Digital Advertising in the U.S. 2021 Report

Search engines, social media and word-of-mouth are most influential for both content and product discovery
U.S. internet users show habitual internet usage patterns. Every second says they mostly visit the same websites. When asked where they discover new content, American internet users name search engines and social media most frequently, followed by friends and acquaintances. When discovering new products they rely on search engines most frequently, followed by friends and acquaintances and then social media. When U.S. internet users look up information about a specific product they are interested in, search engines are their number one source, followed by online stores and friends and customer reviews.

95% of the internet users in the U.S. remember having seen digital advertising in the past 4 weeks
With 95% of the U.S. internet users having seen digital ads in the past 4 weeks, digital ads beat non-digital ads in terms of visibility. Among classical advertising channels TV ranks highest, with 50% of the internet users remembering to have seen TV ads in the past 4 weeks. Among the digital channels, YouTube is no. 1, followed by social media websites and apps, and Amazon.

Most visible advertising channels are also the most annoying, led by YouTube
Asked for on which channels they find digital advertising frequently annoying, every second U.S. internet user says YouTube. Search engines only annoy 22% of the Internet users with advertising, Amazon with 23% and social media with 29%. Among all social media, Facebook is the leader in this category as well by annoying 51% of the U.S. social media users with advertising.

U.S. internet users are generally distrustful of social media
When asked which websites and apps they trust to handle their personal data responsibly, 35% of the U.S. internet users say they do not trust any of the websites and apps they could choose from. Video portals and streaming services rank highest with 27%, followed by social media websites and apps. Nevertheless there is a considerable lack of trust in social media: 45% of the U.S. internet users say they do not trust any of the social media companies they could choose from in the survey to handle their personal data responsibly. Among the social media companies, Twitter ranks highest with 23%.

Every fifth user thinks cookie settings are not solved appropriately
While 32% of the U.S. internet users say they want to be able to decide for each website exactly what data they share, 19% thing cookie settings are often not solved appropriately. Nevertheless, 32% of the users they usually directly agree when prompted whether they accept cookie tracking on a website, 15% say they usually change the settings first and only 9% disagree with cookie tracking instantly. 34% of the users agree that websites generally should not store any personal information.

Customer journey

• Attitudes
• Content discovery
• Product discovery

• Categories
• Devices

• Channels
• Preferred contents

• Subscriptions
• Drivers
• Services

• Attitudes
• Touchpoints

• Devices
• Touchpoints
• Triggers
• Barriers
• Channels
• Social media channels
• Irritation/annoyance

• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Trust
• Use of personal data

• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Acceptance

• Attitudes
• Permissions

• Usage

• Demographics