This week in charts
U.S. search advertising revenue
Net Ad revenue
Fund flows to China
Exports from Canada to China
Working-age population
Capital expenditure
U.S. 10yr Treasury
Discretionary spending per household
Spreads
Automotive industries
Google’s Grip on Search Slips as TikTok and AI Startup Mount Challenge
For years, the tech giant has seemed invincible in this corner of the ad market, which is the foundation of its business. Now, rivals are beginning to eat into its lead, and new offerings—fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence and social video—threaten to reshape the landscape.
TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video platform, has recently started allowing brands to target ads based on users’ search queries—a direct challenge to Google’s core business.
Perplexity, an AI search startup backed by Jeff Bezos, plans to introduce ads later this month under its AI-generated answers. Until now, it has made revenue mostly from a $20-a-month subscription offering that grants access to more-powerful AI technology.
Google’s share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to drop below 50% next year for the first time in over a decade, according to the research firm eMarketer.
Amazon is expected to have 22.3% of the market this year, with 17.6% growth, compared with Google’s 50.5% share and its 7.6% growth.
Google remains in an enviable position: far ahead of the pack in the search market, with plenty of resources to counter moves by its rivals. Still, advertisers are eager for more competition.
The increased competition, coupled with legal pressures on Google, makes it a particularly tense time for the Alphabet -owned ad giant. This past summer, Google lost an antitrust case over its dominance in the U.S. search-engine marketplace after a federal judge said it acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in the sector. Google plans to appeal the ruling.
OSC Launches Trading Simulation Tool for Retail Investors
The Get Smarter About Trading simulator provides retail investors with a chance to participate in a simulated stock market and practice online trading.
It exposes users to gamification techniques to show them what could be influencing their investing behaviour, according to Leslie Byberg, Executive Vice President, Strategic Regulation at the OSC.
As digital trading platforms have grown in popularity, regulators around the globe are alert to the usage of digital engagement practices (DEPs) within these platforms, according to the OSC.
In addition, the OSC has released a new report that studied the impact of gamification on investors.
The report, Gamification Revisited: New Experimental Findings in Retail Investing, looks at whether promoting certain assets on digital investing platforms presents a risk to investors.
The research found two types of promotion had a significant impact on participants’ trading behaviours; those who saw promoted stocks featured on a social feed traded 12% more in those stocks, and those who had the option to copy the trades of a “high performing” user traded 18% more in the promoted stocks.
The findings suggest that these social engagement techniques can influence investor behaviours by encouraging trading in specific assets.
The new report builds on the work of an earlier OSC research report Digital Engagement Practices in Retail Investing: Gamification and Other Behavioural Techniques.
The experiment found participants rewarded with points for buying and selling stocks made 39% more trades and those who saw a list of top traded stocks were 14% more likely to buy and sell those stocks. More frequent trading generally has a negative impact on investor returns.
This report also contains several recommendations for how regulators and authorities in Canada and abroad might respond to the ongoing use of digital engagement practices by online investing platforms.
This week’s fun finds
Thankful for sharing a meal with our coworkers (and the trust our partners place with us every day). Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Wherefore Turkey? How poultry made its way onto the holiday menu.
They were fresh, affordable, and big enough to feed a crowd. Americans have long preferred large poultry for celebrations because the birds could be slaughtered without a huge economic sacrifice. Cows were more useful alive than dead, and commercial beef wasn’t widely available until the late 19th century. Chicken was more highly regarded than it is today, but rooster meat was tough, and hens were valuable as long as they laid eggs. Venison would have been another option, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, though it would have required you to hunt for your Thanksgiving meal.
Among the big birds, turkey was ideal for a fall feast. Turkeys born in the spring would spend about seven months eating insects and worms on the farm, growing to about 10 pounds by Thanksgiving. They were cheaper than geese, which were more difficult to raise, and cheaper by the pound than chickens. Cost was an important factor for holiday shoppers, because people weren’t necessarily preparing just one meal; Thanksgiving was the time to bake meat and other types of pies that could last through the winter.
