With Halloween this week, the holidays are practically on our doorstep. For 25 percent of consumers, some holiday shopping has already happened. This year, influencers may have a special impact on purchase decisions as we head into the “most connected holiday shopping season ever” according to Google. As a majority of marketers are placing an increased importance on their influencer marketing efforts this year, the holidays are especially key. Now, 78 percent of consumers go online to research what gifts they’ll buy and vet them. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of them are ending up on YouTube.
Of those who watched online videos to help with online shopping, 80 percent watched product reviews and ratings where they are favoring videos featuring people most like themselves (68 percent) instead of experts (45 percent). Watching these product reviews is proving to be a strong influence in the end game: 45 percent of holiday shoppers cite product reviews as the most important influence in making holiday purchases.
It’s also interesting to note that for influencers themselves, these stats are not all that different. In a survey of over 550 influencers, social networks and search engines (you could count YouTube in either of these categories) provide more inspiration for their gift-giving than TV, blogs and magazines combined.
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