Social Trends Quarterly: Q4 2025

Contents

1. Overview: Key stories this quarter
2. Brand content: Why is social-first episodic video the hot new brand content? | Reddit makes its pitch to pharma and healthcare brands
3. Social commerce: TikTok is doubling down on holiday shopping despite US app uncertainty | QVC sees positive results from TikTok – but can it save the brand? | Pinterest rolls out shopping assistant as Snap teases foray into conversational commerce
4. Audiences: Facebook is courting younger users in its first brand campaign in 4 years | X shifts to Grok-based discovery | Meta encourages users to gather with Threads Communities

1. Overview

Even as 2025 draws to a close, there’s no shortage of developments in the realm of social media as brands set out to court consumers ahead of the key holiday shopping period – and social platforms set out to court them.

In this edition of the Social Trends Quarterly, we look at how Meta is hoping to revive Facebook’s relevance with younger generations by launching the platform’s first brand campaign in 4 years. Can an emotive ad spot help to reverse the ageing userbase trend that continues to plague Facebook? With new legislation also placing increasing scrutiny on young people’s relationship with social media, Facebook may have an uphill battle ahead.

TikTok may be more secure in its position as a youth-favoured social network, but it has other worries as sale talks over its US business still have yet to produce a definitive outcome. In spite of this, TikTok is doubling down on shopping in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but is not seeing the uptake for social commerce in the west that it might have hoped.

Meanwhile, Pinterest is hoping a new shopping assistant will entice users to browse and buy with its platform, and Snapchat has teased a potential move into conversational commerce as it inks a major deal with Perplexity.

In wider content shifts, increasing numbers of brands are hopping on the bandwagon of creating episodic video series produced for social media – and are seeing real results. We consider why this particular content format has been so effective at capturing and keeping consumers’ interest.

Read about all of these stories and more in Econsultancy’s Social Trends Quarterly.

2. Brand content

Social-first episodic video is the hot new brand content. What makes it resonate?

A growing list of brands, from retailer Argos to luxury hotel brand Sofitel and restaurant chain Cava, are partnering with influencers and commissioning creative agencies to create mockumentaries, TV shows, and sitcoms designed for social media.

Each of the series has some kind of tie-back to the brand’s key proposition and offering – while also doubling as entertainment for viewers. ‘Arghaüs’, Argos’ mockumentary serialised on TikTok and Instagram, is set in a fictional art gallery where Argos products are reimagined as conceptual pieces of art.^[1] ‘Sofitel Encounters’, a short video series produced with the goal of capturing the interest of a younger demographic, takes place in the hotel, humorously showcasing everyday goings-on while highlighting the hotel’s unique offering.^[2]

The Sofitel Encounters series marked the brand’s entry onto TikTok, where it quickly netted the luxury hotel brand 100,000 followers. Sofitel also picked up a CB News Grand Prix award for the ‘groundbreaking’ campaign.^[3] Arghaüs, meanwhile, had gained 8 million impressions as of August with a 90% positive sentiment and an 8-14% uplift on top-of-mind brand awareness, according to Argos and influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy.

The success of episodic series, as opposed to standalone short or longform video, is being attributed in part to the fact that Instagram and TikTok now reward serialised content. Cody Larson, a café owner who saw sales take off thanks to a viral series that involved trialling new drinks for the winter menu and posting the recipes, told Adweek:

“Instagram knows you’re doing episodic content, and brings in new viewers to your channel, but they’re bringing them in earlier on [in] the series to hook the viewers.”^[4]

Regular, predictable content can also build a sense of community as viewers come back to enjoy each new episode – particularly if they are fans of the creator or creators involved in the series. Many serialised productions have tapped talent with major followings on TikTok or streaming platforms like Twitch, such as Grant & Ash, better known as ‘A Twink and a Redhead’ on TikTok, who starred in InStyle’s mockumentary ‘The Intern’; or streamer Kai Cenat, who appeared in the fourth season of ‘Gamerhood’ from insurance company State Farm.

With that said, brands don’t need to involve influencers or big names to produce series that resonate; a creative idea delivered in the right format can have just as much impact, as demonstrated by Larson’s success with his drinks series, which boosted sales at Little Joy Coffee by 40%. Larson brought the series back for Valentine’s Day and again for the café’s autumn menu.

Seeing results like these from brands of all sizes is likely to encourage more and more social marketers to jump on the trend – and while not all executions will be as strong as these, those who can play into the medium while advancing a brand agenda stand to reap the rewards.

Reddit makes its pitch to pharma and healthcare brands with first Reddit Health Summit

In September, Reddit held the first ever Reddit Health Summit in New York, which was attended by more than 170 brands in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and medicine industries.^[5]

Reddit is keen to promote itself as a nexus of conversation and human insight about health and wellness, highlighting that health-related discussions on Reddit are up 48% year-on-year, with conversations on Reddit “shap[ing] real health decisions”.

The summit featured insights from moderators of health-based communities on Reddit such as r/BreastCancer and r/Nursing, as well as leaders from brands such as Pfizer, Genentech, and Digitas Health, and played host to creative and product sessions.^[6] Reddit also reportedly launched a new ad product at the summit for pharma clients, Reminder Ads, which is currently in alpha testing.

For Q3 2025, Reddit reported another round of positive results, with ad revenue up 74% year-over-year to $549 million, and daily active unique users up 19% year-over-year, reaching 116 million.^[7] Reddit CEO Steve Huffman also shared in the company’s earnings call that according to Semrush data from October 2025, Reddit is the third most-visited site in the US, after YouTube and ahead of Amazon.^[8] He noted,

“That puts us in rare company … People come here to find trusted perspectives, to participate in communities that share their interests … and increasingly to engage directly with brands, institutions, and publishers.”

Reddit has shared case studies of healthcare and pharma success on its platform, including from Takeda, a Japanese company that set out to promote its non-branded bleeding disorder management advice website.^[9] Takeda used Reddit’s Newsfeed and Conversation Ads, as well as engagement retargeting, to drive traffic to the site, and saw a 62% uptick in click-through rate and a 32% decrease in cost per click.

With Reddit only gaining momentum as a place for people to seek community and share advice and experiences related to healthcare, the appeal for marketers and advertisers in the health industry is clear.

While many countries have regulations that prohibit direct advertising of prescription treatments, there are opportunities to provide information and resources in a health context – for example, in the UK, the NHS-approved Every Mind Matters created a ‘megathread’ of mental health advice to engage Reddit users with mental self-care.^[10] Reddit has made a point of demonstrating that it is open to partnerships with the health and pharmaceutical sector, who may be uncertain about engagement on social media, and has made a point of showcasing the platform’s strengths in this area.

3. Social commerce

Despite US app uncertainty, TikTok is once again doubling down on shopping ahead of holidays

TikTok has declared that it is “kick[ing] off [its] biggest holiday season ever” in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, announcing deals and exclusive offerings from major brands on TikTok Shop – including the likes of Philips, Samsung, and even social media rival Meta.^[11]

Digiday has also reported that TikTok is working to entice its Shop Partners to spend with TikTok via a raft of incentive programmes that promise ad credits and cash bonuses in exchange for things like incremental daily GMV growth during Q4 and affiliate partnerships.^[12] TikTok also announced a new Instacart integration at October’s New York Advertising Week that will allow select advertisers to access its first-party audience data within TikTok Ads Manager, reaching consumer segments with high purchase intent and using Instacart conversion data to measure campaign performance.^[13]

TikTok is clearly hoping to entice advertisers to maintain and even up their spending over this crucial period despite the elephant in the room – the promised spin-off and sale of TikTok’s US business, which has been subject to continual delays and setbacks thanks to the often-rocky trade relationship between the US and China.

In September, President Trump announced with great fanfare that the sale would be going ahead, signing an executive order that paved the way for a deal and also valued TikTok’s US operations at $14 billion.^[14] However, China appeared to be less definitive about the deal’s status. At the end of October, after Trump and Xi Jinping met to agree a trade framework, the US again stated that China had approved the deal, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was only able to report that he “expect[ed the deal] would go forward in the coming weeks and months”.^[15] China’s Commerce Ministry, meanwhile, said that China would “work with the U.S. side to properly address issues related to TikTok.”

The continued uncertainty has not endeared marketers to investing budget in TikTok, given the large number of unanswered questions around how the new US-only version of the platform would operate. Courtney Werpy, associate director of performance media at Collective Measures, told Digiday that, “A new, U.S.-based version of TikTok would need to be vetted and understood before advertisers feel confident investing large amounts of advertising dollars in the platform, even if it maintains TikTok’s core functionality.”^[16]

TikTok may also be redoubling its efforts to push shopping because it still isn’t seeing the uptake it had anticipated in the realm of ecommerce. Dandan He, CEO at CHC Fashion Group, told Wired that only about 20% of TikTok users watch shopping-related content, and only one in ten of these are consuming livestreams – meaning about 2% of TikTok’s traffic in the US goes to live shopping, compared with an estimated 50% for Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart.^[17]

The same article highlighted that live shopping has been a hit in Southeast Asia, with Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines all top-performing markets for TikTok Shop. However, TikTok is clearly not giving up on its bid to crack the US market – despite its ongoing challenges in the country.

Marketers are justified in being cautious about TikTok’s future but may be enticed into throwing caution to the wind for the holiday shopping season, particularly if there are incentives on offer.

QVC sees positive results from leaning into TikTok – but can it save the brand?

Last April, shopping channel QVC announced that it would become the first company to host 24/7 shoppable livestreams on TikTok^[18] – simultaneously an acknowledgement of the power of social commerce and a tacit admission that QVC needed to change its approach to live selling in order to stay in business.

At the time, QVC Group CEO David Rawlinson II said that, “Everybody’s been talking about [live social commerce] being the next big thing in retail for five or 10 years but it never quite has hit … I think this is the start of it really hitting. And that’s … our bet.”

More than six months on from the move, QVC has established five channels on TikTok across fashion, home, and beauty, and is working with an astounding 400,000 creators, according to Modern Retail.^[19] In May, the company hosted its first Super Brand Day on TikTok, which became the company’s highest-viewed and most-engaged livestream, and the second is set to take place in the form of a pop-up in New York in late November – straddling online and offline channels and featuring celebrity styling trends and festive mocktail demos.^[20]

QVC’s Q2 2025 results revealed that TikTok Shop had brought in more than 100,000 new customers for the brand,^[21] which had risen to 255,000 by the end of Q3 2025.^[22] On an earnings call with investors, Rawlinson stated that QVC was ranked among the top sellers within TikTok Shop US and that the company was “encouraged by early repeat customer rates on TikTok Shop”. With new customers from TikTok Shop included, QVC’s new customer volume was up 38% compared with the previous year.

However, QVC also saw its stock dip after it posted continued revenue declines for Q3 – albeit at a reduced rate. Executive chairman Greg Maffei acknowledged that QVC had had a “challenging quarter” thanks to the continued decline of linear TV but emphasised that “[we] are making good progress on our WIN strategy, specifically around social.”

QVC’s WIN strategy, announced in March, is a “strategy to grow by becoming a live social shopping company”.^[23] The announcement was accompanied by a restructuring that saw 900 roles eliminated across the company.

Speaking at the VaynerX Live Shopping Summit in New York, QVC’s president and chief growth officer, Alex Wellen, called social scrolling “the new channel surfing”, drawing a direct line from QVC’s traditional outlet to its new area of focus. He added, “I predict [TikTok] will overtake any channel we’re working in, at least in the short term.”

But competition in this space is fierce, with independent creators and established brands alike vying for a slice of the social commerce pie; while QVC undeniably brings strong brand recognition and a wealth of expertise to the table, it remains to be seen whether this will be enough to keep the business afloat.

Pinterest rolls out shopping assistant as Snap teases a foray into conversational commerce

Visual social platform Pinterest has announced the launch in beta of Pinterest Assistant, a ‘visual-first’ AI assistant designed to provide tailored recommendations to shoppers.^[24]

As Pinterest, a platform with billions of saved images (per Pinterest’s About Page), continues to play to its strengths as a hub of visual search and recommendations, an AI assistant may be the logical next move. Pinterest Assistant, which is being rolled out in beta for US users aged 18 and above, will make use of the data points Pinterest has for each user in the form of saves, boards, and collages, as well as those of others considered to have “similar tastes”, to give personalised product recommendations. For instance, a user might ask for a handbag to fit with a specific style aesthetic or for a lamp to match their living room.

Pinterest differentiates Assistant from “traditional search or chatbots, which are helpful once you already know what you’re looking for”, pitching it as “designed for the moments when you don’t [know] … like a best friend suggesting the perfect new look.” Unusually, Pinterest Assistant will only respond to voice input – for now – and will reply with audio narration as well as visual results.

During Pinterest’s Q3 2025 earnings call with investors, CEO Bill Ready stated that Pinterest had already become “In effect … an AI-powered shopping assistant for our 600 million monthly active users” thanks to its wealth of inspiration and individualised suggestions. He also likened Pinterest’s ability to offer proactive recommendations to agentic AI: “[Pinterest] anticipates what users love without the user having to ask. Effectively, that is the promise of agentic.”^[25] Ready underlined that these qualities make Pinterest offering highly monetisable.

Snap, meanwhile, accompanied its Q3 2025 results with the announcement of a major partnership with Perplexity AI – something that, along with the news that Snap’s revenue had beat analyst estimates, caused the company’s stock to jump by 9%.^[26]

Perplexity’s conversational AI will be rolling out in Snapchat’s Chat interface in early 2026, a deal that has netted Snap $400 million in revenue. Snapchat already offers My AI, a native assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology, which can answer questions, make suggestions for things like gift purchases, or help with trip planning. For the moment, My AI will still be accessible alongside Perplexity, although it’s possible to imagine this changing in future if users find the dual assistant experience confusing.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has repeatedly emphasised the potential for conversational assistants to enhance the experience of using Snapchat, telling investors in Q2 that, “I think one of the things that’s really exciting about Snapchat is … our app … really lends itself more towards this type of chat communication which is so relevant to the distribution of these AI assistants.”^[27] On Snap’s Q3 earnings call, he reiterated that Snapchat has a “unique opportunity” to offer AI agents through its interface, adding,

“Advertisers are very focused on leveraging Sponsored Snaps to distribute conversational commerce experiences with their brands. That’s something we’ll be experimenting with as we kick off next year.”^[28]

We’ve previously covered Snapchat and Pinterest’s respective bids to court Generation Z with shoppable social content, and this seems like another instance of both platforms making similar moves in the realm of social commerce: Pinterest with an AI shopping assistant, and Snapchat with an AI integration that the company has strongly hinted could give rise to a conversational commerce experience.

Both companies have recognised that there is considerable buzz around the idea of dedicated, agentic AI shopping assistants, something that is already being rolled out by OpenAI^[29] and has just been announced by Google in time for the holiday shopping period,^[30] with players like Mastercard and Visa introducing frameworks for agentic transactions. (For more, read Ecommerce Trends Quarterly Q3 2025: ‘AI and ecommerce tech latest’).

What the user uptake of these will be like remains to be seen for now, but both Pinterest and Snapchat are clearly placing bets that there will be demand for a conversational commerce experience – one that would complement their respective propositions – from both users and ad partners.

4. Audiences

First Facebook brand campaign in 4 years aims to bring younger users back to the site

Facebook is courting younger users in its first brand campaign to air in 4 years, titled ‘A Little Connection Goes A Long Way’.

The first in what’s slated to be a series of short films and partnerships, Facebook’s 60-second ad spot is explicitly themed around Thanksgiving and will air on live TV, streaming services, and social networks including Snap, Pinterest, TikTok, and Reddit.^[31] It shows a series of young people reuniting and rekindling connections on the eve of Thanksgiving thanks to Facebook messages and events.

Pew Research data collected between 2014 and 2024 shows that over the past ten years, usage of Facebook among 13- to 17-year-olds has fallen from 71% to just 32%.^[32] By contrast, 63% of teens in 2024 said they used TikTok, while 61% used Instagram and 55% used Snapchat.

Even though Meta’s ownership of Instagram means that these young people are still in its wider social media ecosystem, the company is clearly hoping to nudge them back towards Facebook as well. After all, the more collective time they spend on Meta’s platforms, the greater the opportunity for advertisers – and the more chance of building habits and associations that will let Meta keep those young people coming back as they age, as it was largely able to do with previous generations on Facebook.

How Facebook is working to win back young users

Facebook’s bid to recapture the youth has been ongoing for some time. In May 2024, a post by head of Facebook Tom Alison titled ‘The Future of Facebook’ outlined plans to “set Facebook up for success going forward [by] building the next generation of social media for young adults.”^[33] It highlighted that Facebook, relatively speaking, had reached new heights of youth activity with more than 40 million US and Canadian young adults active on Facebook, the highest number in three years.

Later that same year, Facebook announced a series of design changes to the core platform that aimed to woo younger users by emphasising local community information, videos, and Facebook Groups.^[34] Facebook Events, Facebook Dating, and Facebook Messenger also received upgraded features like events digests and a ‘matchmaking’ feature that let people assess their friends’ potential matches.

Beyond demographic figures and UX developments, Facebook is now clearly hoping that its brand campaign can strike an emotional chord with younger audiences – which may be a surer bet, since what has dogged Facebook as its star fades is a persistent sense of uncoolness. While it almost certainly won’t be enough to turn back the clock, it may at least give things a nudge in the direction that Facebook desires.

New legislation to protect young people complicates the picture

While young people remain a demographic in demand, there is also more risk associated with playing host to a young audience than there once was. In December, a new Australian law is set to come into force that requires social media platforms to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent users under 16 from holding an account, with fines of up to AU$50 million levied at platforms that fail to comply.^[35]

Other countries have mooted similar legislation, such as Denmark, whose government recently announced plans to prohibit social media access for users under 15,^[36] and Malaysia, which has approved plans to ban under-16s from social media starting in 2026.^[37] In the UK, the Online Safety Act deems platforms to have a “legal duty to protect children online” and requires them to conduct age verification to prevent under-18s from accessing harmful content.^[38]Meta and other social media companies have set out to comply with the Australian law, with Meta announcing account closures for users between 13 and 15 years of age from 4^th December – although Meta’s vice president and global head of safety called compliance with the law an “ongoing and multi-layered process”.^[39]

The amount of renewed scrutiny being placed on the way that young people interact with social media will mean that platforms need to walk a careful line between appealing to young users and demonstrating that they take safety concerns seriously.

Musk promises the “deletion of all heuristics” on X in shift to Grok-based discovery

A surprise announcement from Elon Musk has signalled a major shift in how X handles content discovery – away from a more traditional algorithm towards a system powered entirely by X’s AI assistant Grok.

Musk revealed that the team was “aiming for deletion of all heuristics” on X in favour of Grok “read[ing] every post and watch[ing] every video to match users with content they’re most likely to find interesting.”^[40]

He claimed that this should address the problem faced by new X users and smaller accounts in which their posts are less visible regardless of how relevant or interesting they might be. Users would also be able to adjust the content mix of their feeds either temporarily or permanently by asking Grok – although Musk has yet to outline exactly how this would work.

The move could impact reach for those publishers, brands and marketers for whom X is still an importance source of traffic. In theory, following the change – which is slated to take effect towards the end of November – users’ posts would be finding the audience most interested in their content, which on paper would be a boon to achieving marketing goals.

However, the reduction in control over how content is surfaced, along with a lack of information about how (and how accurately) relevance is determined, means that this may not be welcome news – especially for marketers aiming to reach new audiences or simply cast as wide a net as possible.

Marketers will no doubt be closely monitoring their metrics in anticipation of the change.

Meta encourages users to gather with Threads Communities

Between the continued rise of Reddit and the increasing attention paid to platforms like Discord and Substack, the future of social media increasingly resembles dedicated micro-communities for sharing common interests or seeking advice.

Opportunities for users to gather around a shared interest or value have long existed on social media – see: Facebook’s Groups or Reddit’s subreddits – but they are enjoying new heights of popularity. Earlier this year, Discord’s VP of Sales told audiences at Social Media Week 2025 that “The biggest change we’re seeing [in social media] is that community is the product. It’s not about follower counts any more.”^[41]

This last assertion could be debated given that follower counts (and follower engagement) remain important in the influencer space, which is booming. However, it’s true that people are now seeking out social interactions that go beyond ‘follower’ and ‘followed’, as well as those that feel less visible, likely in part as a reaction to the dominance of influencer content.

Perhaps in acknowledgement of this, Threads has announced the launch of Communities: “public, casual spaces where you can exchange unique perspectives and join conversations about topics like basketball, TV, and more.”^[42] Communities also have an element of identity to them: membership is public and any communities a user joins are tagged on their profile, serving as something of an index of shared interests.

Meta have also teased the introduction of badges for “standout community contributors”, a concept that resembles Reddit’s awards, which are given by users to their fellow users to show appreciation and which take the form of a small badge next to their post.

A key difference between Threads’ Communities and the way that other platforms like Facebook, Reddit or LinkedIn approach their equivalent features, however, is that Communities are created externally by Threads staff rather than being user-driven and administered. Currently, Threads is trialling communities oriented around more than 100 of the most popular topics on its platform; if users can’t find a community themed around a subject they’d like to discuss, they can’t simply start one but need to wait for one to be created.

This may be a bid by Threads to reduce the moderation demands that come with user-run communities, although it could potentially impact the popular uptake of Communities if users object to the lack of control.

Interest-based communities on Threads could also play neatly into the platform’s advertising goals. In April, Threads rolled out ads to 30 countries after three months of testing with select ad partners.^[43] With this in mind, Communities could offer a new venue primed for contextual ad targeting – with ads for a sports streaming service perhaps displaying in a basketball-themed Community, or ads for a new album appearing in a K-Pop-themed community – complete with an audience already invested and engaged in the topic.

Much has been made of the potential for a community-endowed Threads to further challenge X, which has a very similar feature. In the context of wider social media trends and Threads’ ads rollout, however, it is also just a common-sense move. With that said, Threads still has yet to develop in any direction that does much to set it apart from other major social networks, which still makes it difficult to articulate exactly what makes Threads a compelling proposition for marketers or even for users.