The news: Instagram’s latest updates to direct messaging could help brands and creators better organize communications, making the platform a go-to for striking brand partnerships and engaging with customers. Meta added several filtering options to Instagram, including the option to sort DMs by unread or unanswered messages as well as by the senders’ follow count and verification status. Creators can also streamline inbox management with new folders. Our take: These are more than just admin updates—they’re features that pave the way for a future where DMs are central to engagement. Investing time and resources in intentional messaging workflows can help treat DMs as a high-impact channel and a meeting point between companies and consumers.

Key stat: $6.19 billion (9.0% of US social media ad spend) will go to TikTok this year, according to our forecast. Marketers need to make sure they’re putting their TikTok budget to good use by choosing the right ad types for the right activations. Here’s an overview of in-feed versus Spark Ads on TikTok.

Instagram Stories ads will bring in $15.95 billion worldwide in 2022, more than one-quarter of the platform’s global net ad revenues.

Instagram's new Explore page ads will bring more opportunities for marketers—but they also raise concerns about the limit of organic reach, which some claim has already happened in the Instagram feed. Savvy marketers have established best practices to get their content featured on Explore, but when ads are introduced, it could become more challenging to appear there organically.

Facebook took a drubbing all year long—or did it? The social network's usage edged down in the US as teens migrated to other platforms (among them, Facebook unit Instagram) and consumers worried about privacy and other issues. But the company also rolled out waves of new products and scored huge revenue gains. Throughout the year, "Behind the Numbers" tracked Facebook's challenges, triumphs and evolving ambitions.

Stories are hot in social media, and the ad opportunities are growing fast. How are consumers using stories, and how do they respond to marketing in stories?