2025 Prediction: Major Changes are Coming to Social Media
As the marketing and advertising industries continue to evolve, staying ahead of the curve will remain essential for businesses’ ongoing success. 2024 brought some widespread changes, but 2025 may present even larger challenges.
Our next prediction is that major changes are coming to social media.
Here’s what’s happening:
Social media networks are making significant changes that will affect advertising. Here are the changes that are happening on each major channel:
These changes will change the way marketers and advertisers reach and engage with audiences on these platforms.
Why it matters:
Meta announced that it will restrict advertiser access to special ad categories—like health and wellness, financial services, and politics—for shared customer list custom audiences. These changes will reduce the types of data advertisers can use to reach consumers, limiting targeting abilities. These changes may also make Meta’s “campaign optimization” tools less functional.
LinkedIn discontinued its lookalike audiences in early 2024, meaning that marketers can’t create new lookalike audiences or edit existing ones, and lookalike audience data no longer refreshes.?
As for TikTok, the platform is facing high-profile legal challenges. While it remains to be seen if the app will be banned—in light of the Supreme Court case and a new presidential administration—many users and advertisers are exploring new platforms. YouTube and Meta may attract users due to the ease of sharing video content. However, Bluesky has seen an incredible 500% growth due to its reputation as a “safe haven” for users fleeing Twitter/X; this growth may continue if TikTok does get banned nationwide.
What we recommend:
With these changes coming to social media platforms, advertisers will be affected by the loss of data, loss of targeting abilities, and possibly even the loss of entire platforms.?
On Meta, advertisers should seek out third-party audiences that comply with Meta’s new policies. With the right data, advertisers will be able to keep campaigns running smoothly. Many Meta audiences are available on Deep Sync One, including audiences related to health and wellness, financial attributes, and politics. Once audiences are selected, they can be distributed to advertisers’ Meta ad accounts for campaigns.
To adapt to the loss of lookalike audiences, LinkedIn recommends: “Predictive audiences for contact list, conversion, or Lead Gen Form data sources [and] Audience Expansion for Matched Audiences and LinkedIn attribute targeting, such as by skill or interest.”
If TikTok is banned, we recommend that advertisers lean into video-based advertising on YouTube and Meta. Influencer marketing may also experience growth, as creators who built significant platforms on TikTok may have loyal audiences that follow them to other platforms.?
In the face of all of the changes to social media, smaller marketing teams might consider exploring other avenues like search ads or relying more heavily on organic content. For larger marketing teams, we recommend spreading your efforts across channels and platforms.?
Targeting the same audience across disparate channels requires a significant understanding of audience targeting, addressability, and how to use your customer data. But, that’s where data providers like Deep Sync can provide expertise and help marketers have more control over their audiences—regardless of the changes to social media platforms.
Read the full article (including our top 8 predictions for 2025) by our Content Marketing Manager, Kelly Parrett, here: https://deepsync.com/emerging-marketing-trends/
Contact us to learn more about how Deep Sync can help you navigate the industry's changes in 2025 and beyond.