Step one: Make sure you have the right data, said Chris Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist at Trust Insights. Also important is bringing in an attribution model to ensure a complete view of which marketing efforts are moving the needle. Lastly, be careful who you partner with—they may not be giving you the full story.

We slashed our 2023 US ad revenue estimates for almost every social platform. For Snapchat (revised down by $505.2 million), TikTok (down $649.0 million), and Twitter (down $991.0 million), the cuts are significant. For Pinterest (down $31.5 million) and Reddit (down $40.9 million), the cuts are smaller but still impactful—$40.9 million is nearly 10% of Reddit’s annual revenues.

Gen Zers are flocking to emerging payment methods, but card-based options, led by debit cards, remain supreme. Payment providers must align offerings with Gen Z’s preferences now as their spending power grows.

The rise of shopping apps selling ultralow-cost goods from China is drawing more value-driven US consumers. But are their strategies sustainable over the long term?

The US isn’t the only country with serious talks of TikTok bans. Japan, the UK, Germany, and France are all countries with over 15 million TikTok users each that could be left with a lot of time on their hands if TikTok bans succeed.

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.

One-fourth of creators said they go live to their followers via YouTube, making it the most popular livestreaming app ahead of TikTok (18.7%), Facebook (17.4%), and Instagram (14.0%), per an April 2023 survey by The Influencer Marketing Factory.

On today's episode, we discuss the implications of Twitter's new CEO choice, what Tucker Carlson moving his show to the platform means for advertisers, and what to make of Twitter alternative Bluesky. "In Other News," we talk about the effect AI will have on social media and what to expect from TikTok's US shopping platform. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Jasmine Enberg.

The 2023 upfront market will likely be the last one transacted primarily on Nielsen’s legacy currency. A shift from traditional TV to digital video advertising is the main factor driving this change.

Cross-border ecommerce is rising in popularity as US consumers look for value amid inflation. But growth has slowed from previous boom years.

Generative AI is poised to reshape the search advertising market. With a significant first-mover advantage, will Microsoft grow its share of search ad budgets? How can advertisers stay ahead of the curve?

On today's episode, we discuss Snapchat's first quarterly revenue decline since going public in 2017, what to make of the social platform's My AI chatbot, and how concerned we should be by Snapchat's inability to innovate (without being copied). "In Other News," we talk about TikTok ads bringing viewers back to bigger screens and what people are doing on different social media platforms. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Jasmine Enberg.

TikTok and generative AI have changed the brand marketing game more than any other development since the pivot to mobile, and social media marketers must adapt. Here are six takeaways from CMOs and marketing professionals on how to do just that.

Google turns to generative AI to give shoppers a helping hand: The search engine aims to simplify consumers’ purchase decisions by arming consumers with more information.

The grand final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Liverpool, UK, on May 13. Attracting a Super Bowl-sized audience, tourists, and viewing parties, the competition’s global reach will provide marketers and retailers with a notable opportunity to drive brand awareness and sales.

Digital ad spending will increase slightly faster this year than in 2022, but the bump will be minimal. Total media ad spending growth will roughly hold steady. But there are parts of the world where spending is surging.

Worsening economic conditions will take their toll on Latin America’s digital ad market this year. Despite gains of 12.7%, digital ad spending will fail to outpace the rate of inflation for the first time since we began tracking the region in 2011. Here are our latest forecasts.

TikTok promotes learning and automation at product summit: Simplicity is a big buzzword for TikTok this year, with automation at the heart of simplifying the ad creative process.

D2C ecommerce will continue to grow at above-average rates. But that growth will be driven by established brands selling directly—not digitally native brands.