The linear funnel — awareness at the top, purchase at the bottom, customers politely descending in order — has been marketing’s favorite diagram for a century. In this session from Think with Google, that diagram gets an obituary. Drawing on Etsy’s reinvention of its own growth model, the talk argues that real buyers loop, skip, binge research at midnight and buy on impulse after months of silence, and that a video-first, creator-led platform is where those nonlinear journeys now happen. The research underneath it is substantial: shoppers report that on YouTube they pay more attention, find more relevant content and place more trust than on social platforms, and those qualities translate into measurably stronger influence on consideration and purchase. For planners still allocating budget against funnel stages, this is the case for reorganizing around moments, creators and creative readiness instead — and for treating viewing as the beginning of a transaction rather than a branding expense.
Video: Think with Google (official YouTube channel)
What sits behind the headline claim is Etsy’s own rewrite, described by Think with Google: Search working as a discovery channel while YouTube works as a conversion channel, joined in a single flywheel rather than sequential funnel stages. The research context matters too. On Think with Google’s shopping analysis, U.S. viewers rank YouTube first among video platforms for researching and deciding on purchases, and 78% say YouTube has the most trusted creators for product recommendations. That helps explain why the funnel diagram feels dated: people move between creator storytelling and intent capture in the same session, not in order. For media teams, the implication is budgeting for moments and creators, not rigid awareness-to-purchase phases.
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