As of January 2022, 35% of people ages 12 and over in the US own a smart speaker, up just 2 percentage points from the year before. That’s following an increase of 6 percentage points year over year in 2021.

In 2022, 40.7% of China’s digital ad spending will go toward the ecommerce channel, for ads offered by retailers like Alibaba and JD.com. This eclipses the share in the US, where 14.5% of digital ad spending will flow to ecommerce channel ads sold by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

Dating apps Bumble and Hinge attracted more downloads worldwide in 2021 than the previous two years. Meanwhile, Tinder outpaced them both by at least 54 million downloads—albeit 8 million fewer downloads than its lead in 2020.

Nearly 2 in 5 augmented reality (AR) users in the US will shop with the technology this year, for a total of 35.0 million retail AR users. That base is up 18.8% from last year and will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2024 as shoppers make use of virtual try-on and product visualization features.

Companies tempted to ride the blockchain wave may want to avoid dipping their toes into nonfungible tokens (NFTs) just yet. Among adults in Great Britain who’d heard of NFTs, 43% said they’d feel less favorable toward a company if it started offering them, and 32% said their opinion wouldn’t change either way. Only 3% would view a company more favorably if it offered the digital tokens.

Around the world, Facebook is the most popular social app for livestream purchases. Among internet users who had bought a product via a social media livestream, 57.8% did so on the blue app. Meanwhile, 45.8% have made a livestream purchase on Instagram, and just 15.8% have on TikTok.

Fragrances will see about $240 million in US ecommerce sales this year, following a massive 72.9% growth rate in 2021, when consumers returned to social activities but stuck with their pandemic-induced habit of shopping online.

The majority of US consumers are shouldering loan debt, with 61.1% holding one or more loan accounts with an outstanding balance. The most common types of accounts to have an outstanding balance are mortgages (33.3%) and auto loans (31.0%).

YouTube is the leading podcast platform among US adults who listen to 5 hours or more of these shows per week, with 55% tuning in there. Streaming audio platforms Spotify and Apple Podcasts take second and third place, respectively, while Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Facebook round out the top five.

US food and beverage ecommerce sales will approach $80 billion in 2022, up 20.7% from nearly $65 billion last year. While the growth is impressive, it’s far slower than the 99.0% surge the category saw in 2020, when wary consumers pivoted to buying online at the onset of the pandemic.

In the US, higher-income millennials are more likely to own cryptocurrency than their lower-earning peers. Some 61% of those making at least six figures per year own crypto, while just 25% of those earning less than $50,000 hold Bitcoin or the like. Gender plays a role as well—half of millennial men hold these digital currencies, while only one-fifth of women in that age group do so.

Amazon will account for 39.5% of all US retail ecommerce sales in 2022, or nearly $2 in $5 spent online. Altogether, the next 14 biggest digital retailers will make up just 31.0%, with the remaining 29.5% of the ecommerce pie going to everybody else.

The percentage of US adults who lacked savings to cover a full month of basic expenses rose to 29.0% in January, up from an already high 22.3% the previous month. This figure had hovered above one-fifth since June 2021, when states began terminating the expanded federal unemployment benefits that had helped many weather the pandemic.

In a study of select countries, adults favored in-store over online shopping everywhere except China. There, 54% would rather shop digitally and only 16% preferred physical stores, while the rest had no opinion.

Time spent with TikTok peaked at 40.0 minutes per day for the average US adult user in 2021, below that of YouTube, at 45.0 minutes daily. TikTok will lose some of its pandemic gains this year and the next, with its time spent falling to 37.1 minutes in 2023.

In the US, software startups attracted $121.2 billion in venture capital investments last year, more than triple what those in commercial products and services received, at $39.1 billion. Pharmaceuticals and biotech raised the third-highest amount, with $37.8 billion in venture capital.

Private labels are winning over consumers with good value for the money. Among US adults, 89.7% said they switched from a national label mainly because the store brand offered better value, and 47.9% said deals and/or membership rewards motivated the move. Meanwhile, 52.0% cited the private-label brand’s bigger selection of products.

US consumers pined for pre-pandemic pleasures in Q4 2021, with the delta wave receding and omicron just entering the frame—and it showed in their search behavior. Organic Google search visits to travel sites increased 41% year over year that quarter. Meanwhile, retail and consumer goods took a hit: Visits to those sites decreased 14% as the prospects of in-store shopping improved.

Telemedicine is not the way most US adults prefer to access care. For only two healthcare needs—flu or cold treatment, and prescription refills—live video visits held an edge over in-office visits in 2021, and this margin was slim. US adults were more inclined to travel to their providers for mental health services, annual checkups, and physical therapy.

With inflation on the rise and supply chains in disarray, consumers are checking their grocery lists twice. In the US, 38% of adults are cutting down on how often they buy meat, poultry, or fish, while about one-quarter are purchasing snacks, dessert foods, or prepared foods less.