Briefs
12 briefs
What a click costs in 2026
The average Google search ad click ran $5.42 in the US over the year to March 2026 — more than double a decade ago — but the gap between industries is far more useful than the average.
The invalid traffic tax
Four widely cited estimates of invalid ad traffic range from 0.5% to 35% of spend — not because the fraud problem is unclear, but because each source measures a different point in the supply chain.
AI at work: adoption by the numbers
Ask how many U.S. businesses use AI and the answer ranges from 18% to 78%, depending which federal survey answers first.
Ukraine’s business ledger, wartime edition
A closures slowdown, not a founding boom, explains Ukraine's swing from a net loss of sole proprietors in early 2025 to a net gain of 39,000-plus a year later.
What one star is worth
Four independently designed studies — covering Yelp restaurants, hotel pricing across 11 cities and Amazon book sales — put a number on what an extra star is worth: 5 to 9 percent more restaurant revenue, up to 11.2 percent more hotel pricing power.
How patients pick a doctor
Patient surveys from 2020 to 2026 agree that most Americans now check online reviews before booking a new doctor, with estimates running from 71% to 90% depending on question wording.
Where the clicks go: position by position
Position one on Google still wins the most clicks, but the margin is shrinking fast.
Global Talent, counted
Britain's Global Talent visa approves 99% of applications once they reach the Home Office — but only 72% of people who applied for endorsement between 2020 and 2023 went on to hold a visa, and at wildly different rates depending on field and nationality.
The half-life of a web page
Half the hyperlinks the U.S. Supreme Court cites as legal authority no longer lead to the material they cite, a 2014 Harvard study found.
Thought leadership, measured
B2B buyers say expert content earns more trust than a vendor's own marketing materials and moves what they're willing to pay — but the two most recent annual studies behind those numbers surveyed different populations, and the companies producing the content still can't measure most of its effect.