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Marcus Johnson (00:00):

Consumers skip ads, those sneaky individuals, but they don't skip rewards, thank goodness. That would be madness. Fetch drives performance with over 12 and a half million monthly active users and 11 and a half million receipts scanned daily, capturing 88% of household spend. Your brand becomes the reward, that's nice, earning real engagement, verified purchases and loyalty. Fetch, it's America's rewards app, where brands are the center of joy.

(00:36):

Hey, gang, it's Friday, October 17th, Eleni, Yory and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast made possible by Fetch Rewards. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation, we have VP of global content operations, living over in the UK, it's Eleni Digalaki.

Eleni Digalaki (00:55):

Hey. Hi, Marcus. Thanks for having me. Hi everybody.

Marcus Johnson (00:57):

Hello there. Of course. Welcome to the show. We're also joined by a principal analyst, who heads up our media, tech and ad teams, based in New Jersey, it's Yory Wurmser.

Yory Wurmser (01:04):

Hey, Marcus. Glad to be here.

Marcus Johnson (01:05):

Hey, fella. Happy to have you. Today's fact. Elevators, or lifts, are the single most used form of transportation on Earth. Now, I'm playing fast and loose with the word transportation, but bear with me. Every day, people take roughly 18 billion, 1-8 billion, elevator trips in a single day. That's more than the world's car, plane and train journeys combined. That's too much elevator. Like all transport, there is a lot of waiting around. The average office worker, you'll be furious to learn, spends more than a year of their life just waiting for elevators to come. Destination dispatch systems, like the ones we have in our New York office, works to group folks together who are going to the same place, to the same floor, to help save time and energy, I guess. Altogether, elevators move the equivalents of the Earth's population, eight billion people, every three days.

Yory Wurmser (02:22):

That is amazing. Those are amazing numbers. I never would've guessed, if you had asked me what was the most used form of transportation, elevators would've come in about on the third day, toward the end of a wait for an elevator up to our office, in fact.

Marcus Johnson (02:39):

It doesn't seem like... Transportation's generous.

Yory Wurmser (02:41):

Yeah.

Eleni Digalaki (02:42):

Yeah, it's generous.

Marcus Johnson (02:43):

Okay. Thanks, Eleni.

Eleni Digalaki (02:46):

But those numbers did make me feel good that I'm working from home three times a week, probably missing more like two, three months a year on this transportation.

Marcus Johnson (02:59):

You're welcome, that's the good parts of working from home, save that time. Anyway, today's real topic, what we've learned about digital in 2025. So Eleni, you and Vlad Hanzlik, who runs content for us, just published a new piece of research looking at the must-watch trends digital leaders should be paying attention to this year and beyond. I liked this piece of research because it shows the main ways that digital has changed this year, and then obviously you're looking to the future, but I thought it's just nice to recap. A lot of times, towards the end of the year, we look forward and we're just looking at 2026 trends, and it's nice just to say, well, what's changed this year? We rarely spend a lot of time looking at, from January to now, what's different and acknowledging those changes. So I asked Eleni and Yory to tell me which charts or pieces of data best define how digital has changed the most this year for them, either from this research or from some other place. Eleni, what's one of yours?

Eleni Digalaki (04:06):

Well, the way you framed it makes it kind of inaccurate, because my first one looks at how it's changed over the last five years, Marcus, five years.

Marcus Johnson (04:18):

Okay [inaudible 00:04:19] five great. Okay, but from five years to today.

Eleni Digalaki (04:22):

Okay, yeah, today.

Marcus Johnson (04:23):

Okay, yeah, that's true.

Eleni Digalaki (04:25):

And this research is more of a compilation of some of our favorite charts from this year that showcase exactly how digital is shifting, so they all are housed in different reports and are part of other analysts' research as well, but I think when brought together, they also tell a very interesting story.

(04:43):

And so, the first one that I have is one that looks at the triopoly's share of total ad spend and also digital ad spend, and triopoly is definitely one of our words, I don't know how much we've popularized it, but that's Google, Meta and Amazon. And so, what we're seeing here, which is quite interesting, is that their share of total ad spend is rising, it's risen roughly 12 percentage points over the last five years, but it's only increasing because digital is increasing as a whole. So they're riding that digital wave, but they're not actually gaining ground within digital. So in fact, their grip on digital is slipping. It has declined two percentage points over that same period, which sounds modest, but I think it's quite meaningful in that it indicates a less concentrated market, a more competitive market.

(05:42):

And also, I think it's even more stark if we take Amazon out of the picture. Amazon has been riding the retail media wave over that period, and their share has actually increased. So if we take that out, I think Google and Meta have seen their share drop by roughly six percentage points over the last five years, so I think that's quite an interesting number.

Marcus Johnson (06:03):

Yeah, a lot happening over that time. Just to key in on what's happened from 2024 to 2025 with regards to those players, Google has lost over a percent, 1.2% share, Meta is up a tiny bit, but pretty much flat, and Amazon has gained as well, to what Eleni was saying, Amazon is the outlier there that's keeping the triopoly's share up. You mentioned the word competition, Eleni, where is this competition coming from the most?

Eleni Digalaki (06:37):

Yeah. So if you see in the graph, there's this other digital that's been growing its share over the same period, and it's becoming a fourth pillar of digital advertising, and there are a lot of fast-growing channels there and platforms across connected TV, retail media and social. So the likes of Walmart, TikTok, Reddit, Peacock, I think, are some of those platforms that have been growing the fastest over that period.

Yory Wurmser (07:07):

That said, we shouldn't overstate it as well, I think it's a totally valid point, but they're still around 60%, I think that's right, they're still around 60% share, holding somewhat steady. They're dipping a little bit, but their dips are pretty small. And Meta, Amazon and Google are all pretty well-positioned to grow in the AI era. Google is probably the most threatened, just with search, but it also has some of the best AI technology out there, so it might actually ride the wave and do pretty well. Completely interesting and valid that the numbers are going down a bit, but at the same time, just want to point out that we don't want to overstate it as well.

Eleni Digalaki (07:55):

Yeah, I agree. That's a good point, Yory.

Marcus Johnson (07:57):

Yeah. And the total of dollars as well are still extremely healthy, so even though the shares are going down, we have, looking at Google here for a second, they're making in the US, we expect them to make $4 billion more this year than they did last year, we expect Meta to make nearly $7, $8 billion more this year than they did last year, Amazon are obviously going up as well. So the dollars are looking very good, it's just their share, because the pie is growing and they're not growing as fast as the pie. So you mentioned Google here, Yory, one of your major digital trends is to do with YouTube, owned by Google, what do you have for us?

Yory Wurmser (08:39):

One of the charts in this report that Eleni and Vlad put together show just a huge number of minutes that YouTube captures in the US, it's the leading media in the US in terms of time spent. And if you look at it on a global scale, more people in the world view YouTube than any other media, two and a half billion people, so it's a huge media in terms of attention. And yet, in the US, YouTube only nets about $10 billion in ad revenues, and if you look at the gross figures, so the numbers that are actually earned by YouTube, some of which shared with creators, that's only $20 billion. When you look at Meta, it's $73 billion, Google is a little bit more than that, Google as a whole is more than that. So it's a very under-monetized media property, very profitable, but I think that differential between time spent and attention in general and ad revenue is going to be something that will probably shrink in the years going forward. It's a significantly under-monetized property.

Marcus Johnson (09:59):

So what's going on there? Because you're spot on, I was looking at this as well, despite having 20 million more US users than Facebook, YouTube has four times fewer ad dollars. How does YouTube, Yory, close this gap, and can they, is that something that they're able to do?

Yory Wurmser (10:18):

I think they can close the gap. A part of it is just through AI targeting. It's always been relatively lightly monetized compared to its attention. I think Google has shifted its attention to YouTube. Some of it is also it has a subscription, YouTube TV, which has longer programs with less advertising. So I think as YouTube figures out how to monetize the longer form TV, as well as targeting better with new ad formats, new shoppable ad formats within YouTube in all of its content, I think that that should drive up the ad revenues. I'm not sure if it'll ever get to Meta's level, but it should shrink the gap.

Eleni Digalaki (11:12):

Yeah, I think there's definitely an opportunity gap there. We have a report, The YouTube Opportunity, that talks about some of the key barriers that are maintaining that gap, and I think a part of it is how fragmented the platform is. There are many different formats and many different contexts for creative content, and there's not a lot of premium content, so brand safety is an issue. And then, measurement is quite difficult and attribution when you have this also fragmentation and complexity of the platform. I do think it's a big gap though and there's a real opportunity there, and I do expect it to shrink over time, like you already said, and I think maybe with AI, adjusting creative to fit different types of formats and contexts will also become easier, which will be to the benefit of advertisers looking to take more advantage of YouTube's scale and time spent and attention.

Marcus Johnson (12:21):

Yeah. YouTube's scale is still growing. In the US, they're going to add another five million viewers this year, and each of the next four years, I think they're adding about four or five million up until at least 2029, when our forecast goes out to, and they're adding a further 60 million, 6-0 million viewers worldwide this year alone, so still somehow swallowing up people on the planet and adding them to their user base. Eleni, what do you have for us next, what else do you think people should be paying attention to in digital?

Eleni Digalaki (12:53):

Oh, right. So next, I'm moving into e-commerce, to mix it up a little bit, and there's an interest infographic in our report that shows that the categories with high e-commerce penetration will be the ones to increase their lead over time, so looking now from today, up to 2029 essentially. And you have some categories with very high e-commerce penetration, like books and toys and computers, and all those categories will increase by at least six percentage points, or up to 10 percentage points, over that period in terms of the penetration. And then, you have other categories that are lower in penetration and will stay low, so the increase will range at 1%, 2%, which is much lower, so that spread will widen.

(13:45):

I think it's an interesting story. It might be somewhat intuitive in that it signals that the categories that are largely offline are offline for a reason, there are some structural barriers that keep them there and that's why they won't shift online as meaningfully as some other categories. And similarly, some other categories, like toys or books, the tactile experience doesn't matter, it's quite easy to ship them, you understand how they work, you don't need to see them to buy them, and so again, it's intuitive as to why they'll be growing their lead.

(14:23):

But I think what's most interesting there is that some other categories in the high penetration, like apparel, which will grow like six percentage points over that period, or even within household, which is one of the low categories, but one that will gain quite a bit, four percentage points, even more if we look at beauty as a subcategory there, they have some of the same barriers that food might have in terms that I feel like the tactile experience is important, trying clothes on and seeing if they fit or not, some of the return logistics. But they've made meaningful strides, I think, in those areas, and they'll continue making, potentially AI will also help with that, some of the 3D try-ons and so on, and that's why they're moving more meaningfully than auto, say, or food. So it's interesting to see those categories that have broken through those barriers, and actually, apparel will be, I think, e-commerce first subcategory, by the end of our period, it's going to be 51% online, so it's quite a big milestone.

Marcus Johnson (15:32):

Yeah. This one is really interesting to see, because you're saying the very highly penetrated categories, I believe you said books, toys, computers, they are over 50%, some of them well over, closer to 60%, 70%, and they have the biggest growth, they're seeing the biggest growth from now to 2029. And then, some of the other ones on the other end, food, beverage, they're very low penetrated, they're probably around 10% or lower in some instances, auto and parts lower. It's quite interesting.

(16:02):

Yory, what do you make of this? Because on the one hand, I understand the food and beverage piece, people like going to the store and a lot of it's produce. It's not all produce, a lot of it is paper goods, it's things in boxes, it's stuff which you buy all the time, it's bottled water, the things that you could just replenish, you don't need to go and see them. It's the same with auto, to a certain extent, brake pads are brake pads, and I don't think picking them off a shelf and looking at them... Some of these categories, I think they should be more highly penetrated. What's your take on this chart?

Yory Wurmser (16:36):

I think that there are different reasons for auto and for food. So for food, you're right, a lot of these packaged goods could easily shift into e-commerce. The thing is a lot of people will still go in for perishable goods, frozen foods, produce, and while they're there, they'll pick up the packaged goods, so I think that's probably holding back some of the e-commerce share for packaged goods. With cars, there are all types of barriers, you have dealer barriers. AI could meaningfully change the experience of buying a car in the sense that you could really do a lot of the comparison shopping. Depending on how AI develops, you could almost take an AR, an augmented reality test drive of the different cars and so forth. But I think one of the things that's holding it back is people love shopping for a car, oftentimes part of the experience is trying the different cars.

Marcus Johnson (17:38):

Yeah. Eleni, you were saying before we hit record, you were talking about how AI shopping assistants might change some of this category growth, are there any here that you could see it really affecting?

Eleni Digalaki (17:49):

Yeah, so good question. I want to plug Carina's recent report on AI shopping assistants, because I fully buy its arguments and its main take, which is that in the near future, it won't meaningfully change the penetration, because they do offer greater convenience, in many ways, they collapse the funnel, we might see an increase in average order values, but they don't really right now address the bigger barriers that have to do with what's keeping in-store strong, and again, those are the things like the tactile experiences or the immediacy that I want something now and it's going to be quicker versus waiting on a long delivery window. So some of the barriers, but also some of the things that consumers want. So consumers apparently like, I say apparently because I don't relate, I do everything online, but the social interaction that comes with shopping as well, not just the tactile experience and trying something on, but just seeing people, talking to people, there's an appeal to that.

Marcus Johnson (19:04):

Not for you though, apparently.

Eleni Digalaki (19:07):

I love talking to you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (19:09):

Okay, thanks, yeah. This doesn't count. You're inside still.

Eleni Digalaki (19:14):

It's true, it's true, you caught me. So I think it won't meaningfully shift online, any of the categories, in the near future. Yory, would you agree with that take?

Yory Wurmser (19:30):

Yeah, I do agree. The one area where I think that might get an early impact from these chatbots is going to be in apparel with better try-on features. I think as the AI gets better and you can actually try on these outfits to see how they look without actually going into the store and trying them on, I think that might boost apparel online purchases. But otherwise, I basically agree, that part of what shopping is is entertainment, and I think that won't meaningfully be changed by chatbots, at least in the near-term.

Marcus Johnson (20:10):

Speaking of chatbots, speaking of AI, Yory, your last one is in that space.

Yory Wurmser (20:17):

It is. In this chart, can see that OpenAI, or ChatGPT, has gone from 200 million weekly users in February 2024 to 800 million in October. So right now, about 800 million users, so just a huge growth, and ChatGPT has really entered the realm of a mega app. It hasn't hit that billion user threshold that is often used for that, but it's heading there and it'll probably reach that pretty soon.

(20:59):

At the same time, it's still very early days in terms of its impact on advertising on e-commerce. They've introduced a few e-commerce tools. A very small amount of referral traffic is actually coming from these chatbots. Now, part of that has to do with zero click, you're getting your answer on the chatbot. But part of it is people aren't really using it too much for commerce type of inquiries yet. My colleague, Nate Elliott, just produced a report, just published a report, that showed only about 3% of discovery time, which means search and inquiry time, is happening on chatbots as opposed to traditional search, that is from Comscore, so just a really small amount of discovery time. And in terms of referral, it's about 1%, according to GEO company, Generative Engine Optimization Company, BrightEdge. So its impact is still small, but the size of the audience indicates that big change is coming.

Marcus Johnson (22:07):

Why is it still so small?

Yory Wurmser (22:10):

Part of it is that the people are still going to Google for commerce information, they have a lot better and richer data when it comes to what's available in the nearest store, cost comparisons. People are often going to ChatGPT for deeper research. A lot of the time spent on ChatGPT doesn't have to do with trying to compare, ask a question about a product, it has to do with themselves, what is this a symptom of, a health thing. But even more than that, they're using it as a tool to write things, to create things, and even to use it as a therapist, even though that's probably a fairly small portion of it, but there are a lot of use cases for it that aren't commerce-related.

Marcus Johnson (23:11):

Yeah, yeah. Eleni, what are your thoughts on this one?

Eleni Digalaki (23:14):

I think it's also about that it's early consumer behavior where we haven't yet learned to ask AI to search for things that we want to buy that require clicking through. I'm thinking back to when it first launched and it didn't even have up-to-date information, and the way we learned to use it is just for more knowledge-based questions. I think still the way that we use it is to inquire and to ask questions, that's the primary use case. Just as Yory said, it's information-seeking rather than something that has to do with commerce.

Marcus Johnson (23:54):

Yeah. We'll see if that changes, because we just did an episode on Wednesday of this week where I was guest hosting the retail show and we were talking about how ChatGPT's instant checkout changes things, and that was with Carina and Zak, so that's brand new, maybe that will move the needle somewhat. Well, Eleni and Vlad's full report is called 10 Charts that Define Digital Markets in 2025 and Beyond. PRO+ subscribers can find it at emarketer.com. Link, of course, is in the show notes. Or all those other reports we mentioned from Carina Perkins on AI shopping assistants, I think we mentioned, and then Nate Elliot, who wrote about AI, we've got the YouTube advertising opportunity report as well, tons and tons and stuff there, so head there if you're a subscriber, or if you're not, then become one. That's all we have time for for today's episode. Thank you so much to my guests. Thank you first to Eleni.

Eleni Digalaki (24:48):

Thank you, Marcus. Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson (24:50):

Yes, indeed. And thank you to Yory.

Yory Wurmser (24:52):

Great being here as always. Thanks, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (24:53):

And thanks, of course, to the whole editing crew. And thanks to everyone for listening into Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast made possible by Fetch Rewards. Make sure you subscribe and follow and leave a rating and review if you can. We'll be back on Monday, happiest of weekends.