The Weekly Listen: The DoJ floats a Google breakup that could change search, Walmarts designed just for you, and more

On today's podcast episode, we discuss how a department of justice suggested breakup of Google could change search, the potential impact of Walmart’s personalized homepages and customer support, what’s next for the buy now, pay later (BNPL) space, how Tesla’s new “cybercab” could change the world of robotaxis, what charitable donations in America look like, and more. Tune in to the discussion with host Marcus Johnson, director or Briefings Jeremy Goldman, analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf and vice president of Briefings Stephanie Taglianetti.

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Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson:

You see how this episode is sponsored by TikTok for Business? Very mindful. Using their measurement solutions, you can reveal the true impact and performance of your ad. See? Very demure. Learn more about better measurements on TikTok at tiktok.com/business.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind the Numbers Weekly Listen, an eMarketer podcast made possible by TikTok. This is the Friday show that doesn't understand why rental car places are always surprised when you show up. They're always like, "You made a reservation with us? How did you manage?"

Stephanie Taglianetti:

And what'd you book? And how long will you be having it for?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. They always treat me like I'm trying to ask to borrow their private car, their personal vehicle. I just don't understand. They're always washing them too. Why aren't they ready? You knew I was coming for weeks. And they always look so disheveled.

Jeremy Goldman:

You should try to messing with them when they ask you those questions. And how long are you keeping it? Oh, I'm not giving this back.

Marcus Johnson:

They just take off with the keys. Just running. Anyway, I'm your host, Marcus Johnson. In today's show, the DOJ floats a Google breakup; what kind of an impact will Walmart's personalized homepages have; we check in on the buy now, pay later space; what will the world of robotaxis look like in 2028; and what do charitable donations in America look like today?

Joining me for this episode, we have three people. Let's meet them. We start with our senior analyst who covers everything digital advertising and media. Based in Virginia, it's Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Hello, everyone.

Marcus Johnson:

Hello there. We're also joined by our vice president of all things briefings. She's based in New Jersey. It's Stephanie Taglianetti.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Cheers, mate.

Marcus Johnson:

Hello there. And finally, we have with us our senior director of briefings. He's based in New York City. It's Jeremy Goldman.

Jeremy Goldman:

Hello to one of my favorite people.

Marcus Johnson:

Well, who? We all know you're talking about.

Jeremy Goldman:

You can all think about it.

Marcus Johnson:

Good to see you too. Good to see you too. What do we have in store for you? Story of the Week. We move to the game after that. We end with some trivia. Let's get to it.

We start, of course, with the story of the week. The DOJ floats a Google breakup, foreshadowing drastic changes to search advertising, writes our briefings writer, Daniel Konstantinovic, explaining that the Department of Justice has indicated that it could seek a breakup of Google in the aftermath of an August ruling that determines the company runs a legal search monopoly. The filing is not final, Daniel notes, and does not contain explicit plans for a breakup. But I believe the way they phrase it, Evelyn, structural remedies, which is a wink wink, could be a breakup. Evelyn, you cover Google the closest at eMarketer for us, so I'll start with you. Your initial reaction to this news.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I mean, I guess I didn't really think of it as new news. You and I discussed this back in October of 2023, I believe, when we talked through the potential remedies, and I think all of these were on our list. So none of them are all that new, and there's not quite enough information about a potential breakup to speculate on how that would go or what it would mean for advertisers. I think a lot of advertisers are also... I mean, there's a lot of talk, but not a ton of action because there's no need to spin your wheels and plan for different scenarios when there's still a long way to go here.

Marcus Johnson:

So what happens here? Was it just that this was always on the table, but maybe towards the back of the table, and the DOJ pushed this option forward a little bit and then the publishers reacted by saying, "Oh, this is more likely than we thought it would be"?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Well, it's just that the DOJ has won by now, so that's not new news because that happened back in the summer. But now, we're in the phase of the trial or the whole process where the DOJ is proposing what its remedies will be, and it's a little bit different because it's already won. However, we still do have the formal remedy hearing. The judge will give his ruling. The hearing is supposed to be in April, I believe, of next year and then the ruling in August. So that's nearly a year from now until we have the actual remedy, and then there will be appeals. So it's not that it's not news. It's just that it's another step forward in the trial, and we'll have to see whether there are any steps back in the future.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Jeremy, what was your take?

Jeremy Goldman:

Yeah, so to me it's really interesting that first off, do we know how likely a breakup in some ways is? I don't think I can put a percentage on it. I think that's really difficult to do. But I think that the remedies facet of it, the more recent announcements that came through, it's interesting to help imagine what a post remedy, if you will, Google might look like.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Goldman:

First off, obviously focusing on the search business rather than the ad tech business, but I think one of the facets that's probably most fascinating within that is the idea of the ending the exclusive agreements with Apple or Samsung or what kind of vetting future exclusive agreements have to go through. Because obviously, that could be the kind of thing that just makes it a lot more difficult for Google to dominate, at least to the extent that they have up until this point.

Marcus Johnson:

So really quickly, the filing also indicating that DOJ could say to Google, "You're not allowed to pay money, basically, to other companies to be the default search engine on their platform."

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah, and I think that's definitely one of the most... I think that remedy is certainly the most likely to happen. That's what we would call a behavioral remedy rather than a structural remedy, which is, as you noted Marcus, leaning towards the breakup end of things. But I also think Google has enough brand equity. I mean, people still use the word Google to mean to search online. So there's a high chance that Google won't actually lose that much market share by not being the default just because people are still most familiar with Google, even if it's not the automatic, built-in search engine on their mobile devices, browsers. So we'll have to see. There's a lot of gray area there, and it also depends on what, then, the procedure would be to select a default if it's not Google or if other search engines might come in and steal the default. If that is the case, then things will look very different. So there's a lot up in the air about how that will go too.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah, Google is synonymous with search, and they have 90% of the search market in the US and basically the same of the search market worldwide. [inaudible 00:07:29] similar web data. But that doesn't translate into 90% of the search dollars, and Daniel was noting this. Google currently controls 50% of the US search ad market, and its share will fall below 50% for first time next year according to our forecasts. He says that a forced breakup could accelerate that, but that share is already going down. It's already going in the wrong direction, and we already are looking at a different search ad revenue universe in two years time even without the Google breakup. Because today, as I said, Google has 50% search, sorry, share of search ad dollars to Amazon's second place, 22%. So 50 to 22. By 2026, the shares will be 47 to 27. So it's going from a 30-point gap between Google and Amazon to a 20-point gap.

The problem here is that no other company is racing to challenge these two at all, so it's going from a monopoly in search ad dollars to a duopoly. Over the next couple of years, third place Apple will gain half a point to hit 5.5%, Microsoft in fourth place will gain less than half a point to basically hit just below 5%, and fifth place Walmart will gain half a point to hit 2.5%. So whilst this does translate into a few billion dollars for these folks, in terms of share, we're talking about fighting for scraps.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah, I think another thing that's about what the DOJ put out now is the firm consideration of requiring Google to share the data that powers its search engine or just the iterative product details of its search engine. So the query volume, ranking signals, indexes, AI models, all of that that makes its search engine very good and locks competitors out from developing their products such that those products can compete on the merits, Google might be required to share that information. And the DOJ is saying if that information is subject to privacy concerns, then Google shouldn't be using it in the first place. So that, I think, is really alarming for Google. It almost seems like Google might consider spinning off a couple aspects of its ad business just to preempt some action on government intervention here, but there's a lot that could happen in the search space in the future where competitors are concerned.

Jeremy Goldman:

Oh, and I don't know if any of you, I guess, caught this, but they announced this week that they were going to... their data retention practices, they were going to revise a little bit, so to only hold on to data for I think something like, what is it, 11 years as a max. And restricting data tracking was one of the things that was cited as a likely remedy for this, so it's clear they're going to try to float trial balloons in order to get ahead and see if they can in some ways and maybe just appease regulators and DOJ in advance.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Stephanie, real quick, what jumps out to you about this announcement?

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Well, I think Evelyn touched what I was going to say, which is primarily that having Google search not be a default browser isn't going to stop people from the loophole of redownloading it if that's what they're used to and also if they think and perceive it as the best option for search. I also know that the analysts on our team have been positing what the upcoming election could do for the environment on how soon things are going to move forward. We know that Donald Trump has historically campaigned for lessening regulatory scrutiny while Kamala Harris has advocated for stronger scrutiny. Although I will say that Donald Trump was interviewed just two days ago saying that he does think that Google is going to be close to a shutdown because he doesn't think Congress is going to take this, so maybe not as strict as we think.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm. So the timeline here. November DOJ will provide its final request for how to fix Google's monopoly through these remedies. In December, Google will have the chance to propose its own potential remedies to Judge Amit Mehta, who's presiding over this case. The company also planning to appeal the ruling as well that it illegally maintained a search monopoly.

That's where we'll leave the story of the week. Let's move now to the game. Today's game, the Super Duper Game. How does it work? Three rounds. We have the Random Scale, Fill in the Blank, and Fortune Teller. The better the answers, the more points you get. Round one, it's the Random Scale, where folks have to tell me where they land using the random scale. We're starting with Walmart.

Walmart is using AI to deliver personalized shopping experiences, writes our briefings analyst, Rachel Wolff. She explains that Walmart plans two things here. One, roll out personalized homepages tailored to each individual shopper by the end of next year so customers feel like they're stepping into a store designed exclusively for them. And number two, Walmart's planing to deliver more personalized customer support via its updated assistant, now capable of identifying who the shopper is from the start and taking actions, like finding orders and managing returns.

So the random scale, let's go with Evelyn first. What kind of an impact will Walmart's personalized homepages and customer support make? Possible choices are barely a dent, these initiatives will certainly make a difference, or stop traffic. This is the future.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I'm going to choose the middle option because I think they will make a difference for some shoppers, and others won't really care or notice. There are definitely elements of the shopper journey that will be made better by these things. I don't know that I personally want to step into a store designed exclusively for each consumer. I think I would be creeped out if every time I walked into a Walmart physically, the store had been rearranged in anticipation of what's on my shopping list. But I do think the customer support improvements could be a game-changer because I've had great experiences with chatbots and I've also had experiences that made me want to put my fist through the wall. That's true for classic human-forward customer service as well. However, I don't think that identifying the shopper from the start, finding orders, managing returns qualify as personalizing the customer service experience because Walmart would have to do those things at some point in the customer service interaction regardless of who's on the other end. I think it's just better customer service, which I am here for.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm. Stephanie.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

I call traffic stoppers because I think that saying personalization and speed is the future is such a well, duh statement, right? So Carina on our team recently published a gen AI for customer support and retail report covering use cases of gen AI, and it's not surprising to see Walmart implement solutions that are going to help speed up customer service requests. Some of the data in that report says that people want their customer service tickets resolved in less than three hours. I even thought that sounded high based off of anecdotally, my own personal experience. Waiting three hours seems really frustrating. And so we're seeing retailers make in-house virtual assistants to help with these customer service requests. And so yeah, it's not surprising. I think that's definitely what we're seeing already and the direction people are going to continue going in.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay. Jeremy, where do you land?

Jeremy Goldman:

I land at being annoyed that Steph pointed out the Carina report because where I was going to start, but I think we did... Yeah, the very fact that we're talking about this, we're talking about this because clients are talking about this, leaning into it. I think that Walmart, I would give them similarly a middle-of-the-road grade for this. It's definitely going to move the needle, but is it a game-changer? I mean, increasingly this is becoming table stakes.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Goldman:

I think that leaning into this is great. If you see there's a lot of different personalization use cases that consumers are demanding of the retailers that they are buying from, so the fact that you're going to personalize... I'm trying to find the newness in this.

I think the biggest value here is that Walmart, besides from being highly competent, is sitting on a wealth of data. And if it can essentially use this data to be a bit more predictive, to say that "This is this customer based off of what we have about this individual. This is what they're more likely to want to see in the future," and essentially can guess what I want to be seeing or what type of chatbot experience I want even more than I know it and going beyond the data that you have on that customer, if they can do that, that could be really effective.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it seems as though some research suggesting that folks are excited about the prospects of real personalization. I say real because it's varying degrees of personalization, from just using your name in an email as opposed to dear customer all the way to I think what this is getting at. And according to an Adobe Analytics study, 7 in 10 people believe that using gen AI to produce images of them wearing a product can boost their confidence when making a purchase. And I was speaking to our AI and technology analyst, Grace Harmon, who was telling me that there are startups, there are companies working on showing customers wearing the products. So the question is, then, what does it look like in terms of conversion if you could see every item on a retailer's site and what you looked like in that item, which I think is quite [inaudible 00:17:42] and very, very personalized.

All right, folks. Let's move to round two. We'll start with Stephanie for this one. Fill in the Blank. We're in on the buy now, pay later, BNPL, space. Some new research from our payments analyst, Grace Broadbent, points out that 86 million Americans are buy now, pay later users. That's just over 30%, three zero percent, of Americans. In terms of value, Grace notes that BNPL will make up 1.3% of total retail sales this year. But fill in the blank, Stephanie. What jumps out to you most about the BNPL space is blank.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

That the user base has reached a saturation point because it's not really growing anymore and it's going to stay flat, hovering around 5% growth over the next five years. But actually, I think looking at the user base growth rate might tell a misleading story because the amount that people are spending with BNPL is actually growing. It's increasing 13% this year. And for the first time, users are going to spend more than a thousand dollars with BNPL purchases.

But ethically, I always think of this ethically how the fact that it's become so easy to put off payments makes it challenging to keep track of your financial health. So I actually wonder about what the downstream impact of this is going to have on overall debt in the United States, and I'm sure we'd also see that growing per user over time.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, yeah. I'll jump in on that really quickly because I wanted to talk about that annual buy now, pay later spending per user crossing the $1,000 mark as well for the first time this year. I was wondering what that looks like versus annual credit card spend, and I found one data point from two years ago. So holders of general-purpose credit cards charged an average of close to $9,000 in purchases per account in 2022. This was according to NerdWallet. So folks spending close to nine times as much on their credit cards each year. It'd be interesting to see if that gap is closing.

I couldn't see credit cards spend over time. I could see credit card balance over time, but couldn't see annual spend over time. And is that going up, down? Because you are seeing the average annual spend of a buy now, pay later user going up. Not as sharply as it once was, but still going northeast on the chart. Jeremy, what jumps out to you most about the BNPL space is blank.

Jeremy Goldman:

Is that current BNPL users are making bigger purchases. They're also making purchases more frequently using it. So to Stephanie's point, one of the things that I look for is as essentially society follows these users, what winds up happening to these individuals. As new categories, like travel and healthcare, start to open up to BNPL usage, do these people get into financial distress? And does this also let retailers give them almost a rosier view of what their future fortunes could look like?

Because you have to account for the fact that at some point, these individuals will be tapped out. And are you getting other generations like older Americans, which are... they're becoming a bit more frequent BNPL users. Are you able to essentially replace that early growth with some later adopters, and should you? And what are the other levers that you have to be pulling as a retailer as this type of growth slows down? All of that, I think, will be really interesting to watch.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

What jumped out to me about the BNPL market is that BNPL will only make up 1.3% of total retail purchases in the US this year. I think that's a figure you called out, Marcus, too.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

That's nearly $100 billion, which is certainly not nothing, but it's also a much smaller share of the pie than I was anticipating. And I tried to find similar market share estimates in our ad spending forecast and, well, okay, radio will constitute 2.7% of total US media ad spending this year, out-of-home will constitute 2.4%, physical print will constitute 2.0%. So those are all bigger than BNPL's share of the total retail pie in the US, and BNPL's share of total retail spending will climb less than half a percentage point by 2028. So it's tiny and it's growing roughly the same amount as the rest of total retail media spending, or total retail purchases in the US this year. So.

Marcus Johnson:

Interesting. Something that jumped out to me as well towards the end of the report was what's next for the BNPL space, and one of the initiatives that Grace was pointing out were pointing to our subscription services. So she was writing that Klarna and Sezzle are among the providers that offer users or waived service fees and other benefits for a monthly fee. So maybe that's something that can help to jumpstart growth. Some other initiatives in there as well in terms of what is going to be growing the BNPL space in the future. Grace's full report is available to eMarketer Pro+ subscribers. You can just search for the US Buy Now, Pay Later Forecast 2024.

We move to our final round. All to play for. I'm kidding. One of you has definitely run away with it. We'll start with Jeremy. Fortune Teller. It's where we predict the future.

Elon Musk shows off his Tesla robotaxi that drives itself, writes Jack Ewing of the New York Times. The private cybercab, as it's nicknamed, will cost just under $30,000 and be available before 2027, according to the Tesla founder. The two-seater car looks to come in brushed gold stainless steel casing with no steering wheel or pedals. Mr. Musk also unveiled another prototype for a robovan which can carry up to 20 passengers around at time.

Many were underwhelmed with the announcement though. Analysts at BNP Paribas said, "Tesla were simply demonstrating marginally-better capabilities in a carefully-sanitized driving environment." Mr. Musk did mention that Tesla's existing cars, like the Model 3 sedan and Model Y sport utility vehicle, will be able to offer robotic taxi rides in Texas and California before the new vehicle becomes available. But Jeremy, fortune teller. What will the world of robotaxis look like in 2028?

Jeremy Goldman:

It will look actually pretty similar to what it looks like now. It will not look... This strikes me as a bit of a similar paradigm to the metaverse and virtual reality, where everybody was talking about it in the 1990s, which was a time that happened a long time ago.

So I mean, you have players like Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla that are trying to solve this whole entire dilemma, but part of the problem is, A, some people just don't want this problem to be solved. They're fine with the current paradigm. You have major regulatory approval hurdles. The tech is still getting more mature, so it is getting more mature. I would say that's a less significant hurdle, but still achieving true level five autonomy is not really something where a lot of people feel like we're quite there yet, and that's where vehicles can handle all the driving without any type of human intervention.

And then public acceptance. Gaining widespread public trust in autonomous vehicles, that's not nothing. For a lot of people, that is a major hurdle. A lot of people see driving as a core part of their identity. So there's a lot of even if you get around the tech and the regulatory, which are two pretty big things, there's the whole "Are jobs being automated out of existence? I like driving," all of these other hurdles that mean that, are we going to see advancements? Sure, but is it going to be so different than what we're seeing right now? I'm not so positive about that.

Marcus Johnson:

Evelyn, the future of robotaxis will look like what?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I had pretty much the same answer as Jeremy. I'm not an expert in this area, but it sounds like most of the experts that weighed in for the New York Times article we read are skeptical that Tesla's robotaxi will be available before 2027 as Musk has stated. And Musk himself acknowledges that he tends to be overly optimistic on timelines.

So it's basically 2025 already. It sounds like the self-driving programs are already quite impressive, but still make too many fatal errors for regulators to allow them on the roads at scale. So I think in three years, given the pace of AI innovations and the fact that there are much smaller, simpler problems with lower stakes that AI has yet to solve, I'm going to say that we will have made very little progress toward the robotaxi vision of getting in the car, falling asleep, and waking up at your destination. And I think the technology will get better, but it won't be mainstream or accessible for the majority of the country.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm. And Stephanie.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Let's say it's a perfect reality by 2028, where regulation hurdles were over. We're over them. The tech is ready. The cars are ready. I still don't think people are going to be ready to get inside of them and give control over the steering wheel. We just published an Insurify chart where the majority of respondents to a survey said they don't want the tech to have control over their car, and they would wait and see before even considering buying one. And then our tech team also wrote a story about other barriers to adoption, including ultra-high insurance costs for individual consumers and manufacturing fees. So I still think that if everything's ready, customers simply aren't going to be ready to get inside and give control to self-driving cars.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. It's interesting because robotaxis, they are already operating, but in an extremely limited capacity in a bunch of areas. So Google-owned Waymo have been operating a 700-vehicle driverless taxi service for years now. Recently saying that had provided over 100,000 rides per week in San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA, expanding to Atlanta and Austin next year.

I was down in Phoenix last week and a driverless Waymo car pulled up alongside me. No driver. And it is quite shocking, but also very, very impressive. The funniest thing is trying to see someone get into one of these who's hailed one because they're not sure when to approach it. Has it seen me? Has it noticed I'm trying to get in around the side? But it is a reality. But again, as I said, on a very limited scale.

Something else that jumped out to me about this story was Tesla. They're trying to rebrand themselves. At the event, Mr. Musk saying that Tesla should be thought of as an AI robotics company rather than an automaker because they're working on a personal humanoid robot as well. So yeah, [inaudible 00:29:16] interesting rebrand or attempted rebrand or rebrand that we'll see over the next couple of years of this particular company.

Jeremy Goldman:

Wait, there's somebody in charge of a public company who wants to be valued at a greater multiple than they are currently? I'm shocked.

Marcus Johnson:

That's all we've got time for, for the game. Count the scores, and two folks are tied on six points. In joint second, we call them Stephanie and Jeremy. But this week's winner is Evelyn with seven points.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Nice.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Woo-hoo.

Marcus Johnson:

Congratulations to you. You get the championship belt and, if you would like it, no one does, the last word.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I want to use it for my Dinner Party Data again.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, okay.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

So just tack it on.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, you want to take... Okay.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

She wants to save it for later. All right, fine. We can't actually do that. You'll get the same amount of time as everyone else. I'm kidding. You get a little bit longer. You get five more seconds. Time now for Dinner Party Data.

This is the part of the show where we tell you about the most interesting thing we've learned this week. We start with Evelyn because she won. Go.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Okay, do we all recall the Roman Empire meme?

Jeremy Goldman:

Of course.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I'm going to explain it just in case.

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-mm.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

There was a TikTok moment in 2023, where women were asking the men in their lives, boyfriends-

Marcus Johnson:

Oh. Yes.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

... dads, brothers, how often they thought about the Roman Empire, and they all answered hilariously that they thought about the Roman Empire a lot, once a day or multiple times a day. We all had a good laugh. That moment has lived on in the form of another meme, which is XYZ is my Roman Empire, meaning that for whoever is posting whatever they're posting about is something that they think about all the time.

So YouGov surveyed Americans about the Roman Empire in June and indeed, men were more than twice as likely as women to say they knew a lot or a fair amount about the Roman Empire. 37% of men compared to 17% of women. 59% of men said the Roman Empire had a very or somewhat positive impact, while 39% of women said the same. And the most positive aspects of the Roman Empire were Roman buildings and roads, with 75% ranking it as mostly positive, and Roman art and literature with 73%.

Marcus Johnson:

Hmm. I thought you were going to... they were going to survey people and say, "If it's not the Roman Empire, what is the thing that you think about the most?"

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I think they would get a different answer for every person, so really hard to collate those results.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, I wonder if there are... Is there a second place?

Jeremy Goldman:

What is your favorite other empire?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Exactly.

Jeremy Goldman:

The Mongols. What do you think? Yeah.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh. I-

Marcus Johnson:

What do you land on?

Jeremy Goldman:

Genghis.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Genghis?

Marcus Johnson:

Very interesting.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Is that what you just said?

Jeremy Goldman:

Genghis Khan. Yeah.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Sure did, sure did.

Marcus Johnson:

What's your stance?

Stephanie Taglianetti:

It's on record.

Marcus Johnson:

Very interesting. Let's go, Stephanie.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

So if you're looking to catch up on scary movies for this spooky season, I am here to tell you about the Science of Scare Project's 10 scariest movies according to science. So this project uses viewers' heart rate and heart rate variance to determine which movies both elevate users' heart rates the most and then cause lower heart rate variance, which is an indicator of stress. So any guesses for which movie is in the number one spot of scariest movie according to the Science of Scare?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

The Exorcist?

Marcus Johnson:

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

That's not even in the top 10, surprisingly.

Jeremy Goldman:

What?

Stephanie Taglianetti:

I know.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I mean-

Jeremy Goldman:

It, Shining, Terrifier, Blair Witch?

Marcus Johnson:

Scream.

Jeremy Goldman:

Blair Witch?

Stephanie Taglianetti:

It is Sinister.

Marcus Johnson:

I'm kidding. Oh, interesting.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Which caused the highest spike in heart rate. And that's followed by the movie Host. And if you want to know the top 10, I'll go in order. So Sinister, Host, Skinamarink, Insidious, The Conjuring, Hereditary.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oof, that one is spooky.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Smile, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Hell House LLC, and Talk to Me. So if you want to watch a scary movie, you might as well watch one of the 10 scariest movies according to science.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I have actually screamed out loud at The Conjuring before, so there you go.

Jeremy Goldman:

We'll do a-

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Yes, actually. That one, even though it was number five, did cause one of the highest spikes in heart rate among users.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

It's freaky.

Jeremy Goldman:

We have to do a whole watch party on Halloween. Let's do it. Let's call the people team. We can make this happen.

Marcus Johnson:

Very interesting. Let's go, Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman:

So do you know about comb jellies? I think our producer, editor, awesome person, Victoria, might know about them, maybe, because they're like jellyfish, but super, super small. They're the size of a nickel. And so does anybody know what I'm going to say or no?

Marcus Johnson:

No.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

I don't know what you're going to say, but I know what they are.

Jeremy Goldman:

Okay, so-

Marcus Johnson:

Wait, wait. Really quickly. Victoria, do you know what Jeremy's talking about?

Victoria Grace:

No, but I love sea creatures of all types. I'm a big jellyfish fan.

Marcus Johnson:

What did you call octopus before the show.

Victoria Grace:

Big octopus fan.

Marcus Johnson:

Friend?

Victoria Grace:

So I'm-

Marcus Johnson:

Friend and food?

Victoria Grace:

Friends. They're also food. They can be food. Delicious.

Jeremy Goldman:

I don't think you guys are ready for this jelly because-

Stephanie Taglianetti:

I'm ready.

Jeremy Goldman:

... it is really interesting. It can fuse with another one of its friends, and they basically get stuck together and then they get a little bit stronger. And then they share a nervous system, and food that goes into one of them comes out the butt. Do jellies have tushes? I don't know. It comes out the backside of the other one.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

This is just transformers.

Jeremy Goldman:

This is like-

Marcus Johnson:

[inaudible 00:35:10].

Jeremy Goldman:

Yeah, no. And what's crazy is how did we not discover this until basically a few weeks or a few months ago? So.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Because there's 96% of the ocean or more that is undiscovered. I think James Cameron has advanced a lot of aquatic research just by having enough money to build things to go deep enough.

Jeremy Goldman:

Yeah. Why did James Cameron not find this out before? So I also gets me thinking about what if... Does it have to be a friend? What if you're literally stuck together and conjoined with-

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Oh, gosh.

Jeremy Goldman:

You're like, "Oh my God, this dude is the worst comb jelly that I know. And now, we're stuck together." And how long does it last? So stay tuned and I'll report back.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Whoa.

Jeremy Goldman:

We're gonna chart this.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

That was a wild ride.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. It's interesting, though, because there are a lot of species. Obviously, we've identified, I think, a million or two odd, but there are estimates that there are millions more that we have not even discovered or identified on the planet yet, which is shocking. But also, yeah, to Stephanie's point, most of the ocean hasn't even been looked in yet. But yeah, wasn't expecting that, Jeremy.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I want to see a picture. [inaudible 00:36:32].

Jeremy Goldman:

We'll put it in the show notes or I'll Slack you. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay. I've got one for you real quick. Charitable donations in America according to 2022 YouGov survey. So who? Start there. About half of Americans, 54%, say they have donated in the past year.

Number two, where? In that time, Americans are most likely to have donated to human services, so homelessness, food banks, things like that, 33%. 27% to religious services. And in joint third place with 21% each are donations to animals and also human health and disease charities.

Why? Number three. Most, 48%, do so because they believe in the cause. 31% just believe you should give to charity, and 15% do so because it's part of their religious beliefs.

Number four is the what. 51% of American adults say that they mostly give money to charity. 9% mostly give time, and 17% mostly give both.

And number five, who's more responsible for helping people who are struggling? This was closer than I thought it was going to be. 38% say the government versus 33%, so just five points difference, who say private charities.

However, there is a big discrepancy by age. For those over the age of 45, slightly more said it's charities' responsibility. For the younger, under 45-year-olds, quite a significant amount more said that it's the government's duty.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I wonder how that breakout would look for political. If you broke it out by political leanings, what it would look like.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, they do have that as well.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Ooh.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. For Democrats, 58% said it's the government's responsibility versus 18 for private charities. Republicans, 22 for government versus 48% private charities.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Interesting.

Marcus Johnson:

Independents was almost neck and neck. They said 32% government, 36% private charities. Yeah.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Well, there you go.

Marcus Johnson:

Yes, indeed. Any other breakouts? I hope not, because there aren't any. That's all we've got time for, for this episode. Thank you so much to my guests. Thank you to Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Thank you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

This week's winner of the Game of the Week. Congratulations to you. Thank you to Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman:

I'm just happy I wasn't last, so thank you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Well, you were. It depends how you look at it. Congratulations-

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Alphabetically, it was me.

Marcus Johnson:

... to Stephanie as well for a joint second place. Thank you for joining us.

Stephanie Taglianetti:

Yes. Thank you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Yes, indeed. Thank you to Victoria who edits the show, Stuart who runs the team, Sophie who does our social media, and Lance who runs our video podcast. Thanks to everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday, of course, for the Behind the Numbers Daily. That's an eMarketer podcast made possible by TikTok. Happiest of weekends.

On November 1st, eMarketer is hosting a virtual summit, where you can learn all about the top trends of 2025 with a keynote from analysts Sarah Marzano and Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, Panels hosted by analysts Kelsey Voss and Yory Wurmser, and featuring executives from top brands. All of this starts at 11:30 AM Eastern on November 1st and is hosted by eMarketer's Vice President of Content Suzy Davidkhanian and Senior Director of Client Briefings Jeremy Goldman. Use the link in the show notes to register today.