Social listening is helping businesses take the pulse of their consumers and make faster marketing decisions during the pandemic. It’s still not a perfect analytics tool, but right now the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

We spoke with Brian Wright, social media listening and intelligence leader at Wells Fargo, about strategy, technology and measuring ROI.

eMarketer forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle discusses the latest podcast deals and what the mean, how listenership is changing, and the state of podcast advertising. He then talks about the recent Unity and Snap mobile gaming partnership, YouTube's 15-second audio ads, and which sports Americans are currently most comfortable attending in-person.

The pandemic has sparked new use cases for social listening, an underutilized tool in marketers' work belts. But some brands, like Johnsonville Sausage, were already well-acquainted with the concept. Stephanie Dlugopolski, the company's senior manager of PR and social media, said her team has utilized social listening for nearly a decade. It has allowed them to not only monitor conversations about the brand, but also see how consumers react to larger issues.

Marketers have long turned to social media to hear and respond to what people are saying, gauge sentiment, and inform and support their team's marketing strategy. But the coronavirus pandemic has put fresh emphasis on the practice known as social listening.

We also use memes for social listening as a way to unlock new insights. Who’s responsible for creating the memes you use on social media? Our in-house team works hand in hand with our social media agency, Day One Agency, to create original memes or repurpose meme content in a way that’s specific to Chipotle.

Jürgen Stackmann, member of the board of management at Volkswagen passenger cars for sales, marketing and after sales, speaks with eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov about the automaker’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of social listening and more.

But for those that want to do corporate social responsibility and cause-marketing right, there has to an authentic connection between the social issue and brand. And more importantly, consistent action must be tied to the words.

Many social media platforms have started making measurable gains in social commerce, but according to a June 2020 Bizrate Insights survey conducted for eMarketer, there’s still a ways to go.

As such, understanding memes can be part of social listening—a tactic which has seen a resurgence due to the pandemic. According to a March 2020 survey by Gartner, for instance, 51% of marketing leaders worldwide said they were using social listening platforms to understand consumers’ changing preferences during the pandemic.

Programmatic podcast ad spending, which we are forecasting for the first time this year, is growing at a fast rate from a small base.

There will be stronger emphasis on social listening. Keeping abreast of consumer sentiment, not only toward your brand but generally about how consumers are feeling, will remain critically important. Social listening hasn’t always been valued as an insights tool, but it will likely see a resurgence in the months ahead.

Using social listening, KitchenAid and its agency Digitas discovered that some people were using social media during the pandemic to share how they were using stand mixers and other implements to make things like bread, pasta, and cookies. The marketer also learned that there was an increase in the number of people who wanted to learn more about cooking.

Our weekly review of the most intriguing stories covers Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Spotify’s plan to target ads based on podcast listening and viewership metrics of the NBA Finals. We also delve into the digital ad industry’s latest steps to promote brand safety, and we bring you the game of the week, useless dinner party data and more! Host Marcus Johnson leads the conversation with eMarketer principal analyst Nicole Perrin and vice president of multimedia Paul Verna.

Social network ad spending has substantially rebounded since the early days of the pandemic. In 2021, the biggest issues social media marketers will face are in the areas of brand safety, ethics, and privacy.