why Google and other platforms like Meta, TikTok, and Twitter have taken great pains to court the retail industry over the past few years, and why so many retailers have tacked on advertising to their websites.
On Google’s end, that meant pushing into social commerce with features like livestream shopping on YouTube, as well as improving its Google Shopping product with visual search integration and better filtering options.
- Those efforts appear to be paying off: The share of respondents who said they turn to Google or YouTube first to research a new product jumped from 54% to 57% in the six months between May and November 2021, according to a survey by Morgan Stanley cited by Insider.
Worth remembering: Google doesn’t owe all its success to new features and product improvements. Apple’s privacy changes in iOS 14.5, which rolled out in April, had only a “modest” impact on its business, per Alphabet’s Q3 earnings call. Google’s access to first-party data means its ability to track and target ads was relatively unaffected, making its platforms especially attractive to marketers who were left scrambling after iOS 14.5.