January 2025 in Digital Strategy
Everything you missed in January about digital and influencer marketing.
Good morning,
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January was a wild month in digital, from TikTok's temporary (and still pending) ban to Zuckerberg giving Meta the red pill. We'll look at where things stand now from a high level.
The Month in Digital launched just three months ago and is growing each month. At this rate, in just ninety-four months, every human on earth will finally be up to speed on digital marketing. Imagine.
Have a colleague who’s lagging behind on digital trends? Forward this to them—help them finally contribute something meaningful in a meeting. Feel free to delete this part so they think you’re just being thoughtful.
Once more unto the internet, dear readers—once more.
Ryan
The Month in Digital Strategy - January 2025
Social Media
Big Picture:
The ultimate guide to selling to Baby Boomers online: they love social media, customer reviews, and a great deal.
Hip CMOs share their 2025 priorities—lots of culture and community.
Unpacking the ‘Human-Likeness Effect’ ;-0
The line between cool and cringe is thin: 40% of consumers think it’s “cool” when brands join viral trends, while 33% find it “embarrassing.”
History is finally happening again, with surges in book sales, podcast downloads, and newsletter subscriptions.
Here are some recent viral marketing videos that will either inspire, depress, or both.
The Center for Campaign Innovation released a study reaffirming the shift to social media, podcasts, and streaming during the 2024 election. Whoever setup Timothée Chalamet’s press tour for A Complete Unknown has read this research.
I really loved the Severance Grand Central pop-up.
The State of Social:
Huge new study on the state of social media from Metricool.
The top 35 social media platforms.
How teens in the USA are using social media.
Influencers
Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is just 27, will integrate creators and influencers into the press room.
New research reveals that 80% of Americans will buy something because of a random piece of content they see an influencer share. Read “The New Rules of Influence.”
Don’t miss Izea’s 2025 influencer trust survey, lots of exciting numbers.
TikTok
For those not following closely—Trump tried to ban TikTok as president, Biden got Congress to pass a TikTok ban and signed it, TikTok was banned in the U.S. and taken down for around 12 hours, and then it returned "thanks to President Trump," vowing to bring it back. TikTok is back for now and has about 65 days to find a buyer or face another ban.
Nobody knows how this will play out, so make sure your brand or organization is focused on building out YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels while TikTok figures things out.
TikTok Isn’t That Great: A recent study out of Rutgers showed that TikTok app users had a more positive view of China than non-users. America’s teens love Chinese e-commerce apps.
TikTok released a 2025 blueprint for publishers to master the platform.
If your phone has TikTok installed on it, now is the tine to sell it.
Meta
In what was only the second-biggest social media story of January, Mark Zuckerberg announced major changes to how Meta fact-checks and censors content on its platforms. He made this announcement before an appearance with Donald Trump at the inauguration and a guest spot on Joe Rogan, where he, without smiling, discussed running a more “macho” social media app.
Many are rightly concerned over hate speech and disinformation:
“Each aspect of Zuckerberg's announcement appeared designed to ingratiate the company with President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA base.” - Popular Information
“Zuckerberg’s Macho Posturing Looks a Lot Like Cowardice” - Zeynep Tufekci
“These below-the-fold changes are very clearly designed to avoid having to penalize people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the increasingly dehumanizing language they use against these specific groups.” - Dave Willner
But, I’m glad that Meta is no longer holding back political content in the algorithm. That’s something brands and organizations can leverage to their advantage. And, Meta was never very good at countering disinformation anyway.
Many questions remain about how this will all play out. Meta has plenty of incentive to keep the platform brand-safe and friendly.
If you’re managing a brand page, we know that community notes won’t apply to paid ads, but it’s unclear if they’ll be added to organic brand content. Things could get interesting very quickly. But if you spend enough money, you don’t have to worry about content moderation: “Meta gave special content moderation treatment to top advertisers”
AI Profiles: Meta offhandedly announced the pending introduction of more AI-generated profiles to their platforms, designed to engage with real users. Soon, users discovered older AI profiles on Instagram that were pretty silly, prompting Meta to quickly take them down. Those AI profiles were unrelated to the recent announcement—so expect more cringe AI profiles to make their debut in 2025.
Meanwhile, Meta is allowing 'nudify' apps to advertise on its platforms, driving traffic to apps that engage in unethical gen AI practices, permitting the sale of gun silencers disguised as fuel filters in ads while 'starting to test content imagined for you by Meta AI' for your Feeds. The $7 billion lawsuit against Meta by advertisers over faking reach numbers is moving forward. Zuck did tell his employees that it’s “going to be a crazy year.”
Instagram
Don't Be Square: Instagram changed its grid to 4:5, officially moving away from its origins as a square, retro photo app and fully embracing its future as a vertical video platform. This shift upset users with perfectly curated square feeds, but they'll get over it. Besides, nobody posts on the grid anymore.
Don’t Miss: The latest on the best times to post on Instagram, how the Instagram algorithm works, and the latest Instagram content dimensions.
Instagram will prioritize “original and creative content in its algorithmic rankings in 2025.”
Your friends now see the Reels you've liked.
Instagram videos can now be up to three minutes long.
Advice from Instagram For Business:
AVOID these things for maximum reach on your posts:❌ Watermarks
❌ Engagement bait
❌ Reels over 90 seconds
❌ Non-recommendable content
❌ Posting content you didn’t make
Facebook
American moms are still very active on Facebook and Messenger, leading all other platforms.
Haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but this Facebook Group extractor looks very cool.
Threads
Ads are finally coming to Threads.
LinkedIn
TLDR: The best time to post on LinkedIn is between 7:00 AM and 4:00 PM on weekdays. The definitive guide to the best times to post on each day, based on analysis of a million posts.
Always Be Closing: Practical tips for prospecting on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn wants creators on the platform to self-disclose when they’re getting paid.
LinkedIn is training their AI on your LinkedIn message spam.
Twitter/X
Lots of progressive organizations left X for Bluesky and left their audiences behind.
X launches dedicated video feed.
BlueSky
The meteoric rise of Bluesky is over. Didn’t see that coming!
BlueSky launches dedicated video feed.
Reddit
Reddit has launched some cool new trends tools and AMAs powered by paid media.
Substack, Beehiiv, & Blogs
Blogging never stopped mattering, but with the rise of newsletters and the shift toward smaller niche networks, it might matter more than ever.
The debate over whether Substack is the real deal continues. Here's the latest.
The 2025 State of Email Newsletters from Beehiiv.
YouTube
Below, YouTube explains how its algorithm works in 2025.
YouTube will be the big winner in a TikTokless future.
Lots of users are watching YouTube content on their TVs—here’s a guide to make sure yours looks great.
Podcasts
Experts on how to use podcasts to power your niche advertising.
Podcast clips from podcasts that don’t exist are taking over social media.
“YouTube continues to be the preferred platform for most listeners, capturing 33% of listeners in 2024—its highest share yet—marking a steady rise from 27% in 2021.” Read the latest state of podcasting report.
AI
We’re seeing exponential growth in AI-related job titles: “The most significant growth was seen in AI-related C-suite roles, which experienced a staggering 428% increase over two years. During the same period, AI-related VP titles increased by 199%, AI directors by 197%, and AI managers by 174%.”
New research from King's College says don’t try and pass your AI agents off as human: “Making your AI tools look human or dehumanizing them altogether are not the best ways to win over your users. Instead, show them the human effort and expertise that go into their development and design. The path forward is highlighting the humans in AI rather than humanizing AI.”
Book app Fable tries to make their end-of-year wrapped reading report funny with Gen AI but ends up mocking users for how woke their reading list is.
2024 was about the rise of the AI chatbot; 2025 will be about the rise of the AI agent. “Where a chatbot produces output in the form of imagery, textual or video content, an AI agent — built, of course, on the same LLM-based architecture — would complete actions.” Read about OpenAI’s new AI Operator.
DeepSeek’s rapid rise demonstrates that there are no true “moats” in AI technology, with numerous groups worldwide advancing at a similar pace in LLM development.
“The property management software used by many corporate landlords, RealPage, is deploying AI to artificially inflate rental prices in the United States by more than $3.6 billion annually.”
AI is sucking up documentary subtitles to train models.
New Case Study: Cybertruck bomber used gen AI to help plan his self-foiled attack.
71% of Americans didn’t use Gen AI in 2024. 26% of American teens are using Gen AI for homework.
We're all disappointed that Deepseek may have trained on OpenAI's data. OpenAI only ingested data it had the right to and respected Americans' privacy, so it's frustrating to see Deepseek resorting to scraping the internet.
Study says ChatGPT might be a really good tutor.
More Digital Bits
I don't know anyone who has ever watched anything on Tubi, yet they now have 97 million monthly active users.
The biggest deck I've ever seen on the state of video gaming.
Beyond Digital
Graph Of The Month
