This year, TikTok will ride the social video wave to become the third social platform with more than 100 million users in the US. But text-based platforms are also set for a revival thanks to Instagram Threads, Bluesky, and even Meta’s Messenger.

With user penetration nearly complete and time spent starting to plateau or decline on many platforms, social networks have run out of easy paths to incremental budget among their advertisers.

Ad spending is looking shaky for many of the legacy formats across digital and traditional. New channels have arrived, however, and there are bright spots. This year could be rough, but 2024 is looking better.

Social listening is considered by nearly 61% of US businesses to be part of their social media marketing strategy, according to a May 2022 report from Social Media Today and Meltwater. But many aren’t using the technique to its full potential. Here’s how marketers can avoid four common misconceptions.

Marketers are on the prowl for the next big social media platform. They’re eyeing names like BeReal, Lemon8, and Zigazoo, but so far, no platform has gained users the way TikTok did. “Understanding why certain apps surge and why some ultimately fizzle is vital to keep up with changing social user trends and behaviors,” said our analyst Jasmine Enberg. We took a closer look at what marketers are watching.

Musk gave advertisers a reason to leave Twitter. He exacerbated long-standing issues and created new ones. Six months into Musk-era Twitter, most brands aren’t ready to resume spending, largely because they don’t trust the man in charge.

The influencer landscape is more crowded than ever, even as creator funding dries up. Leveraging smaller influencers will help your brand focus a limited budget toward a targeted audience. “We’ve had sleeper hits [with] micro-influencers,” said Fernish CMO Evelyn Krasnow, speaking at eTail West 2023 in March. Finding the right influencers is “going to be trial and error,” said Krasnow. Here are tips for finding smaller influencers who can reach niche, targeted audiences.

The South by Southwest festival returned to Austin, Texas, in full force this year, with discussions on the future of technology, brands, and marketing. Here, we lay out the top trends and takeaways.

“Let it be okay to also ask dumb questions, because there aren’t any.” That’s ThredUP CMO Noelle Sadler Delory’s advice for building a marketing team that understands creative, metrics, and its customer holistically. Delory and the CMOs of Marine Layer and Fernish also advocate for breaking down silos between performance and brand marketers so everyone understands the same metrics and speaks the same language.

Amid privacy changes and macroeconomic headwinds, social media will be the channel hurt most by the digital advertising downturn. For 2023, we have reduced our US social network ad spending forecast by $16.21 billion.

Reddit finally sees the value in being a search engine: Improvements to its in-app search are crucial if it wants to capture more user attention.

The “TikTok generation” transcends Gen Z, according to our first forecast for time spent on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat broken down by age. We reveal what that means for these social platforms and how video advertisers can maximize their investments.

Meta gained a strong hold over the US social media app rankings last year, with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook all boasting the highest numbers of downloads, according to Apptopia. Messaging app Telegram broke into the top 10 this year, as did relative newcomer BeReal.

As social media grows more “lean-back” than “lean-in,” it’s settling into an era of more modest growth defined by short-form video consumption, stabilizing time spent, and ongoing challenges with Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency.

Francophones in Canada’s second-largest province have been slower to adopt digital devices and services compared with the rest of the country. But the latest data reveals the increasingly digital lives of Quebecois in 2023.

Our latest forecast for social network users in Canada highlights a reshuffling of the top five platforms in 2023. Twitter will fall to fifth place, while TikTok will surge into the No. 3 position.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about the state of social media in 2023. But while challenges will persist, the shifting landscape will also give rise to more opportunities for marketers to reach social audiences.

Facing signal loss and challenging macroeconomic conditions, advertisers are pumping the brakes on social network ad spending. But social video is shining through the gloom.

Pinterest was seen as the safest social media platform in the US last year, though the percentage of users who held that view declined from 2020 (51% versus 41%), according to our “US Digital Trust Benchmark 2022” report. Meanwhile, Facebook was where the lowest percentage of users felt safe, down to just 26% in 2022.