CMO Strategies: The highs and lows of the dominant social media platforms — from Instagram to YouTube

Among all marketing channels considered in Digiday+ Research’s CMO Strategies series, social media had the highest usage rate for the second year in a row. Ninety-seven percent of marketer respondents said their company currently uses social media for marketing, according to Digiday’s first-quarter 2024 survey. That is the same percentage of respondents who said their company used social media for marketing last year.

Social media remains the most popular marketing channel most likely because of its massive audience reach and because it offers marketers the opportunity to establish genuine, organic connections with consumers. 

“We are able to reach a wider audience on social media in a way that is a lot more compelling than we would with [traditional] advertising,” said Emmanuel Orssaud, CMO at language-learning app Duolingo. “Over the years, there’s definitely been a mindset shift in that consumers are a little bit more skeptical of ads and advertising in general, and they are looking for a more authentic way to connect with brands. Social media, through content, allows us to build that connection.”

Social media also tends to be an easy channel in which to buy ads, which can help brands to quickly establish a presence on platforms and build an audience. Viral moments, especially on platforms like TikTok, can generate buzz and drive sales spikes for established brands and younger brands alike.

“With paid social, it’s easy for us to quickly test and learn about new campaigns and run different marketing campaigns across the entire funnel,” said Kate Breen, media strategist at Athletic Brewing, a non-alcoholic beer brand and brewery.

Social media’s dominance is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Currently, social media is the largest media channel worldwide by ad investment, according to WARC Media’s most recent forecasts. And global social media ad spend is forecast to total $247.3 billion in 2024, up 14.3% year over year from 2023, according to WARC.

To map out marketers’ current digital playbooks, Digiday+ Research sent out a survey asking 174 respondents about past and upcoming investments, marketing channel tactics, preferences and business challenges. 

Digiday+ Research also conducted a focus group and individual interviews with marketing executives across industries.

Within social media, Meta-owned platforms Instagram and Facebook are the predominant players again this year, holding on to the No. 1 and No. 2 spots respectively. While Meta owns both, the two platforms attract different audiences: Instagram appeals to younger generations, with 62% of its audience base falling between the ages of 18 and 34, while 69% of Facebook’s user base is between 25 and 64, and another 12% is 65 and over, according to Statista.

Both Facebook and Instagram benefit from being veterans in the social space and from offering marketers out-of-the-box-ready ad options, such as Instagram’s in-feed ads or Facebook’s Messenger ads. However, Facebook isn’t faring as well with brands as it has in the past. While brands are still advertising on Facebook, a first-quarter Digiday+ Research survey found they’re spending a lot more on Instagram.

Facebook hopes to change that and position itself for future success, in part by increasing its appeal among younger users. In May, Facebook announced a plan to attract a bigger Gen Z audience to the platform by upgrading its Reels and Feeds technology and simplifying the process to become a content creator and earn money on Facebook. 

Meanwhile, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube — both platforms that focus on video content — tied in third place this year as marketers’ most-used social media platforms. That’s a shift from last year when YouTube held fourth place. YouTube’s usage increased by 2 percentage points in 2024, while TikTok’s usage dropped by 1 percentage point — a slight decrease, but enough to put the platforms on an even playing field. 

TikTok’s ability to create viral moments has consistently pushed it to the top of marketers’ minds. But it’s facing a potential ban or sale in the U.S., and marketers are exploring contingency plans, such as moving spending to other platforms or diversifying in the fediverse. (The fediverse, or the federated universe, is best described as a group of social media networks that are independent but able to communicate with one another.)

“We definitely are not in a place where we are panicking or changing our strategy around this,” said Duolingo’s Orssaud. “It’s clear that the audience is still on TikTok despite the announcement of a potential ban. … The question of where we will distribute content if TikTok disappears — honestly, we’ll just follow our audience. Wherever they go is where we’ll be.”

YouTube is popular as both a social platform and as an ad-supported streaming platform, thereby serving a dual purpose for marketers. YouTube likely moved up to third place in part because of marketers’ concerns about a potential TikTok ban, but also because of the greater emphasis YouTube has placed on Shorts, its short-form vertical video option that launched in the U.S. in March 2021. 

Some brands are even looking to develop and invest in original Shorts videos to take advantage of the platform’s surge in usage, rather than repurposing existing content from TikTok and Instagram. “Great scale and momentum is happening on YouTube Shorts, and YouTube is priming people to go to their platform to watch short-form videos,” said Tyler Wentworth, senior director of social media at beauty brand Ipsy. “We now need to evaluate YouTube Shorts as a primary social channel, and we’re talking with our internal production team to create new, specific and original content for YouTube shorts.”

For other brands, developing platform-specific content isn’t in their playbooks just yet. 

“I would love to be a content powerhouse and build a specific content for each channel,” said Athletic Brewing’s Breen. “At the moment, we don’t develop individual creative for each channel. Instead, we test and learn on Meta, and if something is working really well, we might try it on another platform like TikTok.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, marketers’ use of X (formerly Twitter) declined this year as well — down 6 percentage points in 2024 vs. 2023. That’s likely due to continued turbulence at the platform since Elon Musk’s takeover, including mass layoffs, verification overhaul and seemingly never ending platform and policy changes. (More on this later.) The future for X looks unsteady as well. X’s U.S. ad revenue is expected to fall from $1.06 billion in 2023 to $1.04 billion in 2024, according to eMarketer.

With the wide range of social platforms on which to advertise, and their varied content types, a major challenge for brands is how to effectively measure success on the platforms. Similar to last year’s results, engagement was the primary measurement of success marketers turn to on all social platforms, with the exception of Pinterest where impressions was the top metric. (Engagement tied with impressions as the top metric marketers consider on Snapchat and X.) 

“What is unique about social is attention and the active choice that it comes with — on social, consumers are not forced to watch but choose to watch,” Hyundai’s CMO Angela Zepeda said in an email to Digiday. “Social media is the largest focus group we have and is rich with insights. Likes, comments and shares (engagement) show us what people are gravitating towards. It is our job to listen and respond to our audience.”

More than one-third of marketer respondents (39%) said engagement is the main success metric they consider for Instagram. Engagement was also marketers’ primary measurement of success — tied with conversions — on fellow Meta-owned platform Facebook, with 25% of respondents selecting each of those metrics, respectively. This was a shift from last year when commerce or sales tied with engagement as marketers’ main success metric on Facebook. 

“If the audience is watching and engaging, our costs go down, traffic goes up and so does our overall awareness and consumer intent,” Hyundai’s Zepeda explained. “When the content is compelling, we also see high-quality traffic to our website of potential purchasers who look at available inventory and/or conduct other high value website actions like submitting a lead or scheduling a test drive. Social media is truly a full-funnel approach designed to drive awareness, curiosity and shopping actions.”

Athletic Brewing’s Breen said the success metrics Athletic Brewing considers on Meta’s platforms depends on whether advertising is top- or bottom-funnel. “At the top-of-funnel, we’re mostly monitoring reach, frequency, and even video completion rates,” Breen said. “In the mid-funnel, we’re looking at traffic conversion and directing customers to a nearby retailer. Anything lower-funnel is conversion-driven.” 

When it comes to TikTok, 40% of respondents told Digiday engagement is the primary success metric they focus on, followed by commerce or sales at 24% of respondents. This is a change from last year when impressions was the second-highest success metric marketers considered on TikTok. 

Because TikTok mainly hosts user-generated content, brands marketing on the platform primarily rely on engagement to gauge success. However, the launch of TikTok Shop in September 2023 likely helped propel commerce or sales to become the No. 2 success metric on the platform.

TikTok Shop relies on an algorithm to feed ads, non-sponsored videos and LIVEs (creators and viewers interacting in real-time) with product links to users’ For You pages — with creators eligible to earn a commission from any sales. Brand profiles can also showcase products directly on their pages, and viewers can complete checkout on TikTok — rather than external sites. A tab has been added to users’ Home screens to access the Shop feature.

The Estée Lauder Companies has been embracing TikTok Shop head-on. Jon Roman, svp of global online, said Estée Lauder’s TikTok-focused campaigns have garnered success, in terms of earned media value and engagement. Estée Lauder-owned skin-care brand The Ordinary has one of the strongest followings for a beauty brand on TikTok, with 1.3 million followers. “[Our focus] is not really about the actual TikTok Shop itself and storefront,” said Roman. “It’s about the whole experience of the consumer journey and giving customers the opportunity to shop via TikTok if that’s where they want to shop.”

Engagement was also the top success metric marketers said they consider on YouTube, Digiday’s survey found, followed closely by impressions. Georgia-Pacific’s svp of CPG marketing and consumer experience Laura Knebusch said the home goods manufacturer weighs a range of metrics across social platforms and depending on the brand being advertised. “[For] online video or YouTube, completion rate is one that we’ll look at,” Knebusch said. “When we look at social, we’re looking at engagement and whether people are involved. But we use marketing mix modeling to help provide that single source of truth across all of our different channels from both an effectiveness and an efficiency. So usually, we’re looking at multiple KPIs tied back to the brand objective.” 

Knebusch added that walled gardens present a particular measurement obstacle when it comes to platforms whose primary content is UGC. “The No. 1 challenge is walled gardens,” Knebusch said. “Our ability to actually measure and identify reach across those platforms. … Do we have an understanding of consistency of metrics? Particularly with the increase of TikTok and user-generated content, the ability to deliver the right content with the right frequency is something that we are addressing right now. As we invest more in social, that’s becoming a bigger challenge for us.”

Digiday+ Research also analyzed which social platforms best meet brands’ marketing objectives. When asked which social platform is best for branding, 59% of survey respondents chose Instagram, marking the second year in a row that Instagram is respondents’ top choice for branding. Instagram was also marketers’ top choice for conversions in both 2024 and 2023. 

In fact, Instagram has dominated all social media platform rankings within Digiday’s CMO Strategies series. Instagram is particularly effective for growing organic brand reach, with more tools for engagement and a focus on images and videos which can inspire comments, likes and shares. Likewise, engaged users are more apt to convert on Instagram.

In contrast to Instagram, fellow Meta-owned platform Facebook was not a favorite branding tool among marketers. Only 13% of respondents said it was the best platform for that purpose, although this was a slight increase from the 9% of respondents who said Facebook was the top brand driver last year. Facebook performed much better when it came to conversions — 31% of respondents said it was the best platform for driving conversions this year. 

A recent Digiday+ Research survey of agency professionals found that agencies approach Facebook and Instagram differently when it comes to measuring the success of their clients’ marketing on the channels. On Facebook, the highest percentage of agency pros said that conversions are the main measurement of success their clients used. On Instagram, the largest group of agency pros said engagement is their clients’ main measurement of success. The difference in the success metrics advertisers consider on the Meta-owned platforms likely contributed to why Facebook performed better among marketers for driving conversions than for branding.

This year, marketers found YouTube to be a better branding tool than Facebook for the first time. Sixteen percent of respondents said YouTube is the social platform that’s best for branding in 2024, up from only 3% of respondents who said the same last year (and compared to Facebook’s 13%). YouTube can be useful for branding because its user-generated content attracts a large, engaged user base. 

But the scale of YouTube’s platform can also work against it. YouTube’s premium TV programming is only a slice of the 4-plus billion videos that are estimated to have been uploaded to YouTube in 2023. And many marketers and agency executives can’t shake brand safety concerns when it comes to YouTube’s UGC. Fifteen percent of agency professionals said brand safety was their top challenge on YouTube, according to a first-quarter 2024 Digiday+ Research survey. And 10% of marketers noted it was a top concern within this report. (More on that later.)

Regardless of the platform on which Duolingo advertises, the language-learning app’s Orssaud said the company’s primary goal across social media platforms is brand building. “We think about reaching new audiences, as well as keeping a close connection with our current audience,” Orssaud said. “Having that ongoing conversation with our audience on social media is the best way for our brand to stay top of mind with our audience.”

• Social media remains the most popular marketing channel — 97% of marketers use social media — primarily because of its massive audience reach and because it offers marketers the opportunity to establish genuine, organic connections with consumers.
  
• Meta-owned platforms Instagram and Facebook remain the predominant players within social media, holding the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, but marketers’ use of Pinterest, Reddit and Snapchat has increased in 2024. (We’ll dive into those platforms in the second half of this report, out next week.)
  
• Marketers’ use of TikTok declined slightly in 2024. TikTok faces a potential ban or sale in the U.S., and marketers are exploring contingency plans, such as moving ad spending to other platforms. 

• Marketers’ use of X dropped by 6 percentage points in 2024. X has experienced continued turbulence since Elon Musk’s takeover, including mass layoffs and seemingly never ending platform and policy changes, causing a decline in marketer usage.
  
• Engagement is the primary measurement of success marketers turn to on all social platforms, with the exception of Pinterest. Engagement on social media is unique among marketing channels in that it shows marketers the types of products consumers gravitate toward.

• Marketers said Instagram is the best social platform for branding and for driving conversions. Instagram is particularly effective for growing organic brand reach, with more tools for engagement and a focus on images and videos which can inspire comments, likes and shares. Likewise, engaged users are more apt to convert on Instagram.