April 2025 in Digital Strategy
Everything you missed in April about digital and influencer marketing.
Happy May Day!
What better way to celebrate the creation of the 8-hour workday than by thinking about what we now spend 8 hours a day doing… consuming digital media.
I'm writing to you from Madrid, where on Monday I took my longest internet break in 14 years.
If you're going to be in Colorado Springs at the end of the month for the Pollie Awards, let me know. I'll be there with my People First colleague Nicole and we’d like to say hello.
Also, over on Out Of Office: A Travel Podcast, we just celebrated our 200th episode with travel icon Rick Steves. Please give it a listen.
A lot happened in April, let's dive in.
Ryan
The Month in Digital Strategy - April 2025
Big Picture
H&M is creating digital clones of models, with their permission, using high-resolution scans that capture everything, including birthmarks. These AI models will have negotiated rates for usage—I first typed "appearances.” Models will still be getting paid. Stylists, makeup and hair talent, lighting, photographers? Not so much.
Google Chrome will continue to work with third-party cookies.
A new USF study says smartphones are actually good for your kid’s well-being. Sure.
I hope to never experience this at a movie: The “M3GAN” screening will allow fans to communicate with the evil doll herself via a M3GAN chatbot. Meta is launching its Movie Mate technology, allowing moviegoers to second screen during the film to access exclusive content, trivia, & behind-the-scenes info in real time.
OpenAI is working on an "X-style" social media app. You're generating content there already, wouldn't it be great to just share it directly!?! OpenAI is currently one of the most downloaded apps in the world and is also integrating shopping features. Could we eventually see a Sam vs. Elon showdown to build the elusive Great American Everything App?
Brands that cut marketing spending during downturns often regret it, if they survive at all.
Key findings from the Journal of Advertising Research:
When brands stop advertising for a year or more, sales often decline year-over-year after the pause. On average, sales fell 16% after one year and 25% after two years.
The rate of decline is fastest for brands that were already shrinking before halting their advertising.
Brand size matters: smaller brands typically suffer greater declines than larger ones.
I knew 7 of these 11 “new” social media apps. Find me Noplace.
“Make Things People Want to Share” is still the best piece of social media content advice out there.
I’m with Kyle Chyka that social media decentralizing will likely make social media smaller and more focused on building community and sharing interests.
“New possibilities are emerging everywhere, disrupting the old monoculture and offering different ways of being online. Some people talk with A.I. chatbots on Character.ai more regularly than they speak with their human pals, and Reddit has been reinvigorated as an avowedly human community. Friends congregate on text-message threads more often than Facebook.”
The State of Social
More Americans are consuming social media content than ever before.
After a few years stalled, social media usage among Americans aged 12+ has jumped to 86% this year.
Older Americans' social media use is far more consolidated than that of younger users. A large majority of adults 55 and older prefer Facebook, while those aged 12 to 34 split their time between Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms.
Brands and organizations should focus their efforts on the platforms where their audiences are most active and stay up to date as social media continues to decentralize.
Read the full Infinite Dial 2025 report from Edison Research here.
SMEO: 70% of Fortune 100 CEOs now maintain at least one social media account, and nearly half post at least once a month.
Big Report Bonanza:
M+R 2025 Benchmarks - The digital benchmark report for social impact organizations.
Dash Social 2025 Social Media Benchmarks - Breaks down KPIs by commercial categories.
GWI 2025 social media report - Lots of fun data points here on how and why Americans use social media.
Buffer says LinkedIn has the highest engagement rate of the major social media platforms. They also released a new report on the best times to post on social.
“TikTok Users Spend Twice as Much Time on the App as Instagram Users Spend on Instagram”
The latest social media image sizes for the 9 major networks.
Influencers
Brands and organizations should respond to comments on creators’ content and treat each one as a warm lead.
LinkedIn B2B creators are still being seriously underutilized.
44% of marketers say that identifying the right creators is their biggest challenge in influencer marketing. Brands and organizations struggle to find the right creators because many influencer agencies rely on commercially available platforms filled with low-quality, unvetted talent.
The latest on influencer partnership disclosures in the age of Trump.
Three smart ways to get the most out of your influencer content.
Smart take on the different type of influencers at the top of the creator economy: influencers, celebrities, and entrepreneurs.
On episode three of the Influencer Impact podcast, we spoke with Val Cheney, who leads People First’s creator community, about building the largest database in social impact.
GenAI
New survey of marketers on how they’re integrating GenAI into their workflows.
As more users search and shop through GenAI, it's time to think of LLMs as some of your most important customers.
Eric Schmidt testifying to a House panel on AI this month: "Many people project [electricity] demand for our [AI] industry will go from 3% to 99% of total generation... an additional 29 gigawatts by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by 2030…”
A totally non-dystopian new AI app will call your parents and make small talk so you don’t have to. Unrelatedly, “an AI companion chatbot is inciting self-harm, sexual violence and terror attacks.”
Shopify and Duolingo made headlines with AI-related staffing pauses and cuts.
YouTube backs the No Fakes Act, targeting unauthorized AI replicas of people.
TikTok
Trump issued a reprieve, giving TikTok until June 19 to sell or be banned. The current trade war with China is definitely complicating matters for all involved.
More and more creators don’t care what happens to TikTok, even as its popularity with teens is surging.
TikTok is launching their own version of community notes.
Pro tips on editing your TikTok videos.
Meta
The FTC’s antitrust case against Meta kicked off on April 14th. Will Meta have to sell off Instagram?
Zuckerberg testifies at trial that Facebook’s era of social media is over.
“Sharing videos and memes has become a love language - an intimate gift for Gen Z to send loved ones throughout the day, letting them know they care. 67% have shared video content from Instagram or Facebook with family and friends.” Lots of gems in this new Gen Z social pulse study from Meta.
Ad dollars are moving toward Meta from TikTok with ban uncertainty.
Meta’s Edits app is a big hit, scoring 7M+ downloads in the first week.
Instagram
Instagram is testing Storylines to link Stories together, lockable posts that would require the follower to enter a password, and launching re-posts to facilitate post sharing.
An iPad app may finally be in the works.
Instagram is leaning into search to help with content discovery.
Facebook
Publishers are starting to see traffic from Facebook again.
Facebook vows to cut down on the amount of AI slop in your news feed.
Threads
Threads is for real, hitting 350M monthly active users in Q1.
Here’s a way to follow your friends on Twitter/X on Threads.
Paid ads have come to Threads!
YouTube
April 24th was the 20th anniversary of the very first YouTube Video, Me at the Zoo. It’s now worth over $550B dollars.
Location tagging on YouTube Shorts will now help drive discovery.
YouTube releases new Shorts video creation tools.
A guide to repurposing long-form content for Shorts.
LinkedIn
Why document ads outperform carousel ads on LinkedIn.
Great 101 guide to LinkedIn media planning.
Trending videos coming to your Linkedin feed.
The latest demographics (almost half of LinkedIn users are aged 25–34!) and more in Meriticool’s 2025 LinkedIn Study.
Twitter/X
X shut down the accounts of Turkish dissidents.
95% of sponsored post on X are not disclosed.
Bluesky, Truth Social, Etc…
A long read from the New Yorker on Bluesky’s “quest to build non-toxic social media.” Meanwhile, downloads are anemic.
Bluesky roles out verification.
Reddit, Discord, Etc…
Discord’s Quest Ad Format: “Advertisers invite users to perform a specific action—like watching a video, playing a game, and more— and offer a reward like in-game boosts or themed avatar decorations. Users complete Quests by performing the action and redeeming their reward. Discord's first Quest, a partnership with HBO for a "Dune" trailer, had an 85% video completion rate, according to their internal data. And 100% of those who completed a quest redeemed their avatar decoration.”
Everything you wanted to know about the 380m people who use Reddit a month.
Hackers took down 4Chan for weeks.
Snapchat, BeReal, Etc…
SnapChat’s Conversation Ads show up right in the users inbox.
Could this finally be the ephemeral content moment Snapchat has been waiting for?
Gaming, Twitch, Etc..
Roblox now allows for “region-specific pricing” for digital goods.
Podcasts
Gen Z loves podcasts. “Ninety percent of internet users ages 16 to 24 listen to digital audio.” Their listening habits have a large partisan split.
Substack, Beehive, & Blogs
Can Tumblr make a comeback?
Substack launches Vertical Video.
Direct Messaging, Groups, Email, SMS, Etc…
SMS messaging driving conversions for brands.
Gen Z thinks your old if your Gmail address is your full name with no extra characters. They're shocked to learn about the invitation process.
“Leveraging Social Media DM's for Fundraising with Max Borowitz of Caucus”