Facebook continues its pivot to video

In Q1 2021, Facebook and Twitter both made big moves to defend their beliefs about news and politics on their respective platforms.

Tipping comes to Clubhouse: The social audio app will now let users tip hosts, likely a play to keep creators on the platform as they’re in danger of being poached by bigger players like Twitter and Twitch.

As the pandemic drove consumers to move their spending online in 2020, Amazon benefitted in a big way. But it wasn’t just its ecommerce business that grew by double digits. Its advertising business grew by 52.5% last year, pushing Amazon’s share of the US digital ad market past 10% for the first time. This has only strengthened its position as the No. 3 ad publisher in the US.

Clubhouse has buzz, but social audio isn’t as simple as it looks. The most promising marketing use cases are for thought leadership, virtual events, and influencer marketing.

Facebook remains atop the social ladder

The major social platforms hit the ground running in 2021, making substantial investments into many of today’s top social trends: audio, influencers, and short video, to name a few.

On today's episode, we discuss Twitter's major initiatives and figure out what the platform will look like after it reinvents itself. We then talk about Facebook's cost-per-thousand (CPM) recovery, TikTok's ecommerce efforts, and a recent study about COVID-19 news on Facebook. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Jasmine Enberg.

Social networks will reach almost full penetration among adult Gen Zers this year, or 99.0% of users ages 18 to 24. The next-highest penetration rate will be among the 25-to-34 age bracket, younger millennials, at 90.9%.

On today's episode, we discuss Facebook and Apple's next virtual and augmented reality moves, Netflix cracking down on password sharing, whether Google and Facebook killed the concept of "free," what Americans will do with their stimulus checks, how ESPN+ will do on Hulu, where in the world there is a giant plughole in the ocean, and more. Tune in to listen to the discussion with eMarketer forecasting analyst Rini Mukhopadhyay, senior analyst Sara M. Watson, analyst Blake Droesch, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Jeremy Goldman.

Diet Instagram: The new, less data-intensive version of Instagram will help Facebook penetrate developing markets, where consumers are more sensitive to mobile data costs.

In the lead-up to the election, many social media users expressed growing exhaustion with the user experience due to the influx of political content. But those feelings of “election fatigue” didn’t cause most users to decrease their engagement on social.

The adoption of social commerce—the ability to shop and buy, directly or indirectly, via social media platforms—accelerated during the pandemic. The vast majority of social commerce today is within the discovery and consideration stages. However, checkout capabilities are not available from the leading social networks in Canada.

Social media usage, advertising, and commerce will reach new levels in 2021, presenting big opportunities for brands to engage consumers.

The pandemic led to many upward revisions of our UK digital user forecasts. Some changes (podcast listeners) will be permanent, while others will be temporary (digital gamers). Our social network user numbers, meanwhile, didn’t change much at all.