Paid Social Teams Blend Brand Lift, MMM, and Pixels Over Last-Touch Attribution
With paid social at 32.6% of U.S. digital ad spend, per eMarketer, agencies say deterministic tracking cannot follow a fragmented consumer journey anymore.
The brief
Trends
Trends assesses new formats, features and audience behaviors before budgets follow them. Each piece estimates reach, expected lifespan, production requirements and the opportunity cost of adopting early. Skipping a trend counts as a legitimate answer. For marketers asked about something new in tomorrow's meeting.
New formats and behaviors assessed practically: who the shift reaches, how long it lasts, what production it demands, and whether skipping it is safe.
Paid, Earned, Owned: Why the Lines Blur and How Marketers Should Draw Them
The paid-earned-owned model still describes money and control, but creator marketing, platform algorithms and retail media have blurred every boundary it assumed.
Podcast Clips as a Social Format: Distribution, Measurement and Practice
Clips have become the primary acquisition funnel for podcast audiences, powered by creators and platform video pushes that audio-first publishers did not lead.
How Analysts Estimate the Dark Social Share: Methods, Gaps and Disagreements
Estimates of dark social's share of sharing range from about half to nearly all of it, and the spread is explained almost entirely by methodology, not by behavior.
Authenticity Formats After BeReal: What Survived the Hype Cycle
BeReal's dedicated app faded while its core mechanic, unfiltered simultaneous snaps and lo-fi candor, was absorbed by every major platform and by creator norms.
Brand Migration to Niche Platforms: Motives, Evidence and Hard Limits
Discontent with mega-platform algorithms pushed brands to test Discord, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky and Substack, but documented success stays confined to community-heavy strategies with patient payback.
Livestream Shopping in the US and Europe: What Survived the Hype Cycle
Western livestream commerce stabilized as a niche tactic for demo-driven categories, while the Asia-scale vision quietly dissolved into shoppable video and creator storefronts.
AI Content Tools Among Marketers: Adoption Data, Limits and Quality Risks
Surveys show near-universal experimentation and far narrower production reliance, and the measurable costs of low-quality output are rising faster than the savings.
Gen Z Searches on Social Platforms: Documented Behavior and What Brands Should Do
Survey and platform data confirm younger users start product and place searches on TikTok and Instagram, while Google defends with short video and AI answers.
The Creator Middle Class: What Public Income Data Really Shows
Platform payout disclosures and bank forecasts suggest the creator economy's middle tier is thin, uneven and built on income streams that reset every year.