The Weekly Listen: How swiping is taking over social media, paying with your hand, and AI in the home

On today's episode, we discuss how a new era of social media is rising, whether folks want to pay for things with their hand, when the best time to email your co-worker is, how Walmart+ is getting on, what AI in the home might look like, the most popular cars in the US, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Ross Benes and Blake Droesch and forecasting director Oscar Orozco.

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Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson:

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Thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind the Numbers: Weekly Listen, an eMarketer podcast made possible by Awin. This is the Friday show, that may or may not have a Poltergeist. Thanks, Ross. Thanks. I'm your host, Marcus Johnson. In today's show, Is Social Media Dead?

Oscar Orozco:

It's unrealistic to think that they could ever catch up with what we're seeing on the entertainment side and how people are consuming content. That is impossible. There's no way they could go down all of those rabbit holes and target who they need to.

Marcus Johnson:

Do people want to pay for things with their hand?

Blake Droesch:

I don't think that the palm print is necessarily going to, at this point, feel as intrusive to a larger swath of the population than this concept maybe would have 15 years ago.

Marcus Johnson:

When's the best time to email coworkers?

Ross Benes:

When I do send something that's work related, I schedule it for like Monday morning, or if I send something really late, I schedule it for the following morning. And I guess I've been sabotaging my open rates because I've been doing exactly opposite of what this research says.

Marcus Johnson:

How Walmart Plus is getting on, artificial intelligence in the home, and some interesting facts about Americans and car ownership.

Joining me for this episode, we have three people. Let's meet them. We start with one of our Directors of Forecasting. Based out of New York, it's Oscar Orozco.

Oscar Orozco:

Hello everybody.

Marcus Johnson:

Hey fella. We're also joined by one of our Senior Analysts on the Digital Advertising and Media Team. Based just north of the city in New York, it's Ross Benes.

Ross Benes:

Hey Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Hey fella. And finally, we have one of our Senior Analysts on the Retail and eCommerce Team, also based out of New York, more central. It's Blake Droesch.

Blake Droesch:

Hello everyone.

Marcus Johnson:

Hey fella.

Blake Droesch:

Actually, technically Ross is more central to New York State. I'm south of Ross.

Marcus Johnson:

More central to the city. Yeah, I wasn't specific.

Blake Droesch:

Oh, okay. I'm very central to the city. Thank you for clarifying that.

Marcus Johnson:

Now that we've got that out of the way.

Ross Benes:

Just don't give them the GPS coordinates of where we are, that's all.

Oscar Orozco:

Very private guy.

Marcus Johnson:

They would trash your house, Oscar. At the very least, they would protest outside. I would. I'd lead it.

What do we have in store for you? Well, Story of the Week, we're talking about whether social media is dead. What's next? If it is gone, already. We then move to the Game of the Week, where our three panelists will go head to head to head. Give us the best takeaways they can from the four stories we have for you to win the championship belt. And then Dinner Party Data. We talk about some random trivia. We start with the Story of the Week.

Social media is dead. Welcome to the swipe era, or era, writes John Dempsey and Dom Tunon of Wieden+Kennedy in Adweek. "Thanks, relentless scrolling," they say sarcastically, "for eviscerating society's attention span. Your 15 minutes of fame is now 15 seconds." They think that it's the end of social media as we know it, an era that lasted from the Facebook to the 'Gram. They point to mass tech layoffs and the US Surgeon General's warning in May that social media can be harmful to kids as the proverbial nail in the coffin for social media's demise. Enter TikTok and that the focus is less on your friends and more on you on, they write that in this new era, era, I'm saying it both ways, "content media has evolved from a network of friends into a living database of your own personal identity." Gents, what interested you most about this piece?

Ross Benes:

I like people just coming out and saying things are dead even if I disagree with them. Like Max was on the podcast recently and he just said, "Threads was dead."

Marcus Johnson:

It's over.

Ross Benes:

I think it had been out like two weeks or something. So they're going all in. I appreciate that.

Marcus Johnson:

But you don't agree with them though? You think social media's not dead?

Ross Benes:

Well, I mean Meta, Facebook, just had a pretty good earnings. There's still massive user bases on all these services that are allegedly dead. Maybe the peak of it is in decline, but be a little overstatement to say it's dead and not going to be highly influential still.

Oscar Orozco:

I agree with Ross. I think we've talked about this on the program as well, looking at it from the time spent perspective, the pandemic really, really pushed the time. I mean, I was going to say minutes, more like hours and hours of people spending time with social media. And we definitely have tracked a slowdown and maybe a peak being hit. It's a bit unclear where it'll go in the next couple of years. I think maybe video on social. There is a limit. We used to say maybe it won't be a 100% of social time will be video. That's not the case. I think we're seeing it slow down there. But for it to be dead, completely done? I don't agree with that.

Marcus Johnson:

I guess they're saying that version of social, whatever you want to call it. So for instance, they talk about this kind of evolution of social media. Social networking came first, Facebook, things like that. Social media, YouTube, was next. Social audio was briefly here, Clubhouse. Social entertainment is what we've kind of got now with TikTok. And so I guess they're saying that the idea of social media in its older form, in its form which relied more on conversations with friends and looking more at content about the people that you knew, is gone. Blake, do you agree?

Blake Droesch:

Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's been the case for a while, just sort of the slow fragmentation between social media and social entertainment. What I found most interesting about this article, or I guess what I disagreed with most about this article, was it goes into this whole conversation about how algorithm driven content feeds are going to revolutionize the way that we consume content. And I do think that's certainly true, but it's not just TikTok. I think all feeds at this point are algorithm driven. TikTok just seems to be the best and most innovative at it right now. But it then goes into a lot about how what this is going to mean for our industry. But I think the playbook for effective marketing is going to change very little, whether it's social media, or this midway point when you have the fragmentation of media, social that's social and media that's entertainment driven.

But just to quote the article they wrote, "to communicate effectively in this new era, brands must speak truth to more specific audiences in a language they understand, sharing artifacts and beliefs that create a unified respect of the culture we share." So basically they're just saying, "You need to know your audience. You need to communicate in a colloquial way and you need to be authentic." And that's really always been the key to good marketing. And some do it well, but most people fail at it. And I don't think that much is going to change other than the fact that these algorithm driven feeds are going to increase the time spent on these platforms, which means more time to serve users ads, but it's going to mean less time to keep their attention. So the key is not necessarily going to be more authenticity, it's going to be creativity that captures immediate attention and that is memorable.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Oscar Orozco:

I think it's also, as you said, not a lot is changing, but it's the right campaign. I think the article is referring to a cause, a message, but to me how that's transmitted has always been kind of secondary and that's still the case in this algorithm driven world we live in. I still think that that is secondary. I think it does always boil down to finding the right person with the right message. And they refer to a brand kind of having that identity with a cause, which I think has always been the case, and that's what they're all looking for. But it's easier said than done, that's for sure.

Marcus Johnson:

The sentence that jumps out to me or the section talks about how we can basically find whatever we want whenever we want. And the sentence went, "cultural zeitgeist as we know it faces an existential threat. Shared monoculture is splintering into a bazillion algorithmically curated subcultures. Identity is no longer confined to where people live or what your in real life circle is talking about at the lunch table. You can now obsess over anything you want, wherever, whenever, however you want."

And so that's true, but is that a good thing? Because, yes, you can consume anything you want but with no one, because the chances of someone else seeing the same video as you or the piece of content as you are so slim versus the chances of you guys all seeing the Barbie movie or Oppenheimer or something that is a shared kind of cultural experience, or watching the Super Bowl, that spurs and generates conversation. And so, yes, you can, by yourself, kind of tap your thoughts into a smartphone or consume others' thoughts, but who can you meaningfully share thoughts and feelings with?

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah, we're constantly playing catch up with one another when you're with other people being social, right? "It's have you seen this?" If not, you're outside of the conversation now.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Oscar Orozco:

Because you all know what we're referring to and I agree that's a problem. And again, from the brand's perspective, it's unrealistic to think that they could ever catch up with what we're seeing on the entertainment side and how people are consuming content. It is impossible. There's no way they could go down all those rabbit holes.

Marcus Johnson:

Right.

Oscar Orozco:

And target who they need to.

Marcus Johnson:

And this speaks to, so there's this concept called The Daily Me. It's a term popularized by MIT Lab Media founder Nicholas Negroponte, to describe a virtually daily newspaper customized to an individual's tastes. And so in theory that sounds kind of cool. You just get the content that you want. The problem is my newspaper is completely different from every other person's newspaper on the planet. And so it's quite hard to have conversations about that content because it is so tailored.

Blake Droesch:

I don't know if that's necessarily what the algorithm is doing in its entirety, because in almost a paradoxical way, it also is reinforcing the monoculture because the algorithm boosts specific types of content and then it becomes viral, it becomes trending, and that still happens. And I'd also push back against the idea that algorithms is going to create mono subcultures because subcultures have been becoming established on the internet for decades now, whether it's through message rooms or Reddit or Tumblr or Facebook groups or this Twitter or that Twitter. Once again, I don't think that saying that definitively the sort of algorithm driven content feed is going to be a massive paradigm shift is necessarily true because there's more balance and more nuance, I think, than this article really lays out.

Marcus Johnson:

It's an interesting point. I was thinking about this the other day, that on TikTok, the big draw there is that anyone can go viral. However, because anyone can go viral, I was wondering what share of content that you consume is content that's gone viral? Yes, you could have that big moment where that piece hits, that video hits. It's a 15 second video. Of the content that you consume, what share of it has been consumed by the masses?

Blake Droesch:

I'd say a pretty fair amount. I mean just from personally when you scroll through these feeds, like most of the videos, even these sort of inconsequential little 15 second clips seem to rack up millions, tens of millions, of views. But I mean, what does a number mean when it's compared with the amount of different clips that people are consuming in any given session, right?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Blake Droesch:

So I think we need to be careful about contextualizing that number. But I do think that we're not at a level of fragmentation where you're just seeing content that's only viewed by a select few. This is still widely shared content.

Marcus Johnson:

Let's end with this stat going back to this idea that social media is dead, welcome to the swipe era. There was some data from comScore noting that in 2019, Americans spent a similar share of their internet time, of all their internet time, they spent a similar share on social media and a similar share on entertainment, about 23% for each of those buckets. Today, entertainment share has swollen to 29% as social media's time has shrunk to 15%, opening up a 14 point gap. Now what is within that entertainment bucket? Could be games, could be video, but just this idea that entertainment is growing, and social media is shrinking, at least in its traditional form. And this is, yeah, I think one stat to show that trend, that social media is becoming maybe arguably less social and more entertainment focused. That's all we've got time for, for the Story of the Week. Let's move to the Game of the Week. Today's game, what's the point?

I read out four stories and the panel give us their main takeaway of the story. Okay answers get one point, good answers get two, and answers that give you the same feelings as Fridays, answers that leave you with that feeling, they get you three points. You get 20 seconds to answer before you hear the bell. It's a technical foul and minus two points if you drone on. Two takes gets you ejected. Most points wins, gets the last word. Let's play ball.

We start with Ross for round one. Paying with your palm is here. Amazon will roll out it's Amazon One biometric payments technology at all its Whole Foods market locations by the end of the year writes our Senior Retail Analyst, Zak Stambor. Amazon says the palm reading technology has been used over 3 million times across the roughly 400 stores, including 200 Whole Foods locations. But, Ross, paying with your Palmers here. What's the point?

Ross Benes:

To reduce friction for buying things. These companies like Amazon just want to make it easier for you to continue to buy stuff that you don't need. You used to go from cash to a credit card and then the chip became a tap. Now if you just touch it, you're going to just go crazy when you shop.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

For me, it's that it's not as futuristic as it might sound. It's a technology I think a lot of consumers are familiar with, when you lock your phone, in and out of your phone with a fingerprint or a face scan or something like this. So call me a believer on this. I think it's really powerful. There was a chart in the article that showed that this was preferred over things like pin codes and these multi-factor authentication services, which I think are really annoying. So again, call me a believer. I also think it can help. As a Whole Foods shopper, it takes so long to scan your Prime membership. If this is as seamless as they say, it's a great idea.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, that chart Oscar's referring to, January payments and intersect survey. Yeah, interesting data. Biometrics the most preferred option for authentication, followed by multifactor authentication, codes into your phone, and then pin codes. Yeah, that was an interesting one, Oscar. Blake, what do you think, mate?

Blake Droesch:

Yeah, I also agree. I think that this is going to resonate particularly with Whole Foods shoppers who tend to be younger, more urban and suburban, Millennials, tend to be a little bit more open to trying new technology. Plus Amazon already knows everything about you anyways if you're a Prime member slash Whole Foods shopper. I don't think that the palm print is necessarily going to, at this point, feel as intrusive to a larger swath of the population than this concept maybe would have 15 years ago.

Marcus Johnson:

Very nice, gents. We move to round two. We start with Oscar. When's the best time to email coworkers? Sunday afternoon, apparently, according to new research from Axios HQ. Emily Price of Fast Company notes that the study found company email sent from 3:00 to 6:00 PM on Sunday had the highest average open rate, 94%. The next highest was Sunday from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, with an open rate of 86%. Emails sent in the mornings at the start of the week were more likely to get opened as well. But, Oscar, when's the best time to email coworkers? What's the point?

Oscar Orozco:

This research wasn't entirely surprising to me. I'm one of those. I like getting kind of the week started, even just checking my email for five minutes on a Sunday night, making sure I'm ready for Monday morning and I'm not missing something. So it's not surprising to me that others do that. What was most shocking to me though was that the open rates were much higher from 3:00 to 6:00 AM during the work week than any other time, aside from obviously some of the core hours during the work week. But 3:00 to 6:00 AM? I don't understand why.

Marcus Johnson:

Who the hell?

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah, anyone would be up emailing at that time. I actually think that's inappropriate. Not so much the Sunday emails.

Marcus Johnson:

Blake.

Blake Droesch:

Yeah, I'm not surprised that Sunday emails are the most effective. I mean, I think it'd be more effective to show up at your employee's door on a Sunday. Doesn't mean you should do it. I think that there are certain people, we all have our emails set up to their phone, and if I am trying to enjoy my Sunday and someone sends me an email and I unintentionally see it and then all of a sudden I'm thinking about work? That's not exactly an experience that I appreciate having.

Marcus Johnson:

Sorry.

Blake Droesch:

If it's urgent, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get to it. No, sorry, did I mention I'm directing this answer explicitly at Marcus? Stop emailing me on the weekend asking me to do the show.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay. Fine. Fine.

Ross Benes:

He emails me between 3:00 and 6:00 AM on weekdays, actually.

Blake Droesch:

He says it's because he's, "In the UK," but we all know that's nonsense. I'm finished.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank goodness. Ross.

Ross Benes:

I've been doing this all wrong because I don't like to read emails on the weekend or do stuff that's work related so when I do send something that's work related, I schedule it for Monday morning or if I send something really late, I schedule it for the following morning because Gmail has that nice little scheduling feature.

Marcus Johnson:

Boo.

Ross Benes:

And I guess I've been sabotaging my open rates because I've been doing exactly opposite of what this research says them.

Oscar Orozco:

No one's reading them.

Marcus Johnson:

But why Sunday? Why does Sunday work so well? Well the article nothing less competition from other emails and also hybrids work is a thing now so people adopting more flexible work hours, folks like Oscar who may check their work emails on the weekend because maybe they had to take a few hours during the week to run an errand or something. Also interesting from the survey, so people don't like it, but they will respond, unless you're Blake. A 2022 Skynova survey found that two-thirds of employees think it should illegal for employers to contact them outside of work hours, like it is in Germany in some instances. But the exact same share of people, two-thirds, said they would always answer when contacted outside of work hours.

Blake Droesch:

Did they not mention that the number one reason is probably because if you email someone on a Sunday, they're going to think it's an emergency and it needs to urgently be handled?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Or they're replying with-

Blake Droesch:

That seems like the most logical explanation.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, well you just can't wait to reply to the person and say, "For the love of God. Leave me alone, Marcus."

At the halfway mark, Oscar's out in front with five points, Blake and Ross tied with four a piece. We move to round three. We start with Blake. How Walmart Plus is getting on? Well, according to our forecasting team, the membership program from America's largest retailer is expected to have close to 30, 3-0, million users and nearly 15, 1-5, million households by the end of this year. But Blake, how Walmart Plus is getting on? What's the point?

Blake Droesch:

Yeah, Walmart has made a couple of really good decisions in terms of making their Walmart Plus membership, which was sort of primarily launched as a rival to Prime geared towards e-commerce. But a lot of the benefits they've enrolled are directly appealing to their massive in-store audience. Mainly the fact that there's now a rewards points or cashback feature that is applicable both in store and online. And Walmart's biggest advantage is the fact that they have this massive in-store audience. Their e-commerce audience is comparatively smaller. So what they're doing is using Walmart Plus to hopefully bridge the gap and get some of their more in-store loyalists to sign up and then eventually start using the service to shop online more often. So I think that's the winning solution for them and I think it has to do with a lot of its success so far.

Marcus Johnson:

Ross.

Ross Benes:

Yeah, this brings to mind the stories that you used to hear 10 years ago about Walmart's killing small towns. Lately you hear about Amazon and other of the FANG companies and how they're going to control the world. But it wasn't long ago that Walmart was the company that people feared, at least in small towns throughout the country. And I don't think about it a whole lot because there's not a lot of them in metropolitan New York, but it's still a huge force that generates a ton of revenue and it's not surprising to me that they have an online service that's going to hit 30 million users this year.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

Call me a bit of a pessimist about the long-term viability. And let me explain why. I mean, Blake, you said it, this was launched as a competitor for Prime. But I looked into this a little bit. So Walmart Plus was launched in September 2020 and Prime has been around for 15 year before that. It was in 2005. So my question is the CFO John Rainey said it was still in its beginning stages of building it out. Why has taken so long? It's definitely not exactly the same type of program as Blake explained. But for me, seeing these numbers, they're huge, the subscriber numbers, but far far from the 94 million households that have Prime and I don't know if it can compete. People eventually will have to pay for both. Are people going to give up Prime for Walmart Plus? I don't see that.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Oscar, you made this point. Prime's still way ahead. Six times as many Prime households as Walmart Plus ones in the US. Let's move to our final round, double points, round four. Blake has drawn even with Oscar, seven apiece, Ross just behind with six. All to play for. We start with Ross for round four. Amazon wants Alexa to bring AI into the home, points out Ina Fried of Axios. They note that, "these devices open the door for generative AI queries that not only answer questions, but act." Writing, for example, "You could imagine say being able to tell a voice assistance, 'I'm going on vacation for a week. Please set my devices to make sure the house is safe and we aren't using more electricity than necessary.'" But Ross, Amazon wanting Alexa to bring AI into the home, what's the point?

Ross Benes:

Amazon's just going to control every part of your life soon. I mean, we've already talked about the fingerprints earlier. Now they're bringing generative AI in the home. So I just hope they soon have a service that will help me clean up dog feces in the backyard and then I'll be really good to go.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh gosh. Tough to follow that up. Well, I think it's a great idea, but maybe-

Marcus Johnson:

Ross has dogs by the way, not just awful neighbors. All right, sorry, go on, Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

No, that I think it's a great idea. Maybe I'm just a sucker for things like this. What's most interesting to me, when we think of these AI queries right now it's mainly text-based, sometimes images, but they mention in the article that these Alexa devices have cameras and microphones and I think querying can be much more dynamic. So I think maybe it's a curiosity thing, but I'm interested to see how this ties into other devices that interconnectivity in the household can be achieved here. So I'm very curious to see how this plays out.

Marcus Johnson:

Blake.

Blake Droesch:

I think it makes perfect sense for Amazon to pursue this sort of new wave of AI in order to help revitalize its seemingly stagnant voice assistant product. A few years ago we thought that people were just going to keep on using voice assistants for all of these different things to control their lives. But it turned out that people were really very interested in voice assistants for anything more than maybe turning on the lights or asking about the weather. I don't know if they're going to want to continue to engage with voice assistants any deeper just because of these enhancements from companies like ChatGPT or products like that. But it makes sense for Amazon to try, of course.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Lots of people were willing to buy smart speakers, version one. And so maybe version two with more AI infused, generative AI, infused can do more. Maybe they offer folks more. Maybe they bring the connected home more to life. But if 68 million Americans have Echo devices according to our forecasts, how many use them often is another question entirely, versus them sitting either unplugged or plugged in, but no one really talking to them. That's a separate issue. But they managed to sell 68, well, they managed to sell a lot of these to folks, 68 million Americans have them. So yeah, maybe version two could sell even more of these things.

Oscar Orozco:

And Blake makes a great point. I mean they were supposed to be and they were marketed as assistants, but all we're seeing, and it's to your point earlier, that comScore data you mentioned, Marcus, they're really used more and more for entertainment type of media and it's just to listen to things or even some of these devices come with a screen so just watching more video in some way. So I think going back to that core use case of an assistant, it'll be interesting to see if that will happen again.

Marcus Johnson:

I also think they maybe haven't found their perfect form factor because I think things like the Echo Show where you've got the smart speaker, but it's also got the screen, I think a lot of the time you want some accompanying visuals when you ask a question. When you ask the weather, you kind of want to see it too. If you ask it to play music, you kind of want to see the playlist as well and have that to help you kind of navigate your query. So maybe larger screen kind of form factor is the direction that things will move in.

Let's count the scores at the end of the Game of the Week. This week's winner? Blake is this week's winner of the Game of the Week with 11 points, Oscar with nine, Ross, eight. Congratulations to Blake. Championship belt. Last word.

Blake Droesch:

I was going to pull a reverse and give you a penalty for that really long-

Marcus Johnson:

Me?

Blake Droesch:

-explanation at the end there, Marcus. That was well over 30 seconds, but I had a feeling it was going to hinder-

Marcus Johnson:

Blake loses the Game of the Week.

Oscar Orozco:

He could still take it away.

Blake Droesch:

-my chances of winning the game.

Marcus Johnson:

Winner instead is Oscar. Oscar wins.

Blake Droesch:

So, I was going to wait till after I won to give you the penalization for going just way over time. Sorry.

Oscar Orozco:

I'll take the W.

Marcus Johnson:

Sorry, Blake. Oscar?

Blake Droesch:

Congratulations.

Marcus Johnson:

Any last words? That sounded threatening.

Oscar Orozco:

Blake. Take it, Blake. Take it.

Marcus Johnson:

Didn't mean it that way, but do you have a last word?

Blake Droesch:

I already said my last word is that-

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, that was the last word.

Blake Droesch:

-your explanations were long. Let's keep it.

Marcus Johnson:

All right. Time well spent. Fantastic. Moving on.

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 Blake, because we have to.

Blake Droesch:

This is some data that I found on the website, Thrillist, which looks like they used some sort of search data. I clearly did not vet this information. Looks like some sort of combination of a consumer survey and search data to find the most popular vacation destinations by state. So I was looking at my home state of New York and the most popular destination, domestic destination, for New York travelers is Miami. And the most popular international location for New York travelers is-

Marcus Johnson:

France.

Blake Droesch:

London.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh.

Blake Droesch:

Funnily enough, if you look at California, their most popular domestic location is Las Vegas.

Marcus Johnson:

Typical.

Blake Droesch:

And their most popular international travel destination is Paris.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay.

Blake Droesch:

Any other states you guys are curious about?

Oscar Orozco:

Florida.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, Florida, yeah. That's a good one.

Blake Droesch:

Florida? Florida's interesting because Florida's the opposite. Their domestic vacation destination is New York City.

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah, that's right.

Blake Droesch:

Whereas international is Paris.

Marcus Johnson:

What about Texas people? I feel like Texas is such a big state, it takes so long to get out of the state, they probably just vacation in state a lot of the time. What about Texas folks?

Blake Droesch:

Well, they don't go very far, actually.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh. Here we go.

Blake Droesch:

Funny enough, their domestic is New Orleans. So the next state over to the east.

Marcus Johnson:

Like two hours to the right, okay.

Blake Droesch:

And their international destination is Cancun, which they share a border with.

Marcus Johnson:

Come on, Texas. Lazy.

Blake Droesch:

So you're right.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh, Texas.

Blake Droesch:

They're not going very far.

Oscar Orozco:

Big state, I guess.

Blake Droesch:

Actually, Ross, maybe you could can lend some insights into this because I'm looking at Nebraska. For domestic it's Denver, so that makes sense. But Havana, is there a large Cuban population in Nebraska?

Ross Benes:

Not that I'm aware of. I just, Nebraskans probably seldomly leave the state, so the sample size of international travelers is small, and then one large family goes to Cuba and that's their survey.

Blake Droesch:

Right, so it was like a church humanitarian group that just went to Cuba a few years ago.

Marcus Johnson:

Very good, very good.

Ross Benes:

Makes sense to me.

Marcus Johnson:

Let's move to Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh, that was good. All right, well, I found a really, really interesting study from Dentsu, which is very timely for me because we were covering this here very recently, looking essentially at our ad spending estimates versus our time spent with media estimates and looking kind of under/over represented media types. So value really for advertisers there. Actually, Ethan Cramer-Flood, he's on the podcast a lot, he wrote a great report on it, so check it out.

But what the Dentsu study corroborated, what it looked at, was that audio advertising across three major formats, it found that it performed better than video in grabbing attention and generating brand recall. So a really interesting study. The respondents were exposed to listening environments similar to their native audio experiences. So listening to, it would be radio, podcasts, ad supported streaming, all types, so digital and non-digital. And then they took a look at this survey that gauged ad recall and brand choice uplift compared to a different sort of controlled group. So really interesting there.

What they found, a couple things. 41% of audio ads generated correct brand recall in these follow-up surveys compared to 38% which was the norm for all other advertising, mainly video. Another interesting data point was audio advertising produced average attentive seconds of over 10,000 per 100 impressions, and that was more than 50% higher than the 6,500 in Dentsu's database for other formats like video. Lastly, podcast, Marcus, measured across Audacy, Cumulus Media, Spotify drove the highest attentive seconds per thousand impressions compared to every other media type. So this was anything, digital, social, even TV benchmarks that they looked at. So podcasts. So we know video still rules the ad budgets, that's where a lot of money's going. But it's interesting to see this on the audio side because we also think a lot about multitasking when we talk about audio ads and how that could potentially be a problem. But the study seems to show that that's just a common misconception at this point. So it's definitely an under valued media type.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar, this is the non-work related segment. What the hell are you doing?

Oscar Orozco:

Really? I'm not supposed to talk about that?

Marcus Johnson:

No, of course you're not.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh no. Sometimes I feel like others do and I'm like, "Why am I talking about my intermittent fasting here?"

Marcus Johnson:

We'll cut this out. We'll cut this out. Maybe you could say something about your favorite pancake toppings or something.

Oscar Orozco:

Really? I thought this was so interesting. I was reading.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, it was. I'm just kidding. It was interesting. We'll let it stand.

Oscar Orozco:

I could do something else if you want.

Marcus Johnson:

No, it's fine, it's fine. But just for the record, this is the type of Dinner Party Data that a Sunday emailer would break.

Oscar Orozco:

Okay, got it. Got it.

Marcus Johnson:

That was good. That was good. That was interesting. Ross, you're up.

Ross Benes:

So this weekend.

Marcus Johnson:

It's not tough act to follow, so you should be fine.

Ross Benes:

Yeah, that's the type of acts I like to follow.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh gosh.

Ross Benes:

No one wants to go on after Jimmy Hendrix.

Oscar Orozco:

Cut mine at the end, geez. No one's listening.

Ross Benes:

So this weekend, Bud Crawford, he's a boxer, became the undisputed welterweight champ. He is now 40 and 0 with 31 knockouts. And he owns, or I guess he carries, I don't know what the correct term is for this, I'm not a huge boxing fan, but he has all the belts. He has the WBO belt, the IBF belt, the WBA, and the WBC belt. He's changed weight classes like three times. Nobody could beat this man. So boxing isn't nearly as popular as it was back when there was the Thrilla in Manila, or even when Mike Tyson was boxing in the '90s, but there is still greatness in the sport from Bud Crawford, who just happens to be from Omaha.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, convenient.

Ross Benes:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Maybe bring Mayweather back to fight them, then someone's got to-

Oscar Orozco:

Oh, please no.

Marcus Johnson:

-register a loss.

Oscar Orozco:

Please no.

Ross Benes:

Yeah, I think they're different weight classes.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh nevermind.

Ross Benes:

But I suspect Mayweather would dodge it.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Oscar Orozco:

That's what he does

Marcus Johnson:

40 years old, not bad. All right, who's up? Is that everyone? Me? All right, American's car ownership. So I've got four stats for you. The first one with regards to US vehicle production. So what kind of cars is America turning out and what people buying? Well in 1975, sedans and wagons, sedan being just a typical car, if you were to draw a car, it would be a sedan, and wagons combined for 81% of car production, including SUVs, that's all wrapped up in this. So 81% of cars or vehicles were sedans and wagons. Today it's 31%. This is from a Visual Capitalist piece. So it went from 81% in '75 to 31% today, that bucket of cars, sedans, and wagons. Over that time, truck SUVs went from 2% share to nearly 40, becoming the most popular vehicle category in the US. So truck, SUVs, have nearly 40% share, sedans and wagons that 31% I mentioned, pickups and car SUVs, it's a different category, have about 13% each. Minivans and vans have 3%. So that's the makeup of cars.

How many cars do American households have each? According to the US Census Bureau, most US households, 92%, had at least one vehicle in 2021. 37% had two. I thought that was quite low. 37% had two. And just 22% had three or more. So that's how many cars people have. What's the most popular car in America? Any guesses?

Ross Benes:

Prius.

Marcus Johnson:

Make and model?

Blake Droesch:

Toyota Corolla.

Marcus Johnson:

No. There are two Toyotas in the top five though.

Blake Droesch:

Honda Civic.

Oscar Orozco:

Acura.

Marcus Johnson:

No. I said there were two Toyotas in the top five and you went with a completely different-

Oscar Orozco:

I'm going for number one.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, okay. Fair enough. No, it's in fifth place is the Camry, Toyota. Fourth place is the Rav4, also Toyota. Ram pickup is third. Chevy Silverado is second. And the Ford F series is number one.

Oscar Orozco:

Wow.

Marcus Johnson:

Tesla, interestingly enough, they broke into the top 10 for the first time, according to Merger Intelligence, coming in sixth with the Model Y. And finally, American's favorite car color according to Forbes Advisor is?

Oscar Orozco:

Red.

Marcus Johnson:

Red is six.

Oscar Orozco:

Blue.

Marcus Johnson:

Blue is fifth.

Blake Droesch:

Black.

Marcus Johnson:

Black is second.

Oscar Orozco:

White?

Marcus Johnson:

And white is first, yeah. 26% say white. 22% say black. Gray, oh, 18%. So if you count up white, black, gray, silver, blue and red, you account for 96% of the most popular car colors. Humans are so-

Oscar Orozco:

So boring.

Marcus Johnson:

-boring. It's awful. I'm surprised. Are you guys surprised that more colors don't have vinyl wraps? If you're a Mets fan, Lakers fan, Bulls fan. Or if you maybe have a business and you just want to promote the business. Or maybe we should get a wrap on a car for the podcast. Get a little free marketing. But I'm surprised more people don't have things plastered on their cars to reflect their fandom or their interests.

Blake Droesch:

Yeah, I'm surprised too, given how obnoxious people are.

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, you see some weird license plates and whatnot, but, yeah, maybe because you're driving around, you'll run into thousands of people a day and it's kind of not private.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Oscar Orozco:

Too much information.

Marcus Johnson:

It would be a lot. Ross, if you could pick one wrestler to have plastered all over your car, who you picking?

Ross Benes:

Oh, Stone Cold.

Oscar Orozco:

Of course, Ross wins the Game of the Week. And the Weekly Listen in it's entirety.

Ross Benes:

That's the bottom line.

Oscar Orozco:

Oh, well played.

Ross Benes:

Oh.

Marcus Johnson:

Keep it coming. That's what we've got time for this episode. Thank you so much to my guests. Thank you to Ross.

Ross Benes:

Thanks Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank you to Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson:

And thank you to this week's winner of the Game of the Week, Blake.

Blake Droesch:

Always a pleasure.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank you to Victoria who edits the show, James who copy edit it, and Stuart who runs the team. Thanks to everyone for listening in. We'll see you guys on Monday, hopefully at the Behind the Numbers Daily. That's An e-Marketer podcast made possible by Awin. Happy Weekends.