As social fragmentation continues, marketers rewrite the social playbook

Still, social ad spending is expected to continue to grow to more than $82 billion in 2025, up significantly from the $75 billion forecast for 2024. according to Statista. As expected, Facebook will likely take the lion’s share of that spend, more than 80%, on Statista, leaving competitors like TikTok and Pinterest and newcomers like Bluesky and Lemon8 to battle for the remaining ad dollars. So while there are more dollars out there, that spending is likely to be more dispersed than ever.

The fragmentation trend is not new. Gone are the days of the so-called Big Three social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (as it was formerly known), which have given way to emerging competitors like Bluesky, Threads, and of course, TikTok. What is new, however, is the polarization and volatility of these platforms that marketers have been dealing with for the past year, especially with the 2024 presidential election in mindwho reported how they spend their money on these platforms.

Amid the uncertainty, marketers are focusing on performance marketing platforms, cautiously approaching new social competitors and favoring owned platforms to reduce reliance on third-party partners such as social media. All of this, of course, faces the same old conundrum of doing more marketing with less budget as brands navigate changing shopper habits and President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs. Budgets for testing and learning other platforms have shrunk.

“Now there are a lot fewer free dollars to spend.” There used to be a much bigger budget for innovation where you could try things and play. I just don’t see them much,” said Holly Willis, founder and CEO of Magic Camp, a creative agency and marketing consultancy. (She did not outline specific client budgets.)

Tried and true platforms (mostly Meta) are expected to continue to take the majority of ad spend. Notably, new entrants like Bluesky and Threads have yet to launch ad units, and TikTok’s future is uncertain as the platform could face a ban on January 19.

Favoring creators and owned platforms

Creators and influencers have long seen the writing on the wall and want to be less dependent on platforms and own their presence through newsletters or podcasts. Marketers are just catching up.

According to Robin Sacawa, head of social strategy at Edelman, Edelman advises some clients to prioritize their first-party data through SMS and email campaigns to account for platform outages, cryptic algorithms, brand safety concerns and more. Meanwhile, other agencies like Magic Camp and MediaLink are advising clients to reinvest in influencer marketing — spending dollars with one or more influencers to manage a consistent brand voice and show up natively in the fragmented social media stratosphere, as opposed to managing it yourself. .

“In terms of social media, we’re now looking a lot more at creators and entertainers, celebrities, to play with media more to get our ideas further,” Willis said.

That doesn’t mean traditional paid social networks still don’t have value, she added. Traditional media buys mean standard measurement and ROI. But what influencers offer is an opportunity for brands to spend in one central place because they can appear authentically across multiple platforms, as opposed to having a brand’s voice spread thinly, Willis said.

Navigating volatility

Social media has always been unpredictable, but this is true now more than ever. Perhaps the most notable examples are the ban on TikTok, whose fate is likely to be left in Trump’s hands this year, and X, which has been plagued by brand safety concerns, lawsuits and competition from companies like Threads and Bluesky.

Then there’s the polarization, particularly on X, that has revolved around political discourse on the heels of the US presidential election and Elon Musk’s involvement. Marketers have been left in limbo, waiting to see how things unfold with TikTok, and have quietly retreated from X. This year, 26% of marketers worldwide plan to reduce their spending on X, according to Kantar’s 2024 Media Reactions report.

As they navigate these changes, agencies have recently begun to “scenario plan” whether a client should withdraw dollars in light of audience shifts or increased engagement with politics, particularly on a channel like X, according to Sacawa at Edelman.

As such, marketers are expected to keep their dollars close to their chest with less experimental budgeting, at least for the first quarter of this year, until there is more clarity on TikTok’s future and emerging platforms begin to stabilize and expand. “There’s so much uncertainty, and I wouldn’t want to blow my budget in Q1 if I didn’t know all the things,” said CJ Jammet, managing director and head of new media at Gather, a collective of independent practitioners.

Rise of niche platforms

Historically, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have dominated the social media stratosphere. They were considered reliable for huge audience reach, more advanced ad unit offers and performance tracking. Social audiences were centralized between the three platforms, as were advertising dollars. But over the past two years, there’s been a split that’s been draining audiences on the Internet based on interests, demographics, and user behavior. Over the past year, platforms like Bluesky, Threads, BeReal, and the group of social networks known as fediverse have become part of the social media stratosphere.

TikTok has emerged as a breakout star and a legitimate challenger to the biggest platforms, going from a marketing novelty in 2023 to a budget item in 2024. But this shift was just the beginning. Today, the social landscape includes everything from Threads to BeReal, Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn and the list goes on. Still, TikTok remains today’s golden child of social media. Whether it will stay that way is unclear, as a TikTok ban looms.

Perhaps the most seismic shift was the proliferation of text-based social apps in the form of an arms race that took off after Elon Musk’s takeover of X. At that point, advertisers questioned the safety of the brand on the platform, leading to litigation and the rise of competitors like Threads (Meta’s answer), Bluesky, Spill, and Mastodon. However, marketers are still not sold.

There are several reasons for not being interested, but mostly it’s about money. Alternatives to X are new and often don’t start with the advertising infrastructure or scale needed for a brand to do more than squat on a username. In other words, the dollars haven’t moved into Threads and aren’t earmarked for Bluesky, and experimental budgets won’t be increasing anytime soon, executives say. Meta and Google still win here.

“At the end of the day, the vast majority of the dollar spent on Google and Meta is based on performance. So as long as they work, I don’t see budgets going down,” said Donna Sharp, managing director of MediaLink and partner at United Talent Agency.

Dollars, dollars, dollars

With economic headwinds expected to continue into the new year in the form of tariff proposals and uncertainty with the incoming administration, there is money in social media strategy and spending.

The social media faucet is easy to turn on and off—something that has proven time and time again in election season and high-voltage cultural moments. In today’s performance- and ROI-driven digital advertising environment, “eyeballs aren’t as important as engagement,” said John Geletka, founder and chief experience officer at creative and strategy agency Geletka+.

“I’m not going to go where the eyeballs are, I’m going to use the dollars. Once I maximize the dollars, I will start looking at other platforms,” he said.

But as fragmentation continues, Geletka added, “Ask me again in six months.”