Behind the Numbers: Social and creator economy trends in 2025—Shopping getting even more social and serial creator videos take over social media

Audio by Marcus Johnson, Jasmine Enberg, and Minda Smiley | Jan 13, 2025

Episode Transcript:

Jasmine:

... looking up a product review, for example, or you're looking up the location of a business or you're just browsing really. And so I think in order for social platforms to start capturing serious search ad dollars, they need to get that intent piece proven.

Marcus:

Hey gang, it's Monday, January 13th. Minda, Jasmine, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer Podcast. I'm Marcus. Today I am joined by two people. One of them is our vice president and principal analyst of all things social media based in LA, it's Jasmine Enberg.

Jasmine Enberg:

Hey, Marcus. Hey, everyone.

Marcus:

Hello, there. We also have with us our senior analyst, covering social media, based in New York. It's Minda Smiley.

Minda Smiley:

Hey, Marcus. Good to be back. It's been a while.

Marcus:

Hello there. I know. Welcome back. Minda is back with us, folks, alongside Jasmine for today's episode. Today's fact. Who invented the first hot air balloon? This is how I spend my time, okay? This is my life. French scientist Jean-Francois Pilâtre de Rozier launched the first hot air balloon carrying, I don't know if this bit's true, a duck, a sheep, and a cockerel. What are they doing in there?

Jasmine Enberg:

Are you spreading misinformation, Marcus?

Marcus:

You can't prove this wasn't true, Jasmine. They might've been in there. This is why. Why are they all in there? The trip lasted 15 minutes. The balloon was given lift by hot air, shocking, but also has a compartment of lighter than air gas, like helium or hydrogen at the top of the balloon. The first manned flight was Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, who flew from Paris in a hot air balloon created out of paper lined cloth by wealthy brothers and papermakers Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier. Yeah, that's where it came from.

Jasmine Enberg:

Have either of you ever been in a hot air balloon?

Marcus:

No. Never.

Minda Smiley:

No. Never will be.

Marcus:

Thank you, Minda.

Minda Smiley:

So scary. I can barely handle airplanes, let alone the hot air balloon. You would never catch me in one.

Marcus:

Jasmine?

Jasmine Enberg:

I have, and I can attest to the fact that it is scary.

Marcus:

Insane. Was it willingly?

Jasmine Enberg:

Yes, it was an incredible experience. We took a hot air balloon around Teotihuacan, the old ruins in Mexico, outside of Mexico City in the morning, and it was beautiful, but I was terrified.

Marcus:

Nope. Would you get in one for two weeks? First hot air balloon trip around the world, American millionaire Steve Fossett in 2002 on his sixth attempt. What happened the first five? The trip lasted two weeks, 22,000 miles. And it's the longest ever solo balloon flight.

Minda Smiley:

That's wild.

Jasmine Enberg:

Crazy.

Minda Smiley:

I didn't know that was possible. That's crazy.

Marcus:

When you're a millionaire, Minda.

Minda Smiley:

Well, I guess-

Marcus:

[inaudible 00:03:19] time you have on your hands.

Minda Smiley:

Very true.

Marcus:

Yeah, A hot air balloon festival, amazing. You see it more than the sky, beautiful. Getting in one? Absolutely no. Anyway, today's real topic, the great behind the numbers, takeoff, social and creator economy trends 2025. So it's a Great British Bake Off style episode you'll be pleased to learn, or not, but you have no choice. In today's show, our takers or bakers will be cooking up two trends, one social, one creator for 2025. We'll start with the social trend for our mains. Very clever. And then the creator trend as dessert. So social trends is where we begin. These will be our mains dishes. So Jasmine, what social trend are you going to be cooking up for us today?

Jasmine Enberg:

So I'm cooking up a trend around social media starting to squeeze traditional search budgets as shopping continues to get more social. So we already know that more consumers are starting their product searches on social media. This has been a trend now for several years, but in 2024, the platform started to make serious inroads into search to start catering to those behaviors and also eventually monetize them. So some of the big moves included incorporating AI into their search boxes. Meta, of course, was the most notable here, bringing Meta AI into all of its platforms. And in December, Mark Zuckerberg, who's CEO of Meta, said that Meta AI had over 600 million monthly active users. You also saw platforms like TikTok really lean heavily into new search ad formats. And almost every single platform, including Snapchat and Pinterest also struck ad deals with Amazon, kind of bringing retail media and social closer together.

So now it feels like we're at this inflection point where you have consumers and the platforms all in on social search. So the next step is really for advertisers to get serious about it. And as they start committing more budget to social search, it's going to be platforms like Google and other traditional search engines that are kind of at the front of the line because they have really lost quite a bit of shopping activity or search activity, I should say, both to social and to retail media. And I think as part of all of this, Meta is also going to launch gen AI ads in Meta AI.

Marcus:

So this is a trend that we've been seeing for a while, but particularly with the young folks, right? Gen Z, they've preferred using social media over search engines for the last four years according to GWI Core. For the same reasons that folks use search engines, speed, convenience, we had a survey out from 2023 that was suggesting that. But this isn't just young people anymore. This is a trend we're seeing across ages, correct?

Jasmine Enberg:

Yeah, we're seeing it across all age groups really. And it's very similar to how a lot of other social trends happen. It's usually young people first and then older people catch on. But yeah, absolutely. It's happening across platforms from TikTok to YouTube to Pinterest to Instagram, and really among pretty much all different types of users.

Marcus:

Yeah, our survey also pointing that out that we think a lot about TikTok and the ripples that they've made in social search, but YouTube, at least young people's top choice for social search, again, according to our survey, six in 10 folks there, five and 10 on TikTok, four and 10 socially searching for things on Instagram. Minda... Oh, please.

Jasmine Enberg:

Well, I would love to hear Minda's point of view on this too, because she's written extensively about it. But I mean, one of the reasons that we're seeing young people in particular turn to social platforms is because they want the kinds of results that they're getting from social media versus say Google. They're more conversational, they're more interactive, they tend to be more video. And so I think that's a huge driver of this behavioral shift.

Marcus:

Minda, any thoughts there?

Minda Smiley:

Yeah, I mean, Jasmine's exactly right. I think for a lot of people, especially younger people, the way they kind of know search is through these social platforms. That's sort of how they've almost grown up with it in a way. They want results that are visual, that are coming from people that they feel like they can relate to as opposed to just perhaps a random article from a company. So it really is a vast change from even how people a few years older experience search. So I think it's going to have major consequences this year and beyond, really.

Jasmine Enberg:

I think the one area where it still needs to catch up is improving intent. So when we're going onto a platform like Amazon, we generally have a product in mind or at least an idea of what we want to buy. When people are searching on social, that isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes you're looking up a product review, for example, or you're looking up the location of a business or you're just browsing really. And so I think in order for social platforms to start capturing serious search ad dollars, they need to get that intent piece proven.

Marcus:

Okay, that's Jasmine's main dish, social media will squeeze traditional search budgets as shopping gets more social. Minda, what do you have for us for your main today?

Minda Smiley:

I am baking a trend that involves messaging being the new front in the monetization wars. And this trend, I think backing up a little bit, over the past few years, we have seen users really gravitate towards social as a messaging platform in ways they haven't really in the past. Obviously Snapchat is the OG in this space, but more and more we're seeing this happen across social, particularly Instagram is a big one where people are just, they're going on the app to DM their friends and family to send memes, send messages. And so I think that's been happening for a few years now. And I think marketers have certainly been aware of that trend and organically they've shifted their strategies to account for that creating content that they think will be shared. It's not so much about only likes or only comments anymore. It's how do you break into these private conversations?

And I think the next step of that, that's really going to play out this year is the monetization aspect. And we're going to see advertisers really focus on trying to basically run ads in this space. And it is really tricky because I don't think we're ever really going to see a world where we're just kind of seeing ads in our private conversations. Or if we do, that's probably pretty far off. And I don't think it'll exactly play out just in that manner, but we are seeing advertisers try to figure that out. I think sponsored Snaps is the best example of that so far, where basically ads will show up in the messaging tab. So the ads aren't showing up within a conversation, but they're in that messaging interface. And I think we're also seeing Meta really prioritize WhatsApp, and that's a little bit different, but I think their focus on their messaging app is certainly a sign of what they're placing importance on in the US specifically.

So there are certainly signs there. And I think in conversations I've been having with marketers, they're not putting a ton of money towards this yet. I think it's around five to 10% at the moment of social budgets, which is not that much. But the fact that they're putting any money towards this at all is significant, in my opinion. And I think as we see more ad formats roll out, we're interested in the space that those budgets will go up certainly.

Marcus:

Jasmine, I'm going to get you in on this for a second because folks don't love ads at the best of times. And so I am surprised that... I understand why we're going to see social platforms try to welcome advertisers into this space. But I'm wondering whether folks are really going to want to welcome brands, companies, and ads into their messaging apps.

Jasmine Enberg:

Yeah, historically people haven't wanted advertisers to slide into their DMs, and I don't think that that's going to change. We are at this moment now though where a lot more people are communicating with businesses organically through messaging. And so they're already a little bit more accustomed to seeing brands pop up there in their messages. But the difference is that that is some usually conversations, if not always conversations, that they have started themselves. And so having a brand come in uninvited through an ad is still going to be pretty tricky. I think to Minda's point, sponsored Snaps was a huge shift in strategy for Snapchat. Messaging has long been the core of its service and it's one area that it hasn't monetized through advertising because it is such a tricky space. I do think we're going to see sponsored snaps kind of struggle a little bit. They are definitely going to roll those out more broadly in a very slow manner. But I think we're overall at this moment in time where with so much social activity shifting into messaging and more private spaces overall, the platforms have to find ways of monetizing that.

Marcus:

That's where people are going, to your point, so they're going to have to put some brainpower behind trying to reach those people as they gravitate towards those more private spaces. All right, that's Minda's main dish for us. Her main baked good. Messaging will be a new front in the monetization wars. We turn now to our second round and we have some desserts for you. And for dessert, we're going to have Minda and Jasmine cook up some creator trends. So Jasmine, what is your creator trend dessert?

Jasmine Enberg:

My creator trend dessert is that influencer identification is improving and that is boosting the long tail of creators. And this is more of a, "I hope this will happen," versus, "I know this will happen," but marketers have long relied on vanity metrics like follower counts to identify the creators and influencers that they work with. But the problem with those kinds of metrics is that they do not accurately represent a creator's ability to drive business outcomes for brands. And back in 2024, we started to see marketers kind of start to shift in terms of influencer identification. They were starting to turn more to metrics that actually matter, things like engagement rates and creative alignment. And I think as we're starting to see more AI driven influencer identification tools emerge, it's actually going to be much easier for marketers to focus on things like engagement rates and creative alignment and use that to determine the creators and influencers that they work with.

The idea of course being the more tools and the more powerful tools they have at their disposal, the better decisions they can make. And I think AI in particular can help surface new creators and influencers. It can also help segment creators and influencers into more granular niches or subcategories. It can also help marketers determine the depth of engagement versus just the breadth and things like brand safety concerns and better help them understand what kind of creative resonates with audiences. And so as this continues to drive more identification strategy for marketers, I think what we're going to see hopefully is that the long tail of creators, especially those with medium-sized audiences, are going to benefit. And these of course were the creators that really struggled to score brand deals in 2024. So it would be a positive sign really for the industry at large. And I think, again, this is one place where AI can have a really tangible positive impact on the creator economy.

Marcus:

You had some research from Creator IQ showing brands worldwide, what do they consider when selecting a creator? Engagement rate, number one, 50%, fairly distant second place, audience demographics, 41%. And then things like follower count, 37% behind in third place. Engagement rate, when marketers are selecting creators to work with, what do we mean by engagement?

Jasmine Enberg:

Well, I actually wanted to talk to you a little bit about the audience demographics point, because I think that's really interesting. There's an argument out there that as we've moved towards more algorithmic social media, especially on platforms like TikTok, audience doesn't matter anymore because you can't really control who that content is being showed to. I don't think that that is as true as people make it out to be. And I think we've seen that time and time again. And one really good example, of course, was the US presidential election, which I think was a really big lesson in how important it is to actually tap into the right audiences still. And so I think audience demographics, along with things like engagement rate and creative alignment and all the other factors, are still incredibly important. Maybe less so on a platform like TikTok, but certainly still on, for example, podcasts, which are becoming much more important within the creator space.

Marcus:

All right, that's Jasmine's dessert, AI will improve influencer identification, boosting the long tail of creators. Minda, what are you baking for us in this round?

Minda Smiley:

For me, I am baking we're going to see serial creator videos take over social media. And this trend, it's kind of a nuanced one, but I think it's really interesting and I'll kind of dive into one aspect of it, which is that as we kind of see the creator economy really grow up a little bit, a lot of the more successful creators, they're kind of operating as many sort of brands and businesses now. They have different revenue streams. They're not just people that had a one-off viral video and trying to just make their way. So as the industry grows and matures in that sense, a lot of creators are trying to find more ways to make their growth a little more sustainable. And one way is through serial video. What's something that we can do that is a little more predictable, that's something that brand might want to sign on to and say, "Hey, I'll be able to sponsor your series for a year or a month," or whatever it might look like.

I think the bigger idea here is that it's less about these one-off partnerships and more about ways that brands and creators can work together in more of a long-term fashion. And hopefully that would benefit both parties. And so that's one aspect of it. And then we're also just seeing creators jump off of social media a little bit. That's the core of it still, but they also are... We're seeing them break more into streaming and their content is showing up on streaming services. YouTube is obviously a big part of that as well, with CTV being such a growing and popular element of its own growth. So yeah, like I said, a lot of moving parts, and Jasmine definitely has been on this trend for quite some time, and she can probably add even more to what I've said. But yeah, that's going to be a big one this year.

Marcus:

Well, let me throw this at you. So there was an excerpt from the report, which touches on what you're saying. Creators are prioritizing predictability over virality. Going viral no longer is easy or desirable for many creators as the space has become more crowded, and a viral video doesn't automatically translate to long-term success. This year, the focus will be on building sustainable and transportable audiences through predictable programming, rooted in a specific format and topic, basically summarizing what Minda said. But Jasmine, why now? Why is this trend happening at this moment?

Jasmine Enberg:

Well, I think it's been something that's been building over the past couple of years. And to your point about, well, really to the quote that you just read from the report that we published, I mean-

Marcus:

It was mine.

Jasmine Enberg:

It's easier than ever to become a creator, but it's harder than ever to build a business off of it. And I think as creators are looking to build more sustainable, transportable audiences, really control their own business, control their IP, and own their audience, they're starting to create more predictable programming and it's working. I mean, just think about some of the serial videos that we watched in 2024. I don't know if you sat down and watched Reese Atisa, but I was obsessed with that. I binged that whole thing the same way that I would binge at show on Netflix. And so yes, these examples are still few and far between, but we are seeing a shift toward creators thinking more longer term, thinking more about sustainability, because, again, there's no guaranteed path to making a living, making a career out of having one viral video.

Marcus:

All right, folks, that's all we've got time for this episode. Time to crown our star taker or baker, and this week I'm going to split it up. So for the mains, I'm going to award star baker to Jasmine, or taker to Jasmine. Social media will squeeze traditional search budgets as shopping gets more social. I do like that one, the messaging one that Minda had. I still don't know how they convinced people this is a thing that they should be okay with and how monetization follows on from that, but still a really interesting one. And then for the dessert portion, the creator portion, I'm going to award it to Minda because I think this is a really interesting trend. Serial creative videos will take over social media, shifting TV audiences and revenues versus Jasmine's one about AI improving influencer identification, boosting a long tail of creators. That one was good as well, but I prefer Minda's one on the creator side of things in that round.

So I guess you get one each. So well-played. Star bakers all around. I don't know why I do this. I just give out to everyone pretty much all the time.

Jasmine Enberg:

Can I give out a point? Because I'll give out a point to Minda on serial creator videos-

Marcus:

To me?

Jasmine Enberg:

... on that one too.

Minda Smiley:

Oh, well, thank you. Can I give out a rebuttal, Marcus, to not picking mine for social?

Marcus:

Wait, you're saying that you want me to not pick your-

Minda Smiley:

No, I just have an argument for why you...

Marcus:

Oh pushback.

Minda Smiley:

Yes, some pushback is what I'm saying.

Marcus:

All right, go on, let's do it.

Minda Smiley:

I know you're skeptical. I am too. I think running ads in private messaging is... I totally agree that it's something that people won't... My argument though would be people have been griping about social for years. People are always saying, "I'm going to quit Instagram. I'm going to do this. I hate when the platforms do this." And then we all stay on it. I think people like to say they're going to quit or be angry, and then oftentimes behavior does not always align with what people say. So I don't know. Again, I'm not saying we're all going to have ads in our DMS anytime soon, but I don't think the pushback would actually be as intense as people might think.

Marcus:

[inaudible 00:22:56]

Jasmine Enberg:

I totally agree with that. People complain and then they get used to it.

Marcus:

Jasmine, this is a competition.

Jasmine Enberg:

Well, I agree with this one.

Marcus:

You might get points. Yeah, that's fair. You all make good points. Points all around. Every dessert gets a trophy. The two reports though, if you want more details, more trends on social and creator economy things, the four reports are called Social Trends to Watch in 2025, Creator Economy Trends to Watch in 2025. Links, of course, in the show notes, Minda and Jasmine, both are star takers, star bakers for today's episode. That's all we have time for. Thank you so much to them. Thank you to Jasmine.

Jasmine Enberg:

Thanks for having me.

Marcus:

Yes, indeed. Thank you to Minda.

Minda Smiley:

Thank you.

Marcus:

Thank you to the whole editing crew, Victoria, John, Lance, and Danny, Stuart who runs the team, and Sophie does our social media. Thanks to everyone for listening into Behind the Numbers an eMarketer podcast. Tomorrow you can hang out with Rob Rubin, the very first episode of 2025 of the Banking and Payment Show, where he'll be speaking with Tiffany Montez and David Morris all about the most interesting banking and payment trends of this coming year.