Digiday+ Research: The state of social media marketing (spoiler: Instagram came out on top in 2024)
By Julia Tabisz • December 6, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
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This year has marked yet another in which social media has been a dominant part in the conversations about marketers’ strategies and spending. To find out just how the year turned out for the various platforms, Digiday+ Research looked at surveys of brand, retailer and agency professionals conducted in the first and third quarters of 2024 to rank the top platforms based on usage and spending.
Digiday’s surveys found that nearly all marketers use social media as a marketing channel, and they’ve done so on a steady basis throughout the year — not a very surprising finding, but it’s worth mentioning the numbers. To be exact, 94% of brand, retailer and agency pros told Digiday in Q3 of this year that their companies or clients currently use social media for marketing, right on par with the 93% who said the same in Q1 2024.
And about three-quarters of marketers spend a significant amount of their marketing budgets on social media, according to Digiday’s surveys, which makes sense because a similar percentage also said they’re confident that social media drives marketing success: 76% of brand, retailer and agency pros said in Q3 that social media has the highest portion of their companies’ or clients’ marketing budgets, up slightly from 72% in Q1. And 73% said their companies have the most confidence that social media drives marketing success compared with other marketing channels, also up slightly from Q1 when 67% said the same.
With all that in mind, we ranked marketers’ top social platforms this year, with Instagram taking the first-place spot, followed by Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest. Ninety-seven percent of brand, retailer and agency pros told Digiday in Q3 2024 that their companies or clients currently use Instagram. Eighty-nine percent said the same of Facebook, 86% said they use TikTok, 73% said they use YouTube and 39% said they use Pinterest.
These top five social platforms remained steady all year for marketers, Digiday’s surveys found, but some platforms did see usage increase significantly between Q1 and Q3. TikTok saw a very sizable jump in usage this year: 61% of brand, retailer and agency pros said in Q1 2024 that their companies or clients used the social platform, compared with 86% in Q3. YouTube also saw a jump in usage, from 61% of marketers in Q1 2024 to 73% in Q3.
Outside of the top five platforms in Digiday’s surveys, Snapchat and Reddit actually saw notable decreases in usage in 2024. In Q1, 18% of brand, retailer and agency pros told Digiday that their companies and clients used Snapchat. That percentage fell to 10% in Q3. And while 14% of marketers said in Q1 that they used Reddit, just 7% said the same in Q3.
One noteworthy platform missing from this year’s top five was X (formerly known as Twitter). X ended up in the sixth-place spot among social media platforms according to Digiday’s surveys this year, with 29% of brand, retailer and agency pros saying in Q1 that they used X and 27% saying the same in Q3.
Interestingly, Digiday’s surveys found that brands’, retailers’ and agencies’ marketing spend increased on all of the top five social platforms this year. Almost all marketers spend a portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram, according to Digiday’s surveys, with 98% of brand, retailer and agency pros saying in Q3 2024 that at least a very small portion of their companies’ or clients’ marketing budgets goes toward Instagram, up from 92% in Q1.
TikTok saw a very significant increase in marketing spend this year. Sixty-five percent of brands, retailers and agencies said in Q1 2024 that they spent at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets on the platform. That percentage increased to 86% in Q3. Pinterest also saw a significant increase in spending, from 42% of marketers who said they spent at least a little on the platform in Q1 to 54% in Q3.
Facebook and YouTube also saw increases in usage this year, although less significantly so. Ninety-three percent of brand, retailer and agency pros told Digiday in Q3 that their companies or clients currently use Facebook, up from 86% in Q1. And 84% said in Q3 they use YouTube, up from 75% in Q1.
The picture looks a bit different when it comes to where marketers spend a lot of their marketing budget, however. Digiday’s surveys found that Instagram still takes the top spot among marketers when it comes to where they’re spending a large portion of their marketing budgets, but Instagram has seen a slight decrease here throughout the year. In Q1 2024, 43% of brand, retailer and agency pros said their companies or clients spent a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram, before falling slightly to 41% in Q3.
Facebook saw a similar decrease in 2024 in this category, taking it from second place in Q1 to third place (behind TikTok) in Q3. Twenty-nine percent of brands, retailers and agencies said in Q1 that their companies or clients spent a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Facebook, compared with 26% in Q3.
Meanwhile, the percentage of marketers who spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on TikTok rose this year, from 18% in Q1 to 27% in Q3.
https://digiday.com/?p=562263
