Children will make up 13% of the US population this year, making the future Gen Alpha about 46 million strong so far, per the US Census Bureau. Within that group, 26% will be Hispanic, compared with 19% for the general population. Some 7% will be two or more races, versus 3% for the overall population.

The scale of FTX’s bankruptcy has placed it among the biggest bankruptcies in financial services history, where it sits fourth behind only WorldCom, Enron, and Lehman Brothers. However, there’s a chance of an even bigger disaster if Tether goes down.

Digital ad spend will grow the fastest in Latin America this year, with Peru leading the pack, according to our forecast. While Argentina and Chile will also rank high by this measure, none of the three countries will crack the global top 10 for total digital ad spend.

In the US, 56% of Gen Z adults prefer to buy from companies that reflect their social values, according to Morning Consult. Gen Z’s figure is slightly lower than those of other generations, with Gen X at 61% and baby boomers and millennials at 59% each.

Travelers may want to let loose on vacation, but they want their premium travel credit cards to be locked down tight. The most in-demand feature of these cards is free identity theft insurance, with 53% of prospective users in the US saying it was “extremely valuable” to them, according to our “US Premium Travel Credit Card Emerging Features Benchmark 2022” report.

After several years of double-digit increases, worldwide digital ad spending saw growth slow to 8.6% in 2022, for a total of $567.49 billion, according to our forecast. This year, growth will rebound to 10.5%, and spend will reach $626.86 billion.

Nearly 50% of social network users in Thailand will be TikTok users, giving the country the highest TikTok penetration in the world, according to our forecast. The US will rank second, with 45.3% of its social users on TikTok. We expect penetration in the US will be as high as 49.1% by the end of 2026.

Facebook and YouTube will still be the top US social media platforms for buying ads or monetizing content this year, though their dominance is eroding, according to October 2022 polling by Integral Ad Science.

This year, US retail returns volume will reach $627.34 billion, representing 8.5% of all retail sales, according to our forecast. After surging in 2020 and 2021 (due to the pandemic ecommerce boom and stimulus-driven boost in consumer spending), growth normalized last year and will continue to slow through 2024.

Gen Z will make up 20% of the population in the US this year, putting it solidly in line with millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers, per the US Census Bureau. That said, 42% of Gen Zers will still be minors, and as a result their spending power will remain below that of older generations.

This year, card-not-present (CNP) fraud will account for $9.49 billion in loss, up 8.5% over last year, according to our data. CNP will make up 73.0% of card payment fraud loss this year, up from 57.0% in 2019.

US venture capital funding of generative AI was up 27% year over year in 2022, hitting $1.4 billion, according to PitchBook. That money, however, was spread among fewer deals—78 last year compared with 85 in 2021. Nonetheless, it represents a massive increase from 2020, when funding totaled $200 million.

Retail media was the fastest-growing digital ad channel worldwidein Q3 2022, with retail media spend increasing 45% versus a year ago, according to Skai. It also gave advertisers more bang for their buck with impressions up 61% and costs per click down 12% year over year.

Alibaba’s retail ecommerce sales in China were nearly twice that of Amazon’s worldwide in 2022, at $1.229 trillion compared with about $657 billion, per our estimates. Latin American competitor Mercado Libre had significantly less ecommerce sales, at nearly $35 billion.

Pinterest was seen as the safest social media platform in the US last year, though the percentage of users who held that view declined from 2020 (51% versus 41%), according to our “US Digital Trust Benchmark 2022” report. Meanwhile, Facebook was where the lowest percentage of users felt safe, down to just 26% in 2022.

US consumers spent $497 billion on tech last year, according to the Consumer Technology Association. That’s a $15 billion drop from 2021. This year, spending will decline again, by $12 billion.

Subscription OTT video is chasing linear TV in terms of time spent in the US. We estimate adults still spend significantly more time per day watching TV, but that figure is decreasing and will fall below 3 hours this year. Meanwhile, for subscription OTT video, time spent will surpass an hour and a half per day. But ad spend on these platforms is not proportional to time spent.

Click-to-door time was as low as 4.4 days in July 2022 for non-Amazon digital retailers in the US, according to NielsenIQ. But Amazon has them beat by a lot, with an average click-to-door speed of 1.9 days.

Nearly three-quarters of US adult internet users agreed it will take them a while to understand how to use and join the virtual world, according to an October 2022 Sitecore survey. That’s not great news considering 64% said they won’t engage in the metaverse if it’s hard to figure out or use.

The top priority among US mobile banking users is knowing that their information is safe, according to our latest benchmark study of this banking channel. More than half (56%) said being notified of a Social Security number breach was “extremely valuable” to them, while 51% said the same of alerts for unusual account activity.