The cost of school supplies is weighing heavily on US parents. Between May and June, 40% of those planning to do back-to-school shopping considered it a significant concern in their budget, compared with 30% last August. Meanwhile, 19% said they could not afford it, up from 14%.

The US insurance industry will top $12 billion in digital ad spending this year, up 15.0% from 2021. Outlays will continue to increase by double-digit rates over the next couple of years, surpassing $15 billion in 2024.

As of February 2022, nearly 30% US households with Wi-Fi had an Amazon Fire TV device. More than 20% owned an Echo smart speaker, Fire tablet, or both.

Podcasting finds favor with brand advertisers: US ad spending on podcasts is growing at double-digit rates and will pass $2 billion in 2023.

In 2022, US meal-kit subscription services will deliver $7.63 billion in digital sales to make up 22.8% of the country’s subscription ecommerce sales. The meal-kit subscription market has seen slowing growth since mushrooming by 85.0% in 2020, though its 17.0% increase this year is healthy nonetheless.

Nearly 2 in 5 augmented reality (AR) users in the US will shop with the technology this year, for a total of 35.0 million retail AR users. That base is up 18.8% from last year and will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2024 as shoppers make use of virtual try-on and product visualization features.

TikTok and Instagram were once again the top US social networking apps of 2021, downloaded 94.0 million and 64.0 million times that year, respectively. Snapchat took third place with a 10% jump in downloads, leapfrogging Facebook, whose downloads fell by 11%.

TikTok takes up more of its users’ time than any other social media platform in the US. This year, adult TikTok users will spend an average of 38 minutes per day on the short-video app. Twitter ranks second, with a daily average of 35 minutes, while third-place Facebook will see 31 minutes per day from the average adult user.

—underscoring how retailers are preparing to capitalize on US consumers’ changing healthcare preferences.

He wants to create the US version of WeChat. Twitter can help him do this, but there could be regulatory hurdles ahead.

Insider Intelligence spoke with Sanyu Dillon, executive vice president and CMO at Penguin Random House US, about brands building cultural fluency, entering the metaverse, and building digital communities with younger audiences.

Time spent with cable and broadcast TV is decreasing, a trend that’s been particularly pronounced over the past year. Streaming accounted for 36.9% of US time spent with TV as of September 2022, up from 27.7% in the same month in 2021, according to Nielsen. Streaming stole share from all other TV categories.

YouTube is the most trusted US platform for social commerce.

This year, 120.0 million US adults will book travel via digital channels. While that figure is up 29.7 million from 2020’s pandemic low, it’s 6.2 million fewer digital travel bookers than in 2019.

Private labels are winning over consumers with good value for the money. Among US adults, 89.7% said they switched from a national label mainly because the store brand offered better value, and 47.9% said deals and/or membership rewards motivated the move. Meanwhile, 52.0% cited the private-label brand’s bigger selection of products.

US consumers pined for pre-pandemic pleasures in Q4 2021, with the delta wave receding and omicron just entering the frame—and it showed in their search behavior. Organic Google search visits to travel sites increased 41% year over year that quarter. Meanwhile, retail and consumer goods took a hit: Visits to those sites decreased 14% as the prospects of in-store shopping improved.

HBO Max was the most downloaded US mobile entertainment app in 2021, with 46.0 million downloads and a monster growth rate of 101%. Second-place Netflix saw downloads drop by 15% year over year to 38.0 million.

For many content creators, Instagram isn’t everything. In the US, 41.0% of creators run websites or blogs to reach their audiences outside of social media. Newsletters and podcasts are also tools they use to staying connected. But perhaps most notably, 43.3% do not use anything other than social platforms.

The number of Gen Z mobile banking users will reach 33.7 million in the US this year and continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.4% through 2026, per our forecast.

Tesla sharing its Supercharger network: Tesla joins 16 companies providing 100,000 chargers in the US as part of the initiative to accelerate the EV transition. Government cooperation opens Tesla to billions in subsidies.

The CEO of M&T Bank urged US industry watchdogs to hold alternative lenders to the same regulatory standards as traditional banks.

In a first, 62.1% of adults in the US will use mobile banking, surpassing the 61.5% who will use in-branch banking, per our forecast. This is a marked shift from 10 years ago, when 78.8% of adults used bank branches and 18.6% used mobile.

In 2021, social audio app Clubhouse registered a total of 6.7 million downloads in the US. About 42% of those downloads occurred during Q1 2021, when the app received extraordinary media buzz. But as established platforms created copycat features, Clubhouse’s downloads decreased.

Among connected TV (CTV) companies we forecast, Hulu will lead in US ad revenues in 2021 at $3.13 billion, up 44% over 2020.

As EV adoption accelerates, the necessary charging infrastructure to support it lags behind in the US. The Biden administration has ambitious goals to get the country up to speed, but well-crafted implementation will be crucial to protecting the electrical grid. Part of the solution is harnessing the full potential of EV batteries to bolster energy supplies.