It’s an understatement to say it’s been a dynamic two years across all industries as remote work, supply chain issues and the acceleration of digital trends like e-commerce and connected TV keep us all on our toes. We analyzed first-party data for the last two years, across Audigent’s premium publisher partners, to bring you the notable and, perhaps, unexpected in-market shopping trends that you'll be talking about in 2022. 

As the leading supply-side data activation and curation platform, Audigent uses data-driven insights like these to drive incredible performance for our partners across the programmatic ecosystem.

Trend #1

Our Take:
Whether you call it the Great Resignation, the Great Reassessment, the YOLO Economy or something else, there is a mass movement to reclaim joy and value in both work and in life. Taking a look at labor statistics to get a quick picture: as of February 1, 2022, job openings still hovered at just under 11 million with almost 6 million people still unemployed. People are waiting for the job they want, not just any job, and turning to freelance, dipping into the gig economy, starting their own businesses or even retiring early. In other words, people are thinking about the now, not the future. They want to make sure their current assets are secure and also may want to capitalize on savings to pursue their passions now.

Trend #2

Our Take:
Consumers were set to holiday shop earlier than ever last year, almost a third started in October. It would make sense that decorating for the winter holidays would follow suit. Some psychologists indicated putting up holiday decorations early can make you happier. It’s not only for the childhood nostalgia factor, but also for the fact that bright lights and colors can boost energy levels (chromotherapy is real). When it comes to Valentine’s Day, consumers were 6% less likely to decorate year-over-year. But there could be another phenomenon at play – people keeping their Christmas trees up and converting them to Valentine’s Day trees.

Trend #3

Our Take:
A clear trend emerged early in the pandemic of people updating and investing more in their homes. Last year saw an interesting evolution of that trend where certain areas of the home became the focus, this may have been due to early upgrades or changing tastes as settled on new work from home routines. While researchers initially expected a baby boom at the start of the pandemic, quite the opposite happened. The average number of daily births has declined 0.39% a year between 2000 and 2019. But between 2019 and 2020, it was 4.06% lower. By March of last year, it seemed the dip in births had started to slow, dropping only 0.15% between March 2020 and March 2021 compared to 0.91% between March 2019 and March 2020. This relative increase since 2020, nested in the larger trend of more time at home, resulted in a huge increase in people in-market for Nursery furnishings.

Just for Fun:
From newborns to fitness equipment, this playlist is designed to match the 2021 trends that we found notable, surprising, and downright interesting.