Amazon’s AR push: The ecommerce giant has opened an in-person hair salon to show off its new augmented reality (AR) tools. Were Amazon to integrate AR into its site, it could make this experimental mode of shopping commonplace.

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.

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%.

The short-video landscape is bigger than just TikTok. Marketers must develop a strategy to make the most of this form of marketing across multiple venues.

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.

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.

Despite how consumers feel about it, politics remains a core part of the social media experience. This report explores how marketers should navigate social in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election.

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.

eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson discusses Snapchat's latest earnings, what stands out, and how this year will look. She then talks about which alternative social media platforms are most likely to rival the giants in the near future and why.

Social commerce accelerated in the US in 2020 amid the pandemic-driven ecommerce boom as key platforms advanced their shopping and checkout capabilities.

*Social networks will boost US mobile video ad spending this year.* In-app video advertising on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat was the main driver of growth, with new YouTube and Roku ad inventory helping, too.

TikTok continues its ascent, but Instagram is still king.

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.

Never in the past two decades of social media history have the features, ad formats, and other business initiatives of the four major social platforms looked as similar as they do today.

After a tumultuous year, the social platforms will close 2020 on a high note in terms of ad revenues and users—and with features that closely resemble each other.

The iPhone 12 Pro became the first phone to have a back-facing Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) camera, which enables more sophisticated augmented reality (AR). (Top-end Android phones use a similar Time-of-Flight, or ToF sensor.) Lidar can near-instantaneously detect depth and size, allowing for rapid and very detailed mixed reality functions for apps, such as furniture placement or full-body Snapchat Lenses. This should supercharge mobile AR spending and make such ads more feasible.

TikTok’s growth in 2020 has been, in a word, extraordinary. While the pandemic helped stoke user gains for all the major social platforms, it lit a particularly large fire under TikTok.

Hispanic consumers have endured exceptional financial volatility—mostly bad—during the pandemic. Even in normal times, this population is a moving target, with its diverse components evolving in financial strength, degrees of acculturation, and digital engagement.