Social Media

On social media, younger shoppers are far more likely to trust brands and influencers, while older shoppers prefer retailers. Just 9% of baby boomers worldwide follow and buy from accounts run by influencers, compared with more than 40% of Gen Zers and millennials.

There’s no denying Facebook is a commerce powerhouse. But it also has Facebook Marketplace, which is primarily intended for C2C shopping and buying, though it also allows companies to list their items and place ads.

Twitter and Instagram lean into sharing: Each platform identifies new internal and externally-facing features to spur incremental engagement.

Last week, Twitter finally announced a “share” button for its Android app. The feature’s already standard in iOS, making Twitter really, really late to its own game. It’s just the latest example of a social media platform chasing revenues from competitors. Apps aren’t above copying off a classmate’s paper to get ahead.

Leaked memo gives insight into Snap’s future: Older users, enterprise AR, and Snapchat+ growth are all part of the puzzle.

We’ve increased our forecast for US influencer marketing spend for next year from $4.6 billion to over $6 billion, following TikTok’s explosion.

Juul’s costly settlement offers a lesson to marketers: Company to pay $438.5 million and faces stiff sales restrictions after probe into underage vaping.

Instagram retreats from social commerce: The move comes a little more than a month after parent company Meta reported its first year-over-year revenue decline this quarter.

TikTok commands attention in the UK market: Though it doesn’t make the top 10 among mobile apps in terms of consumer reach, the app leads in time spent per user.

On today's episode, we discuss Facebook's plan to be cool again, Amazon testing a TikTok-style feed, what to make of the price of Netflix with ads, WhatsApp's superpowers in India, TikTok and YouTube making TV their new home, an unpopular opinion about ad-free social media, the most livable cities in the world, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our director of reports editing Rahul Chadha and analysts Evelyn Mitchell and Max Willens.

TikTok parent ByteDance downsizes gaming development: Layoffs in gaming studios indicate a quick retreat from gaming at a time when China’s video game industry is seeing a decline in revenue.

Meta faces litany of fines in EU: Ireland fines Instagram $403 million for exposing underage users’ personal data. Persistent privacy penalties and lack of user protection could diminish Meta’s wider metaverse ambitions.

Meta’s teen safety missteps are costing it: Irish regulators fined the company more than $400 million for violating user data privacy laws.

In the year since NCAA athletes have been able to cash in on their names, images, and likenesses (NIL), celebrity college athletes are just catching up to the opportunities other celebrities have.

Reddit’s AI acquisition will help with targeting, brand safety: The platform says Spiketrap will help contextualize conversations and advertising on its platform.

Triller’s in trouble: Despite a $200 million raise, legal turmoil has eliminated any comparisons to TikTok.

Starbucks faces off against workers on TikTok, and the latter is winning: That’s a problem for any brand with a substantial group of Gen Z consumers.

On today's episode, we discuss what brand new forecasts the forecasting team cooked up in Q2, including influencer marketing spend by platform and tier, luxury ecommerce, and US prescription drug sales. "In Other News," we talk about Apple Pay's meteoric rise and what DoorDash's Q2 performance says about the future of the food delivery space. Tune in to the discussion with our senior forecasting analyst Iwona Drapala and director of forecasting Peter Newman.

Twitter is following social media’s personalization trend: Its new “Circles” feature is a play to boost engagement and help address brand safety issues.

On today's episode, we discuss whether sports streaming is making us all lose, how much time younger and older folks spend watching TV, California passing tough internet privacy rules for kids, how much recessionary fears have taken their toll on brand loyalty, what happens when robots create ads, an unpopular opinion about the new social media app BeReal, some interesting facts about real-life dragons, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our director of forecasting Oscar Orozco and analysts Blake Droesch and Dave Frankland.