• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 11, 2025

Forty-four percent of consumers discover new products or brands through online ads, and 33% through search engines, but data released Tuesday suggests editorial sites are often overlooked and undervalued as advertising and marketing channels.

The adMarketplace data in the company's first annual report, The State of Search in 2025, sheds light on critical shifts in consumer purchases such as the desire to have up-to-the-minute real-time information to make decisions.

Forty-four percent of consumers rely on relevant results to find new products or brands when they search, and 38% of consumers would like to see real-time search results with up-to-the-minute information and 23% would like to see predictive search results that anticipate news.

Seventy-four percent, regardless of generation, said they have purchased a product after seeing an ad, while 68% said ads are helpful for discovering products they might not have searched for otherwise.

TEAM LEWIS conducted the survey of 1,000 U.S. respondents from October 16-22, 2024, with Veridata, an online data collection and market research services, recruiting respondents.

The findings suggest that a diverse media portfolio and emerging platforms can help companies make brands and products easier to discover across the open web.

Advertisers can do this by looking beyond legacy search engines, with 55% of consumers saying the way they search for information about products or brands has changed during the past five years. 

AI search engines attract more consumers. Twenty percent of consumers in the survey said they have been making greater use of AI-driven search engines, and 17% said they are using augmented-reality features to virtually try products.

More than half of respondents are likely to trust a brand after seeing multiple ads for it across different platforms, and 43% of consumers said they often search for more information about a product after seeing an ad for it.

Other than product discovery, editorial sites can drive purchases. Forty-nine percent of U.S. consumers said they purchase a product after seeing it on an editorial or review site within a few hours. Some 74% said they have purchased a product by clicking on a product ad or link after exploring the product on an editorial or review site.

Younger adults are more likely to purchase products from links, with 84% of Gen Z consumers, 77% of Millennials, and 75% of Gen X saying they do this compared with 49% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation

The study estimates that 50% of consumers most often consult editorial or review sites for technology, 40% for food and beverage, and 40% for health and wellness products. Some 52% primarily use these sites to compare prices, and 50% for product reviews.