The Weekly Listen: Navigating Google's 'AI Overviews', the best new membership perk, and does every brand need a personality?

On today's podcast episode, we discuss why the Atlantic thinks "Google is playing a dangerous game with AI search", the best new membership perk that retailers should introduce, TV networks strategy to deemphasize age, whether every brand needs a personality, why the Taj Mahal was built, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Blake Droesch, Bill Fisher, and Carina Perkins.

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Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson (00:00):

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Hello everyone, and thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind the Numbers Weekly Listen and eMarketer podcast made possible by Roundel. This is the Friday show that still despite living in the states for 10 years, doesn't understand why everyone needs a pickup truck. There's nothing in the back. There's never anything in the back. Blake, explain your country

Blake Droesch (00:45):

From New York City. I've got no stake in the pickup truck argument. I don't even own a car.

Carina Perkins (00:52):

They're popular here in the UK now too. No. Yeah, and there's some kind of company car tax incentive of having a pickup versus a normal car, which is why so many people have them here apparently.

Marcus Johnson (01:05):

So disappointed. Excuse me, I did see someone riding in the back, which I thought it kind of makes sense. Dangerous but practical. Anyway, I'm Marcus, so I am your host in today's show. How to Navigate Google's new AI Search Overviews. What's the best new perk that's missing from membership programs? TV networks are embracing their aging audiences. Does every brand need a personality and some facts about the Taj Mahal?

Marcus Johnson (01:44):

Join me for this episode. We have three people. Let's meet them. We start with our principal analyst who covers everything UK and Western Europe for us. You may have heard his voice around the World Show, but behind the numbers, he's the host of that. It's of course Bill Fisher.

Bill Fisher

Hey Marcus, great to be here.

Marcus Johnson

Hey fella, thank you for hanging out with us today. He is on the south coast of England and a little further down the coast is one of his colleagues, our colleagues. She is also covering the UK and Western Europe senior analyst, Corina Perkins.

Carina Perkins (02:13):

Hi Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (02:14):

Hello there. And why did you say it? Like I just showed up to your house uninvited. You open the door and

Carina Perkins (02:20):

You're like, I can't of get it right. If I do it more enthusiastically, then you tell me that I'm being too enthusiastic, so

Marcus Johnson (02:27):

I just find the middle ground my All right, ready. Corina Perkins.

Carina Perkins (02:30):

Hi Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (02:31):

Nah, I see it's too

Carina Perkins (02:32):

Much. See Blake.

Marcus Johnson (02:35):

Blake. Show out. It's done. Blake, how's it going? Here's one second.

Blake Droesch (02:40):

Good to be here. Great.

Marcus Johnson (02:42):

That's Blake Dro. He's our senior analyst who covers retail in eCommerce based in New York City. Terrible start. What do we have in store for you? We've got three segments, of course, a story of the week, a game, and then we end with some random trivia. Let's start with the story of the week,

Marcus Johnson (03:04):

Navigating Google's new AI search overviews, Carolyn Mims. Nice. The Atlantic thinks that Google is playing a dangerous game with AI search. She explains that even though Google has long included snippets of text at the top of its search results, now Genai is taking things a step further with its new AI overviews that folks might have seen that creates a AI generated answer at the top of the page above any links to outside websites within a week. Google users were pointing to all kinds of inaccuracies though with the new AI tool after it said dogs played professional football and that American football, all kinds of sports actually, and that it's okay to, not that it shouldn't really matter in case you were like, yeah, American football, that makes sense, but it doesn't make sense. But soccer, they of course they play that dogs don't play sports professionally is the point. And it's not okay to eat rocks even though this generative AI from Google said that you can. Google is often the first port of call for health related questions, and these contain the potential for real world harm if answered even just partially incorrectly though Ms. Nice notes, she writes that if these AI overviews are seemingly inconsistent for health advice, a space that Google is committed to going above and beyond in what about all the rest of our searches? Folks, thoughts on this piece?

Carina Perkins (04:27):

This is like a 20, 20 fours version of fake news, isn't it really? In terms of the potential harm, I think if people are looking at this AI overview and taking it for what it says, there is a big potential risk in all sorts of way for health as people have pointed out. But I guess also brand reputation, people's reputation depends kind of what it's making up. So I think it is a real problem and I think it really demonstrates the potential pitfalls of incorporating gen AI at this point in its maturity when we all know that it's not giving a hundred percent answers all the time.

Bill Fisher (05:03):

Did you spot it coming in? Did any of you, because I didn't,

Carina Perkins (05:08):

Has it rolled out in the UK or is it

Bill Fisher (05:11):

Out? I've seen it. I've seen it. I've seen it. As you said, Corina, one of these things is being filter out nonsense. I would like to consider myself reasonably sophisticated tech person, but I wasn't prepared for this rolling out and I was searching something up about a TV program and got this result at the top, which was AI generated, and that was the thing that I took as read and it was completely wrong. Everything in it was wrong and I only picked up on it because one of the characters names in the episode I was searching on was incorrect. But you can imagine that someone less tech sophisticated or knowledgeable around these sorts of things, that will be the correct answer for them. And as you say, that leads to all sorts of issues, right?

Marcus Johnson (06:14):

Yeah,

Blake Droesch (06:15):

I think what this article rightly pointed out is that AI is just sort of building upon issues with Google search that have already been around and have been unresolved for a very long time. But I think this idea of cyber condre that it was this term that they've coined that researchers have coined bait, which is basically getting the worst case scenario medical outcome from a Google search whenever you Google your symptoms is something that is pretty ingrained in the sort of cultural psyche at this point. And that's just sort of one of the many ways in which search engines have been misused for going on decades at this point, generating an answer that it appears to be more concrete and have it visually represented at the top of all of the search results. Seems like essentially it's just sort of compounding an issue that Google or any other search engine has been unable to resolve since it really became popular.

Carina Perkins (07:26):

I think there are also some big questions over where the responsibility lies for the information because at the moment, publishers are responsible for verifying the information on their website. So we know that not everyone is publishing accurate information all the time, but if people are publishing blatantly false accusations about people, then the publishers are held responsible for that. The question is here, if a AI overview is inventing a load of hallucinations about someone say that you typed into a search, where does that responsibility, who's going to be held account for the damage that might do to them?

Bill Fisher (08:00):

Yeah, yeah. I think one of the issues with the Google thing, right? It's the veracity of the large language models or whatever it's using to train its AI on, because one of the examples you didn't mention Marcus, was the glue on pieces to help the cheese stick that was tracked back to a Reddit post. So if Google is pulling in information from Reddits, we're on a track to hell,

Marcus Johnson (08:30):

There's technically a disclaimer, but I doubt many folks, myself included are going to notice it. I only noticed it after I was told about it, one of these articles. But at the bottom of your AI generated answer, it does say generative AI is experimental at the bottom of every AI overview. If they have that higher up, much more prominent, I think that they be able to dodge some of this criticism basically saying, look, here's an answer that's generated by AI in big letters at the top. This is an experiment still, and if you want to go to your regular scheduled programming of results, then you can scroll down, but it's kind of hidden at the bottom so it doesn't really

Blake Droesch (09:12):

Absolve from of this or if there was an option to turn the feature on rather than having it being rolled out as the default. Because that basically puts it in front of people who don't really have a good awareness of what generative AI is right now and sort of the level of sophistication and accuracy of generative ai. So I think that is at the heart of it, it is sort of emblematic of where these tech companies are, is that they're racing so fast to get these tools in front of a mass audience, but they arguably are being irresponsible in sort of the way in which that they are scaling it because they're putting it in front of people who don't fully understand it. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (10:03):

So lemme throw this at you folks before we move to the game. I wonder how much this affects Google because we've seen people get upset with Google before, but ultimately people just keep using Google because it's what we've been using for a very long time. However, this isn't helping Google's reputation and folks are already leaving Google little by little. One example here is in terms of social media, they're searching for things on social. 24% of people said they only or primarily use social media, 24% to search online according to Forbes advisor and talker research study. And there's this other study as well showing 42% of internet users worldwide use social platforms to find information even more, 46% of young folks. So you can see from this chart here as according to gwi, the black bar shows Gen Z. That's 12 points behind the share of young people who use search engines to find things.

Marcus Johnson (11:05):

So 46% for social media versus 58% for search engines. And that's just searching for things in general when people are shopping looking for things, they're starting on Amazon, which we've known for a while, but it's getting even worse for Google. If you look at this chart, it shows when it comes to shopping, most 56% start on Amazon. That's 14 points more than search engines coin to Jungle Scout search engines at 42%, they're down from 49% two years ago. Does this really impact Google that much in terms of usage? Do you think these AI overviews that are spitting out these incorrect results,

Blake Droesch (11:44):

I don't necessarily think that it's an existential threat to Google considering how well they've of integrated their other suite of products into search. So I think when it comes to fact finding shopping, other types of more sort of in-depth research, social media, generative AI certainly can be argued that they're more valuable. But I look at my personal use of Google products and if I need to find out how to get to a restaurant or a friend's house, I'm not going to go to social media, pop that in and then have it redirect me to Google Maps. I think there are plenty of use cases for many users, not just including myself, but it's not everyone but it. Google has a pretty high percentage of people who are using their larger suite of products where search is very well integrated and I think that's going to insulate it from a lot of these search alternatives that serve various use cases, but not all of the use cases that Google can offer.

Marcus Johnson (12:59):

Alright folks, that's what we've got time for the story of the week. Let's move now to the game of the week. Today's game, the super duper game.

Marcus Johnson (13:10):

How's it work? There are three rounds today we have CEO for a day Move the needle and the random scale, the better the answers, the more points you get. Let's play round one is CEO for a day where our contestants pretend to be a CO and for this round we're talking about the best new perk that's missing. So our senior retail analyst, Zach Stanmore, just wrote a piece about some new perks for some well established loyalty membership programs. Number one, Amazon Prime folks now get a free subscription to GrubHub Plus. And number two, Walmart plus people will have access to a member exclusive sale called Walmart plus week, which will be from June 17th to the 23rd with deals including better fuel discounts and free express delivery as well as much more. But if you were CEO for a day, we'll start with Bill. What would be a killer perk for these major retail membership programs like Prime, Walmart plus Target Circle, et cetera? Yeah. If you were CEO for a day, what would you add?

Bill Fisher (14:13):

I was hoping you wouldn't come to me first. I could see what the others said and see if my idea was any good or not. Yeah, I mean free stuff is good, right? It would be something free, but targeted on behaviors. So that may vary depending on who the retailer is. So what I'm thinking is this is kind of borrowing from a healthcare benefit that I have. Vitality health in the uk, it encourages you to stay healthy. So then I'm not using the healthcare and the costs go up up. So by staying healthy, I then get free stuff and my favorite perk is free coffee. So if I do a certain number of steps every week I get a free coffee from Cafe Nero. So something like that I think, and that could go all manner ways. It could encourage shopping behaviors to stuff that you want to promote one month or one week or something to other stuff, but it could be targeted in whatever direction you wanted.

Marcus Johnson (15:21):

Very nice.

Carina Perkins (15:24):

So I'm going to go, I dunno whether this is really boring or genius, perhaps mix with both. And I've actually copied this from two very big retailers in the uk. I would say the number one perk that everyone wants as part of a membership is lower prices. So I'm not talking about access to a one week sale, I'm not talking about discounts of partner products, I'm talking about permanently lower prices to members. So this is something that Tesco's doing in the UK with its club card scheme. It's something that Sainbury's doing with its neck to scheme and I think it's a really, really clever approach because rather than trying to compete on price across the board with other retailers, they're offering much lower prices to their members, which encourages then loyalty, it generates a lot of loyalty data, which they can then use for their retail media programs, which they can then use the revenue from to fund the price cuts for their members. So I think that is the simplest and the best people are obsessed with price at the moment. That's not going to change. I think people want lower prices.

Marcus Johnson (16:28):

Nice Blake.

Blake Droesch (16:31):

So a lot of these retail memberships include some sort of ad supported streaming subscription, but none of them offer any access to live TV packages. And I think that would be really an amazing tie-in probably financially extremely irresponsible. It would be sort of akin to the shrimp that ended Red Lobster, but I think that CEO is still around. So I would include a streaming package where you get access to Hulu Live tv, sling, FUO, something like that because then you have all this media that you can use to power your retail media network and target ads on streaming platforms. So if I'm a Target member and I have watching the Mets game on fubu, they can serve me ads based on my data, which is what a lot of retailers are doing with their partnerships with media companies. So why not go beyond streaming on demand and do go over the top

Marcus Johnson (17:40):

Blake's willing to torpedo the company for the sake of a good idea.

Blake Droesch (17:45):

I think it's a data play going to, how's the bottom line going to pan out? I don't know. I'll have my accountant look into it. It's CEO, not CFO. Right?

Marcus Johnson (17:59):

I know. I'm just glad you're not the CEO of our company. What do you mean we're buying the Mets? It doesn't seem financially prudent.

Blake Droesch (18:04):

We could actually probably get a good deal on the mess right now, so don't speak too

Marcus Johnson (18:08):

Soon. That's true. Very good answers folks. Very good indeed. Let's move to round two. It's called Move the Needle Folks. Tell me how much this story will move the needle out of 10 TV networks embraced their aging audience rights, Isabella Simonetti and Jo Flynn to the Wall Street Journal. They explained that for years media execs built their pitches to advertisers around the idea that they could reach the coveted 18 to 49-year-old audiences. However, the piece notes the hard reality these days is that most people watching TV are older than those groups. Quantum Nielsen among cable channels, the median age for TNT and Bravo viewers is 56 M-S-N-B-C. Fox News and CNN have a median age of close to 70 and CBS's median age is 64. The journal last call says that media execs are now focusing more on the mass market reach of TV and playing down the importance of age ram advertisers as they attempt to make the most of the TV audience they do have. We'll start with Corina playing Move The Needle. How much can TV networks embracing their older TV audiences move the needle for advertising out of 10?

Carina Perkins (19:14):

I'm going to give this a two because I think not really is my personal opinion. I think on the one hand it does make perfect sense because older generations have more disposable income often, and as they said that that is the reality of the TV audiences. But I don't really think that this new approach is going to stop the flow of ad dollars away from TV because I agree that perhaps a generational approach isn't the one that people should be following, but advertisers do want to be able to target more to the individual now than to the group. And I think that that kind of targeted advertising isn't something that's available as far as I'm aware on cable tv. It is something that's possible in CTV now slightly more with the developments around tie-ups with retail media networks. So I think it's interesting, but I don't think it's going to be a huge game changer personally.

Marcus Johnson (20:07):

Okay, so out of 10,

Blake Droesch (20:10):

Yeah, I mean it doesn't really seem like it's not a decision made about based on innovation, it's sort of based on desperation, right? I mean that's the only market left, so why not pivot and build your business model around it? But at the end of the day, I don't think it really does anything to reassure advertisers in sort of that core appeal of TV advertising, which was scale. And I think as Karina pointed out, you could still target older demographics on other platforms as well as younger demographics and other slices that you want to reach and it's just more precise and it's more targeted. And I don't really see how this play is going to make the industry as a whole more appealing for advertisers. It's true that yes, older people have more spending power, but they're also less susceptible to switch to new brands. They have less cultural influence. So appealing to them is also it's less relevant for brands. I think there are a whole number of reasons as to why this is just sort of a move because it's the only move left,

Marcus Johnson (21:28):

Bill?

Bill Fisher (21:29):

Yeah, I wouldn't say desperation. I'd just say reality. So essentially agreeing with what Blake said, because this is the reality of where we're at with tv, this is where audiences are. There are obviously on other platforms as well, but TV is still incredibly effective and you've got a bunch of old people really invested in this. So why wouldn't you lean in that direction and offer those with an interest in older audiences, a better route into those audiences? So I'm going to be slightly more positive. I'll give it a five out of

Marcus Johnson (22:03):

Ten five. Blake, it sounds like a zero for you, maybe one.

Blake Droesch (22:07):

Yeah, I guess I would give it a two as well.

Marcus Johnson (22:10):

Oh, a two as well.

Blake Droesch (22:10):

I agree with Corina.

Marcus Johnson (22:11):

Yeah, very nice. I thought what was fascinating is this was in the piece different age groups watching the same show on different channels. So what I mean by that is they say the median age of an Abbott elementary viewer is 61 on A, B, C and 36 on streaming and then according to Nielsen, and then the same near 30 year age discrepancy for the Bachelor people watching on traditional TV versus people watching on streaming. So yeah, it just shows how important that medium is versus necessarily the programming. Alright folks heading into round three. Queena is out in front by a point, so four for her, Blake and Bill tied with three final round. Round three is the random scale. Folks have to tell me how they feel about the answer based on four choices from the random scale we're talking about, does every brand need a personality?

Marcus Johnson (23:06):

If your brand doesn't have a personality, you better get one. ASAP Reads an Ink article written by the Entrepreneurs Organization. The piece suggests that in a content world increasingly dominated by ai, the problem has shifted from producing more content to crafting content with character and a distinctive brand personality. They suggest asking if your brand were a person, who would it be? What values would it stand for? What is its motive? These questions help create a persona that your audience can connect with. It says we'll start with Blake, we moved to the random scale here. So does every brand user personality is the question and the scale for today, lowest to highest is first option is no brand needs a personality. What the hell are we doing? The second one is only a select few like fill in the blank most. But there are a few exceptions like fill in the blank and every brand needs to have had one yesterday, so hell no. A few people, most and every brand's, Blake, Europe,

Blake Droesch (24:13):

I would go with every brand needs to have had one yesterday. This is not necessarily like a new take. I think you could maybe make the argument that it's getting more important just as it always is. But people have been talking about brand authenticity for decades and I think the whole idea behind having a strong creative agency behind your brand, consistency in your brand's voice, reaching your targeted audience in an authentic way. I mean these are sort of tenants of advertising that have existed for generations. Yes. Things are becoming, we're moving away from an element of humanity and creativity with certain technologies developing. I think that whole narrative is maybe more of a threat or a concern that it is exactly a reality at this point, but at the end of the day, the authentic brand is the one that's going to stand out. That was true yesterday. It's true today and it'll be true in the years to come, even if generative AI and other technologies become more t

Marcus Johnson (25:37):

Become Bill.

Bill Fisher (25:39):

Yeah, I concur. Every brand's going to have a audience and you need to speak to that audience in a relatable way. That's what your brand personality is or should be. Even brands who maybe feel they don't really need a particular personality because they're very stoic and exciting, but that in itself is part of a personality. You think Volvo built its whole reputation on being safe and responsible and a little bit boring. So yeah, I think everyone needs a, brands do have a personality if I'm honest. They might just not know it.

Marcus Johnson (26:19):

Corina.

Carina Perkins (26:21):

Yeah, I mean I agree every brand needs to have had one yesterday. I'm kind of surprised this is even a topic of conversation to be honest, because as Blake said, that kind of brand personality, that brand story, it's been important for a very long time. I think maybe what's changing more than the AI angle is that brands can't really get away with false personalities anymore. So in the past we've had brands who perhaps have a personality on paper but don't quite reflect that in all of their business practices and everything they're doing. And I think that's something that increasingly they can't get away with because there's so much more information available on the internet. And Gen Z are very savvy when it comes to brands really living their values. So I think what's more of a conversation in that brands need to have a personality as to is that personality really reflecting their actual business and their values and everything they do rather than just what they say.

Marcus Johnson (27:19):

Yeah, it seems like an obvious thing in terms of this is everyone should have one, but I feel like if I listed out like a thousand companies, very few would I select to say yes, they have one and I know what it is. I feel like so many people are still getting this wrong. Is that a fair statement?

Carina Perkins (27:35):

I don't think every brand has to be an innocent, I don't think every brand has to be wacky or controversial or

Marcus Johnson (27:42):

Right.

Carina Perkins (27:44):

Yeah, but they should understand what their personality is when they're writing copy.

Marcus Johnson (27:51):

Very good folks. The end of the game, we move to the scores this week's winner. Corina is this week's winner of the super duper game. Six points. Bill five, Blake, four. Congratulations to you. Corina maybe deserve some more points, but it's okay. Not really. You should be happy with four Karina, you get the championship out. And the last word,

Carina Perkins (28:19):

I'd like to dedicate my win to my new marketer merchandise.

Marcus Johnson (28:24):

Very nice.

Carina Perkins (28:26):

I believe it's because I'm wearing the T-shirt.

Marcus Johnson (28:30):

It's because the other two were rubbish. That's the main reason. Why don't I have one of those? Where'd you get that from? To

Carina Perkins (28:47):

Around Nomad

Marcus Johnson (28:50):

Around. I do. Very nice folks. Excellent game. Let's move now to 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'll start with Queena because she

Carina Perkins (29:11):

Won. So I was having a little think about aging populations on the back of our story on aging TV audiences. And so I thought it'd be interesting to have a look at some of the ages of different countries. And according to c.gov, which by the way I never knew is website either. The median age in the UK is 40.8 years, which is younger than neighbors. Italy at 48.4, Germany at 46.8, Spain at 46.8 and France at 42.6. It's also older than the US though, which is 38.9. Canada is 42.6. But what's really interesting is that the country, the oldest median age in the world is Monaco, which has an average age of 56.9, and that's nearly four times the average age in Nigeria, which is the world's youngest country with a median age of 15.2 years.

Marcus Johnson (30:09):

Wow. I was going to say Japan, are they up there?

Carina Perkins (30:12):

Yeah, they are in the top five I think.

Marcus Johnson (30:14):

Okay, Monaco, is that because what is it, one third of residents and millionaires?

Carina Perkins (30:23):

Yeah, I imagine so not many Gen Z

Marcus Johnson (30:26):

Millionaires. No, very good. Let's go Blake.

Blake Droesch (30:34):

I was reading, again, reading this article about TV viewers and I saw these interesting statistics that caught my eye about the median age of cable news audiences. So MSNBC's median age is 70, Fox News is 69 and CNN's is 67, which kind of got me thinking like I thought about my own media consumption habits and you think about what other people perceive to be the media habits of younger Americans and which would be, no one watches the news, no one reads, it's all TikTok and Twitter and whatever. So I was just curious to see how that compared to print newspapers or digital news and the median ages for Readerships of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal is actually a lot younger. So for the New York Times, roughly 29% of their readers are 30 to 49 and another 27% are 18 to 29. And actually the lowest percentage, 13% are 50 to 64.

Blake Droesch (31:53):

So they actually have a younger readership as well as the Wall Street Journal. They, according to one of their audience profile documents, the average age of their reader is 43. So not super young, but still significantly younger than cable news audiences, which I guess in my personal opinion, I think it's probably a lot more healthy and productive for younger people to be engaging with the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal than it is maybe an oversaturated diet of cable news. So I thought that that was just interesting to look at it from a little bit of a bigger than what the article focused on, which was just cable news.

Marcus Johnson (32:44):

Yeah, you got some TV in there, some print. I wonder where Radio lives Radio go on.

Blake Droesch (32:50):

Just because I have a brother who works in radio and the statistics, and we've talked about this on the show before, radio is still surprisingly relevant because of the fact that so many folks in the US commute and the radio is still a big part of that. So obviously I think it still skews older, but when you look at I think our e-marketer numbers, the penetration for the percentage of the US population for radio listenership is still higher than you'd

Marcus Johnson (33:24):

Think. And by community you mean drive, right? There were some numbers we were drive, yeah. Looking at the other day, which showed that all the different ways people get around by region of the world and North America in this instance was US and Canada was 90% drive, 5% walk-in cycle, 5% public transport. Whereas the European average was something like 40% drive, 30% train or bus, 30% walk or cycle. Very interesting. Let's go to Bill.

Bill Fisher (33:56):

Okay. I didn't get the memo that this had to be about median ages. Seems both of those guys had a similar tilt. This is just a sporting fact, an interesting fact I learned last week, and I want to share with our audience who I know is slightly US leaning and it relates to sport that is very much not US leaning and that's cricket. Why

Marcus Johnson (34:19):

Golf was bad enough. Blake bringing up every episode. Go on.

Bill Fisher (34:23):

The international T 20 Cricket World Cup is currently happening in the US as we speak. In case you didn't know,

Marcus Johnson (34:31):

No one knew I didn't.

Bill Fisher (34:34):

It's happening in New York as well. They built a stadium especially for it. Anyway, the US has a team, as does Canada as well as all the other traditional nations like England, Australia, India and so on. But anyway, the fact I learned last week was that the first ever international cricket match happened in 1844 and it was between the US and Canada get that.

Marcus Johnson (35:04):

No way

Bill Fisher (35:05):

True. The first ever cricket match was in 1598 in Surrey, but the first international match between two countries was US and Canada.

Marcus Johnson (35:17):

And then after that match they went, nah, it's not worth

Bill Fisher (35:20):

Pretty much

Marcus Johnson (35:21):

No one showed up. Two

Bill Fisher (35:22):

Face falling instead

Marcus Johnson (35:24):

Scrap this. Huh? Very interesting. Just for American, not everyone in England likes cricket. Okay, so I apologize profusely for bill's

Blake Droesch (35:35):

Has ever the second most popular sport.

Marcus Johnson (35:38):

The second best we've got. Yeah, I think you'll find it is Blake well spotted Korean. You're not cricket

Blake Droesch (35:43):

Personally. And it's also maybe this up there in terms of being the most popular sports in the world. Yep.

Marcus Johnson (35:52):

Yeah. Thanks India. Karina Cricket.

Carina Perkins (35:58):

Not really. There we go. Good game of rounders. I'm

Marcus Johnson (36:01):

So glad That's why you won the game of good game of rounders. We didn't have time to get into that. America. It's baseball with all the fun. Stripped out. Okay, let's move to, oh no, it's everyone. Let's move to me, everyone for you real quick. Speaking of India and cricket being the religion in that country, India's most visited tourist attraction, Taj Mahal, some facts about the Taj Mahal. Who's Ben? Anyone Ben?

Marcus Johnson (36:28):

No, no. Yeah. Not as many people as I would've thought have visited or visit every year. So what is it? So the Mag Emperor Shahan ordered the construction of the white marble morum in Agra India as a tomb for his most beloved wife Mum TAs Al, who died in childbirth in 1631, completed in 1653. So the Taj Mahal took over 20 years to build 20,000 workers and 1000 elephants to build. They moved building materials around. It cost 1 billion in today's money to construct. That's a bargain. It's beautiful. The Taj Maha appears to be of different colors at different times of the day. It's pinkish in the morning, milky white in the evening, and golden when the moon shines. About seven to 8 million folks visit each year. Over 85% visit from within India. So 15% come from abroad. And in 2015, travel and Leisure said it was the 50th five zero most visited tourist traction in the world. I thought that was really low

Carina Perkins (37:44):

In case anyone's interested, that average median age in India is 29.8 years.

Marcus Johnson (37:50):

This is a horrible end to the show. Oh, I think I've done those on an episode once before. The most visited is according to this, 2015 was the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul with nearly 92 million visitors. Then the Z Carlo, Mexico City. I probably said that wrong then. Times Square in New York. Yeah. But just eight, seven to 8 million

Marcus Johnson (38:28):

For the Taj Mahar. Yeah, absolutely stunned by that. It's beautiful. It's just the most beautiful thing in the world. It's absolutely incredible. Yeah, yeah. Fortunate enough to go. It is not the easiest thing to get to. So maybe that's part of the reason because it's in Agra. It's not like it's in Delhi and you can just go and oh, there it happens to be like if you go to Paris, it's just like, oh there's the Eiffel Tower. Or in New York. Oh, there's Times Square it takes a little bit of getting to, but it's one of the most dang things I've ever seen in my life. It's remarkable to sit and look at it for just hours on end. Alright folks, that's all we've got time for this episode. Thank you so much to my guests for today. Thank you to Karina. Thanks Marcus. This week's winner of the Game of the week. Thank you to Bill. Thanks for having me. Thank you to Blake and thanks to Victoria who edits the show. Stuart, who runs the team, Sophie who does on social media. Lance, who helps out with our video podcast. John, who's editing this episode, Danny, who's been producing this video podcast. And thanks to everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday for the Behind the Numbers Daily and e-Marketer podcast Made possible by Round Dell happy weekends,

Marcus Johnson (39:34):

Go see the Taj Mark.