Livestreaming has become a prominent feature across the social media and digital video landscapes. Here’s how marketers are taking advantage of opportunities within the space.

Pre-pandemic, Gen Zers living with chronic health conditions said they are more likely to turn first to social media sites—including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter—for medical and health-related information (Healthline Media, February 2020).

From the growth of TikTok and of social commerce to the challenges of brand safety and the cookieless future, 2021 will be another year of big stories for social media.

On today's episode, we discuss some updates in the social audio landscape, whether convenience is outweighing price, if fashion rental can make a comeback, podcast ads versus other ad formats, changes in millennials' spending behaviors, how football players are similar to bears in more than just stature, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer analyst Nina Goetzen, forecasting analyst Peter Vahle, and analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch.

Trust deficit: 37% of consumers trust social media influencers over brands, with Gen Z and millennials twice as likely to trust influencers as boomers, per newly released Oracle data. Consumers don’t trust brands—but they want to: 70% say trusting a brand is more important today than in the past, per Edelman 2020 data.

Canada’s Generation Z—the kids and young adults in the country born between 1997 and 2012—is a lucrative demographic for brands, especially as it ages into higher levels of income.

Are Hispanics heavy users of social media? Social media has natural appeal for people with far-flung relatives and friends, often including some living abroad. And the youthful skew of the Hispanic population yields a receptive audience for platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. Hispanics overindex for social user penetration, but just slightly.

In Canada, the audience breakout by age is roughly similar to the US, in that young adults ages 25 to 34 are most numerous in the social network audience, followed by 35- to 44-year-olds. Central and Eastern Europe. Social Penetration in the Region Will Approach 85% in 2020.

Even before the pandemic, people in Latin America were some of the most engaged consumers of social media worldwide. During Q1 2020, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina were all in the top 10 countries worldwide that spent the most time per day on social media, according to GlobalWebIndex. With the onset of the pandemic and government-mandated quarantines, consumers spent even more time on social.