2023 Digital Investor Survey

A decade in the digital investor landscape

Brunswick has studied the digital habits of institutional investors for over a decade. Over the years, key findings have consistently emerged to tell the same story: these investors make decisions based on information they find on digital channels, and companies should be using digital tools to reach and engage investors.

What’s new in 2023

Over the course of 2022, the digital and social media landscape saw dramatic shifts: TikTok continued to gain market share, Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk, the increased influence of retail investors as they moved markets in an organized approach through Reddit, and generative AI became more mainstream with the rise of platforms such as ChatGPT. Brunswick’s analysis reveals four key themes with which to understand how these changes may have influenced investors’ digital and social media use and identifies emerging storylines companies and communicators should be following.

2023 Key Themes

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The age of information without limitation Aggregation in response to the deluge of data Increased overlap of institutional and retail behavior Maximizing digital investor comms

Machine learning & help from AI  

We asked investors whether they use tools like AI and machine learning to help them collect and analyze digital and social media data as part of their research into companies – the vast majority (94%) said they use these tools to harvest data.

Turning to tools to help analyze data could be a result of the vast amount of digital and social media information available. Investors are using a multitude of platforms for their equity research, and tools can help them make sense of the data.

Google search and YouTube top of the list of sources investors use to collect data. Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a large part in the discoverability of website content by audiences and communicators often place importance of SEO as a tool for other audiences, like customer content. However, when it comes to investors, materials like financial results and annual reports are often published as PDFs or downloadable files. Search crawlers, which help surface relevant content on search results on Google and videos from YouTube, are unable to read these types of files. When crafting content, companies should consider which information algorithms may or may not be able to read and how it is presented on their website, both from a human and machine user perspective.

Advances in generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT are rapidly changing search and research behavior. It’s too early to tell how these advances will impact the way investors are using tools to collect and analyze data about equities, but it’s a story we will continue to track.

Q: Does your investment firm systemically harvest data from any of the following digital and social media sources?

Newsletters & podcasts are a growing part of the research toolkit

Investors may also be turning to newsletters and podcasts in response to the vast information available on digital and social media channels. The formats provide primary research, often from a trusted source, in a quick-read, easy to listen formats to help quickly digest information. Could newsletters and podcasts be the new ‘influencer’ channels for investors?

Our research indicates early trends that this could be the case. Among the investors we surveyed, 90% said they subscribe to one or more podcast and 85% subscribe to one or more newsletter. Both are considered trusted sources of information – ranking fourth and fifth on trust overall.

What could be driving this trend is the shift in newsletter formats. Email newsletters were once a basic roundup of article links. Now, they provide market insights directly to inboxes, and we see it playing out in our research: email newsletters were ranked as the third-best platform for getting information more accurate than what you can get from traditional media.

Conversely, with dedicated resources and teams for research, podcasts can go deep rather than wide in their coverage and allow listeners to fully submerse themselves in the facts and analysis. Podcasts also provide an easy and accessible way to get key information on the go. That’s why it’s no surprise that podcast use is expected to increase among half of investors surveyed.   

With widespread use and adoption amongst investors, newsletters and podcasts are excellent mediums for companies to tell their stories and should be considered part of the media mix – both for earnings and beyond.

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Investors are seeking interactive IR website content

It is clear from our findings that IR websites hold immense value in the eyes of institutional investors: 84% of respondents thought it was important for the equities they cover to have an IR website. Having an IR website should be table stakes for companies, but just having one is not the same as having a good one. Here’s what investors want to see: 

Investors find a range of materials important and helpful. Stock price and key investor materials expectedly top the charts; however, our research found there was a preference for digital interactive and in-page content, rather than downloadable documents which has been precedent for most investor materials.  

Investors seeking digital interactive content reflects broader online content trends, and companies should consider the production value of their IR websites with the same regard as for their consumer and employee-facing websites. While companies will still face the obligation to produce these financial materials as downloads, these new investor preferences offer additional opportunities for companies to create interactive materials to advance their corporate narrative.

Executive social media channels offer an additional avenue to connect with investors that can complement traditional investor relations and broader company communications. Our research found that investors are utilizing social media to follow and learn more about the CEOs of the equities they cover. Subsequently, there is a growing contingency of executives turning to social media channels to communicate with their key stakeholders, including investors.

Connected Leadership 

Our latest research shows that stakeholders expect executives to use social media to lead. But it has never been more important to get it right. Leaders who understand the importance of communicating online build authentic, trusted platforms that advance business objectives and lead to tangible, real-world outcomes.

The jury is still out on virtual vs. in-person investor days

Even in 2022, as the world continued to remove lockdown and social-distancing restrictions, most investor days our survey respondents attended remained virtual. We sought to understand whether investors preferred attending events in person or virtually, and our survey found that investor preferences was evenly split between in-person and virtual events.

While in-person investor days may be making a comeback, virtual investor days have also had several upgrades, including high-quality production, news-style programs featuring pre-recorded segments, and live Q&A via platform chat functions. Investor expectations are higher based on these innovations, and companies should be making use of them for their investor days.