For holiday shopping, 56% of US consumers prefer online-only retailers, and 49% favor mass merchants, according to Deloitte. Off-price retailers rank No. 3 on this list, nearly tied with the remaining four retail formats.

Google Topics, the company’s alternative to third-party cookies, saw a 71% year-over-year increase in testing by marketers and publishers worldwide as of September, the strongest growth among the identity solutions evaluated by Lotame. Testing of authenticated, email-based solutions increased by 67%.

Ultrafast delivery app downloads exploded worldwide during the pandemic. The top 10 apps in this space were downloaded 23.1 million times collectively in Q1 2022, according to Apptopia. Getir leads by a wide margin, ahead of rivals like Gopuff and Gorillas.

Google Assistant is the most popular voice assistant in the US, followed by Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, per our estimates. Come 2024, 88.8 million people will use Google Assistant, 84.2 million will use Siri, and 75.6 million will use Alexa.

Close to a third of US adults don’t like anything about in-store holiday shopping, according to CivicScience. Meanwhile, for more than a fifth, experiencing the products is the biggest appeal. About the same share most enjoy the holiday music, decor, and displays, while 17% are after in-store deals.

Worldwide, head-worn augmented reality (AR) revenues will hit $35.06 billion in 2026, up from $3.78 billion this year, according to ARtillery Intelligence. These revenues include spending on everything from devices to content.

Global digital video ad revenues will top $360 billion in 2027, according to Omdia. That’s up more than $170 billion from this year. By contrast, video subscription revenues will rise about $30 billion over that period and remain below $120 billion in 2027.

The Cyber Five will not see much US sales growth from last year. Cyber Monday will be the biggest day of this promotional period with ecommerce sales growing 3.8% year over year to $11.84 billion.

More than 40% of internet users in North America will be monthly podcast listeners by the end of this year, the highest rate of any region. Western Europe and Latin America follow with nearly 30% penetration among their online populations.

Some 40 million people will use Klarna in the US next year, marking a 15.6% increase for the buy now, pay later (BNPL) service. Over the coming years, growth will slip into the single digits, a far cry from the 115.0% surge back in 2020.

Next year, US connected TV (CTV) ad spend will hit $26.92 billion. This market has grown by double digits each year since we began tracking it in 2017, and it will continue to do so through the end of our forecast period in 2026.

Only 13% of US adults have used augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) while shopping. Though the overwhelming majority have not, 38% are at least somewhat interested in trying the tech.

The average US household was served the same podcast ad 4.76 times in Q2 2022. That quarter marked an unusual decrease in ad frequency, and as a result conversion rates went up, according to Podsights.

We’ve lowered our Meta ad revenue forecast by about $16 billion for this year, from $129.16 billion to $112.68 billion. Through 2024, its ad business will bring in billions of dollars less each year than we previously expected.

YouTube will have more US viewers than any other over-the-top (OTT) platform, at 231.5 million. Netflix also ranks toward the top, with 169.3 million viewers, and Amazon Prime Video will boast an audience of 152.6 million.

Sweatcoin leads US mobile health apps in traffic, with 15.0 million unique visitors in August. Fitbit and MyChart rank No. 2 and No. 3, with 12.5 million and 12.1 million unique visitors, respectively.

Nearly 60% of US adults watch digital video on non-TV devices, like laptops, tablets, and smartphones, every day. That’s up from 54% last year, and 27% in 2013.

Just 14% of US adults regularly use cashierless checkout, like mobile scan-and-go and just-walk-out technologies. That figure is higher among 18- to 34-year-olds, at 21%, while only 6% of 55- to 65-year-olds use the tech routinely.

Social media newcomer BeReal was downloaded 14.7 million times worldwide in September. In January, the app had less than a million downloads, but it’s soared in popularity since then, thanks to its simple premise and focus on authenticity.

US ecommerce holiday sales will increase by 2.5% this year, an underwhelming figure compared with 8.6% growth in 2021 and a 33.0% surge in 2020.