While it likely comes as no surprise to learn that younger audiences are far more likely than older groups to use social platforms for product discovery, it is interesting to know what people are searching for, specifically, within social platforms, and what they still turn to Google for when in need. That’s what the team from Forbes Advisor sought to find out in their latest study , for which they partnered with Talker Research to survey 2,000 U.S.
internet users to get their insights into their evolving discovery behaviors. The main finding? Young people are increasingly using social apps, TikTok and Instagram in particular, for business discovery purposes. Again, that’s not surprising, with even Google highlighting the shift to TikTok and IG for search as being a potential threat to its business .
The question then is: “What does generative AI do for this trend?” Google just recently added C hatGPT-like responses within Search , which provides automated overviews on certain queries, and if conversational search like this does become a bigger shift, as many expect, will that then bring more people back to Google? Along the same line, TikTok’s experimenting with its own AI chatbot , while Meta’s added its AI assistant tool to all of its apps (except Threads). So they are looking to provide similar options, and it’ll be interesting to see how discovery changes, or not, as a result of these advancing AI tools. But a more interesting element of Forbes Advisor’s .