The future of social media, AI-powered search, and organic-led marketing. Explore data-driven insights for modern marketers navigating digital transformation.
Social Media’s Evolving Demographics & Role
Social media is no longer a youth club. In the UK, Facebook and YouTube already reach every adult segment, while TikTok’s fastest-growing cohort is the over-40s. Feeds now double as newsstands, price-comparison sites and peer-review hubs.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
TikTok adoption is accelerating up the age ladder:
What began as a Gen Z playground now counts 41% of 30–49 year-olds and a quarter of 50-somethings among its daily users. Content strategy must reflect a truly blended audience. (Pew, 2024)
Graph showing TikTok adoption by age groups.
What brands need to know...
Social = Primary News Desk
One-third of under-30s get daily news on TikTok* – the platform is now an editorial gate-keeper brands must earn coverage in, not ignore. (*Pew, 2024)
Wallet-Shaping Feeds
72 % of UK shoppers say they’ve made at least one purchase via socialmedia ads* — purchase drivers now ignite inside feeds, not search engines. (*Performance Marketing World, 2023)
Time = Influence
The average adult scrolls 1 h 50 m of social media daily, overtaking broadcast TV viewing for the first time* – it’s now about owning a share of that pie by creating a surround sound of content. (*Ofcom, 2025)
The Economist’s channel posts 60-second explainers on news, climate and elections.
Audience:
1.3 m followers
1/3 aged 35+
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
Takeaway: If your social targeting starts and ends at “18–34”, you’re five years behind the behaviour curve.
Social Media: The New Search & Shopping Tool
Nearly half of people’s product searches start on TikTok or Instagram, not Google. A typical path: see a seven-second skincare clip, hop to YouTube for longer reviews, sanity-check on a Reddit thread, then buy via TikTok Shop. Social is no longer the top-offunnel - it’s the entire funnel.
of Gen Z prefer social apps to search engines for information. (Ofcom, 2024)
Illustration of "46%"
What brands need to know...
Video Search Kills the Messy Middle
57 % of consumers start how-to queries on YouTube before Google (GWI 2025) - SEO budgets must pivot to answer-in-video, and social-search strategies need to optimise captions and community comments or risk irrelevance
Trust Lives in Communities
“Add ‘reddit’ ” searches are up 40 % YoY (Google Trends 2025) - brand-controlled reviews are losing credibility to peer forums, and consumers are taking search into their own hands.
Checkout Moves In-App
45 % of UK TikTok users will make at least one purchase inside the app this year (Hootsuite 2025) - the funnel compresses to a single platform, demanding native storefronts.
Gymshark’s #Gymshark66 campaign
Directs TikTok viewers to TikTok Shop bundles
Result:
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
.webp)
Takeaway: Brand clip > Creator review > Peer comments > One-tap checkout. If you’re invisible in that flow, you’re invisible.
AI and the Future of Social Media
Your feed is now half machine. Instagram admits that 53 % of what users see comes from accounts they never followed, chosen by AI. Meanwhile Twitter’s usage has dropped by a third, splintering public discourse across Discords, Substack Notes and niche Reddits.
Consumers, flooded with AI-generated media, gravitate to content that feels unmistakably human. Marketers must play two games at once: satisfy the algorithm and satisfy the authenticity test.
AI curation boosts dwell-time but makes organic reach unpredictable—
brands need agile creative pipelines and tight data feedback loops. (Ofcom, 2024)
of AI-recommended content bar over blurred feed.
Illustration of "53%"
What brands need to know...
Algorithmic Overspill
53 % of Instagram feed content is AI-recommended (Meta 2024) —creative must win unfamiliar audiences, not just existing followers.
Post-Twitter Fragmentation
Twitter/X usage down 30 % YoY as conversation scatters across Discord, Substack, Reddit and Threads (Edison 2024; Noahpinion 2025) — brands need multicommunity listening to keep a pulse on sentiment
Authenticity Premium
62 % of Gen Z say behind-the-scenes posts boost trust while Meta now labels AI images (Kyra 2025; Meta 2025) — human storytelling becomes the key differentiator in an AI-noisy feed.
Duolingo uses internal GPT tools to draft daily TikTok scripts but keeps a human writer for humour and mascot personality.
Result: 2.2million...
Average views per post and a brand that feels both prolific and authentic.
Company in Action
Takeaway: From one town square to a thousand cul-de-sacs: the next winners will balance algorithmic scale with unmistakably human storytelling.
Social Search: Why
the Algorithm Has
Become the Oracle
Google is no longer the front door to the internet for under-40s. Six in ten young adults now type first into TikTok or Instagram, trusting the algorithm to predict what they want before they even search. These AI-picked feeds – 50 % machine, 50 % social – have become oracles shaping news, shopping and culture. If a brand isn’t optimised for that opaque curation layer, it’s effectively invisible.
TikTok, YouTube & Reddit are now the first port of call:
of UK 18-24s prefer social apps to search engines for finding information (Forbes, 2024)
The oracle has shifted from keywords to curated feeds – brands must optimise for social discovery, not just SERPs.
64%
Reddit-to-TikTok Loop
Partnered with dermatologists on TikTok and joined skincare subreddits to demystify its ingredients
Result: A 226 % spike in Google searches and #1 TikTok skincare brand by mentions.
Peer reviews, expert voices and social-first storytelling helped CeraVe surface wherever people were asking questions.
Company in Action
Caption SEO feeds discovery
Brands that make videos including targeted, natural-language keywords in their captions – and also speak those keywords on-screen – see a 20-40% lift in discoverability via in-app search bars and recommendation surfaces (SeoSherpa, 2025; SkedSocial, 2025). For you? It means treating every caption like a micro-query, if your audience would type it, your video will surface, turning your captions into your brand’s new keywords
Trust lives in communities
“+ reddit” add-ons to Google queries are up 40 % YoY as users bypass corporate content to reach peer threads – forum credibility is the new domain authority (Search Engine Land, 2025).
Creators shape consideration
37 % of shoppers trust influencer content more than brand ads; creators are the algorithm’s answer. TikTok’s feed shows what performs, not what’s official – if your brand isn’t featured in credible, relatable creator content, you’re behind the curve. Think less SEO, more SFO: Scroll Feed Optimisation.
Takeaway: If you don’t engineer content for the oracle, you risk fading into irrelevance in the search universe
AI & Search: The End of the Search Bar
Search is shifting from blue links to direct answers. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how search queries are satisfied – often even without a click.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) isn’t just schema and Q&A blocks: it’s a threepart play of prompt design, source curation and model-specific tuning (Nielsen, 2025). Brands must adopt this holistic GEO approach or risk disappearing behind summary boxes. (xfunnel.ai, 2025; Semrush, 2025)
When an AI answer appears on Google, organic click-through on the #1 result plunges 70%! (LinkedIn, 2025)
Q&A formatting wins AI citations
AI engines surface content formatted as direct Q&A up to 3× more often than narrative blog posts, according to a study of 768,000 AI citations (xfunnel.ai, 2024). Structured Q&A about your brand/product with clear questions and concise answers is now table stakes for being cited by ChatGPT, Bard or Perplexity
LLM traffic is a tsunami on the horizon
Research shows LLM referral traffic could account for up to 75 % of total search-driven revenue by 2028, with e-commerce conversions jumping 500 % in just 90 days on ChatGPT referrals (MMC Ventures, 2024).
Now what? Integrate AI-sourced visits into your attribution model, then optimise those high-intent referral pages with Q&A schema and concise, data-rich snippets so your brand owns the answer-box every time. Ignoring this cedes a massive share to early movers, preparation today locks in future discovery.
Conversions from AI are real and high-intent
ChatGPT referrals convert at 4.2 %, outperforming SEO by 112 %, and Perplexity now sees 22 million monthly active users with rapidly rising search intent (LinkedIn, 2025; Perplexity, 2025). Being cited by AI not only drives traffic; it drives high-quality conversions that traditional search struggles to match.
What you can do:
1. Implement Best Practices for GEO
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
2. Optimise for Decentralised Search
Use tools like Brandwatch to track keywords on platforms like Reddit. Host branded Q&A threads, engage actively, and repurpose top answers into FAQs. Community upvotes and shares now act as ranking signals—real value matters more than keyword stuffing.
3. Blend Human & Machine
Craft unmistakably human commentary around key answers – AI can summarise specs, but only genuine expertise and narrative nuance keep users clicking further.
Takeaway: From queries to conversations: optimise for answers, not just links.
Personalised Discovery:The Next Battle for Attention
Algorithms have trained customers to expect a feed built just for them. 71 % of consumers now demand personalised interactions, and 76 % say they’ll switch brands when they don’t get them (McKinsey, 2024). Half of Americans are even willing to hand over their data for a better experience (Deloitte, 2024). Meanwhile, 71 % want generative-AI woven directly into their shopping journeys (Capgemini, 2025). The bar for relevance keeps rising – and marketers who can’t clear it will simply disappear from the scroll.
of consumers expect brands to deliver personalised interactions (McKinsey, 2024)
70%
Voice & Visual Search Explosion
57 % of Gen Z now use voice assistants weekly for product queries, and 38 % have used their phone camera to search by image in the last six months (Capgemini, 2025). Optimise for zero-UI search – think voice prompts, alt-text and image metadata as much as keywords.
First-party data is your search fuel
Two-thirds of marketers say the cookie-pocalypse is their top challenge, yet only 4% of usable customer data is first-party (Digiday, 2025). Your ability to power personalized search experiences hinges on building direct consumer data pipelines – loyalty programs, interactive tools, gated content
AI speeds decisions & shrinks funnels
48 % of shoppers report that AI recommendations shave at least one step off their purchase journey – accelerating time-to-cart by up to 30 % (Capgemini, 2025). The faster your answers, the fewer clicks needed – and the more captive your audience. Design search experiences for speed and relevance
Search is no longer just text - voice and image queries are mainstream, consumers crave one-stop AI aggregation of results; brands not optimising for the future of search will remain invisible in the digital shadows.
of global internet users now use voice search (DemandSage, 2025).
of consumers have used visual search at least once – and ecommerce sites early to adopt see 30 % revenue lift (Invesp, 2021).
of consumers want Gen AI tools to unify results from search engines, social, and retailers (Capgemini, 2025).
Takeaway: In one-to-one feeds, relevance is your entry ticket to discovery.
The State of Events: From Mega-Conferencesto Micro-Moments
In-person B2B events have returned, but in smaller, higher-impact formats. Brands now favour pop-ups, roadshows and office demos that prioritise quality interactions and measurable business outcomes over sheer scale.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
In-person event attendance has rebounded strongly:
of event marketers say in-person events are theirmost impactful marketing channel. (Bizzabo, 2024)
>80%
The value of “being there” has shifted – it’s no longer about booth size, but about creating moments that connect deeply and stick in the memory.
What brands need to know...
Smaller Scale, Bigger Impact
Intimate formats like pop-ups and customer dinners are delivering higherquality conversations than mass events – and higher lead conversion
Community Meets Creativity
Brands are blurring the lines between event and experience, from showroom-on-wheels tours to interactive demos that bring the product into the customer’s world.
ROI in Relationships
These moments create stronger nurture paths - better first interactions that can be extended with targeted, value-led follow-ups across content, email, social, and more.
Hands-On
Roadshow
The Economist’s channel posts 60-second explainers on news, climate and elections.
Audience:
1.3 m followers
1/3 aged 35+
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
Takeaway: The future of events isn’t bigger – it’s closer, sharper, with relationship-first activations with measurable conversion metrics.
The State of Surround Sound: Owning Share-of-Mind Organically
B2B marketing’s loudest voices aren’t necessarily the ones paying the most – they’re the ones showing up everywhere that matters. Brands are swapping ad blitzes for “surround sound” strategies, building a consistent presence across LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, and niche communities. The goal isn’t just clicks – it’s share-of-mind.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
of B2B buyers say thought leadership content is a more trustworthy way to judge a company than traditional marketing. (Edelman, 2024)
73%
In a world where ads are increasingly ignored, the brands that educate, entertain, and connect across multiple touchpoints win trust long before a sales conversation begins.
What brands need to know...
Trust Beats Targeting
Decision-makers are tuning out overt ads, but they engage with brands delivering consistent, valuable content in the spaces they already inhabit.
Communities as Channels
Owned spaces like Slack groups, LinkedIn communities, or niche forums create ongoing dialogue – and build loyalty – without media spend.
Content as Currency
Newsletters, podcasts, and well-crafted LinkedIn posts don’t just inform – they keep a brand’s voice in the conversation 365 days a year.
ProfitWell by Paddle’s Media Play
Instead of pumping money into ads, ProfitWell built its own media arm, Recur Media – producing video shows, podcasts, and benchmarks for the SaaS world.By leading with expertise and never forcing the sell, they became a go-to voice in subscription analytics, creating inbound demand organically
Company in Action
Takeaway: Be the brand your audience hears from everywhere – without buying every billboard.
The State of Personalisation: From CRM Data to Bespoke Journeys
Today’s B2B buyer expects to feel like your only buyer. The modern personalisation stack blends ABM platforms, CRM insights, and creative design to deliver hyper-relevant touchpoints – from bespoke microsites to sales decks tailored to an account’s specific challenges. The result: stronger engagement, faster decisions, and higher deal values.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
of customers expect companies to deliver personalised experiences – and they’re 80% more likely to buy from brands that do. (McKinsey, 2024)
71%
Personalisation isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s the cost of entry for serious B2B growth.
What brands need to know...
From Data to Dialogue
First-party CRM data fuels messaging that speaks directly to a prospect’s industry, goals, and pain points -then scales across channels for hyperpersonalisation in email, paid, landing pages, and more.
Creative Makes it Count
Custom design and content turn raw data into memorable, relevant brand experiences. Translate insights into memorable formats - microsites, tailored decks, and on-brand assets that make the data feel personal.
ROI on Relevance
ABM campaigns consistently outperform broader marketing, delivering higher ROI and shorter sales cycles. Fewer, sharper touchpoints increase engagement and shorten sales cycles.
Account Pages
RollWorks built account-specific landing pages for target prospects, backed by LinkedIn “air cover” ads that mirrored the messaging. This synchronised approach tripled appointment booking rates and boosted close rates by 15%, proving that personalisation drives performance
Company in Action
Takeaway: If you want their business, show them you already know it.