Last chance to save on Digiday Publishing Summit passes is February 9
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
Bold Call: AI will rewrite publishers’ websites in 2026
This year, publishers will use AI to transform static sites into dynamic, personalized and reader-driven experiences.
Media Briefing: The anatomy of the publishers’ SEO dilemma
As AI upends search, publishers face a choice in 2026: chase Google, feed AI, or figure out how to balance both.
The top AI platforms for publishers, ranked
Digiday’s Jessica Davies and Sara Guaglione joined the Digiday Podcast to handicap the more than a half-dozen AI platforms, from Amazon to OpenAI, that have begun doing business with publishers.