Brand Marketing
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Gen Z drives shift as social and video platforms eclipse traditional search: WARC Report
Search is often siloed from other types of media, budgets and teams. For success, marketers and their agencies should build more agile and flexible search advertising strategies, suggested WARC.
Search is changing fast and there are more ways for users to search than traditional search engines. (Image source: Unsplash)
The search landscape is evolving beyond traditional search engines to social and video platforms, and is outpacing AI search, new research from WARC finds, as 48% of Gen Z now search more frequently on social and video platforms.
"Search is one of the most common and enduring digital activities there is. Among weekly US search users, 72% do so at least once a day", according to a new survey from WARC, TikTok, and Richard Shotton.
But search is changing fast and there are more ways for users to search than traditional search engines. There is also a healthy dose of reality amid the AI hype: US weekly searchers search twice (30%) more frequently on social and video platforms than on AI platforms (14%), the research finds.
What’s going on:
- 86% of Gen Z internet users said they search on TikTok weekly, making them nearly as likely to search there as on the leading traditional search engine (90%) and ahead of online marketplaces (75%) or the leading AI platform (60%).
- Among people who use TikTok to search, 38% start on traditional search platforms before coming to the app to search, and 34% start on TikTok before moving to traditional search platforms.
- Search is as much about discovery and curiosity as it is about information: Over one-third (35%) of TikTok users are inspired to search based on content they see on the platform.
Read more: 67% of Gen Z in India prioritise physical health, 63% mental well-being, reveals Burson report
Search is often siloed from other types of media, budgets and teams. For success, marketers and their agencies should build more agile and flexible search advertising strategies.
"Paid search now represents 22% of total media budgets but after two decades of dominance, this year has been growing chatter about where this spend will go in the future. The future of search and performance marketing in general is fundamentally a battle to identify consumer intent in ever more granular ways. That is what will determine where the revenue ends up," said David Tiltman, Chief Content and Customer Officer.
Sissi Xu, Product Lead, Search and Discovery, TikTok, said, "Long before anyone taps the search bar, TikTok users show their intention. A replay here, share there, a measurable pause on a video that piqued the viewers' interest. Taken together, these actions represent a users' curiosity and where it may take them next. On TikTok, the search starts before the actual search."
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