The Feed is Digiday’s Web-culture corner. Check The Feed everyday for Web-culture news roundups, infographics, essays and more. Follow us on Twitter for updates throughout the day @digiday
.When it comes to shopping, consumers nowadays do their fair share of homework before making a purchase. GroupM Search teamed up with ComScore and from data collected from 1 million U.S. Internet users found that search is the single most important factor in the beginning of the purchase process. They found that 58 percent of all consumer journeys that end in purchase begin with search, followed by company sites (24 percent) and then social media (18 percent). Looking at the overall purchase process though, it looks like consumers are just as likely to use search or a combination of search and social during the purchase process, while only 1 percent uses only social during the purchase process. For consumers, social is more about getting friends’ opinions about products and brands. As the findings show, social media alone is not a key part of the purchase process, but tied with search, it is an important tool.
More in Media
Digiday’s comprehensive guide to what’s in and out for publishers in 2026
Adaptability stopped being a nice-to-have for publishers years ago; it became a survival skill. Here’s a look at Digiday’s guide to what’s in and out for 2026.
Here are the biggest moments in AI for publishers in 2025
Here are some of the moments that defined how publishers adapted to the AI era this year.
Digiday+ Research roundup: Gen Z news consumption and diversification in the DSP space were 2025’s top trends
As 2025 winds down, we rounded up the biggest trends of the year, based on the data that resonated the most with Digiday’s readers.