The most important shift in social media advertising over the previous 5 years hasn’t been short-form video, and even the event of generative AI. The important thing evolution, from a marketing-specific perspective, has been the transfer away from interplay and in direction of straight leisure.

Now, you can, in fact, argue that leisure has all the time been a key aspect of promoting. However within the early days of social media, a central focus for manufacturers was sparking interplay and driving engagement, by offering a way in your goal clients to get in contact and get responses out of your model presence.

The implementation of algorithms made this much more of a spotlight, as a result of extra feedback and likes resulted in additional attain. And whereas engagement remains to be an element, the platforms themselves at the moment are shifting past prompting likes and feedback, and are refocusing, as an alternative, on time spent in every app.

Which is all due to TikTok.

For years, Meta held the reigns in social media, and as such, it dictated the traits and norms that guided how customers work together. Meta had realized that feedback and interactions had been what prompted customers to stay round, so its algorithm prioritized posts that garnered extra of those behaviors.

Which inadvertently incentivized extra divisive, argumentative takes, as a result of the content material that’s almost certainly to spark response is that which drives excessive emotional resonance. Pleasure, worry and anger are the important thing feelings that immediate response, and unsurprisingly, the algorithmic shift led to those turning into the primary drivers of on-line exercise.

However TikTok flipped the paradigm, and has modified the best way that every one platforms now function.

Reasonably than relying in your connections, TikTok emphasised public posting, and quite than specializing in likes and feedback, TikTok targeted on time spent, and taking in additional indicators from every clip to then refine the suggestions that it reveals every individual.

Primarily, TikTok re-aligned the social media matrix round leisure as an alternative. Which is large, as a result of the precise ‘social’ elements that had lengthy been the main target have now been relegated to a secondary airplane.

And that additionally signifies that social media advertising methods have to be re-aligned in step.

Don’t consider me? Want extra convincing?

How about the truth that 50% of the content material that customers see on Instagram now comes by way of AI suggestions?

These should not posts out of your family and friends, and this isn’t content material from accounts that you just’ve chosen to observe. Additionally, Instagram isn’t as involved about whether or not they’ll drive likes and feedback, the important thing measurement is how lengthy you spend watching, and how briskly you skip by every (or not).

Fb utilization can also be up, and 30% of the content material that customers see on Fb additionally now comes by way of the identical AI suggestions system.

However the important thing consideration right here is that this: Whereas time spent on Fb has elevated on account of these topical suggestions, creation and engagement continues to say no, with fewer individuals posting to each Fb and Instagram than they’ve previously.

That’s significantly true amongst youthful audiences, whereas notably, utilization of Instagram Tales can also be in decline, down greater than 10% on earlier ranges.

Persons are spending extra time consuming AI-recommended video clips, however they’re more and more much less more likely to remark and interact past viewing. As such, social media is turning into much less and fewer social, and is extra like conventional media, with interactive components.

The consideration from a advertising perspective is that you could be have to shift your focus in keeping with this, by shifting away from posts that spark feedback, and extra in direction of pure leisure consequently.

Triggering engagement has lengthy been a key tenet of social media advertising, as a result of as famous, platform algorithms have prioritized content material that generates direct response. However now, nearly each platform is more and more aligning with time spent, which comes, largely, by way of video clips.

And in that state of affairs, essentially the most entertaining content material wins, not posts that prod customers for his or her ideas.

And once you additionally take into account the rise of generative AI, that’s more likely to change into much more of a spotlight, as a result of whereas generative AI instruments can give you human-like photographs, textual content and video clips, what they will’t give you is really artistic ideas, or a minimum of, it’s not as really easy to make them offer you such, with out having an idea in thoughts for your self.

For instance, I requested ChatGPT to provide me an thought for a “wacky, humorous marketing campaign to advertise a brand new lemonade model.”

Okay, #SqueezetheDay shouldn’t be horrible, however the tag itself has already been utilized by many juice bars and designers in each on and offline promotions. Which highlights the important thing problem in utilizing AI mills for such objective, in that many of the ideas that such techniques will produce are going to finish up being pretty generic, and subsequently unlikely to resonate within the new, entertainment-focused social media surroundings, the place idea, more and more, will probably be key.

The problem for AI mills on this sense is that they’re inherently spinoff, because the system can solely iterate on what’s come earlier than, so all the things that it spits out goes to really feel considerably cliché and repetitive.

As a result of it’s, the system is simply supplying you with a variation of what it conceptually understands from the phrases that you just enter. It’s occurring “lemonade” and “promotion” and pumping out ideas based mostly on what it might probably match up, based mostly on earlier makes use of of those phrases inside a sure proximity.

As such, all the things that comes out of an LLM-based system will seemingly really feel a bit stale, whereas the content material that’s most entertaining is contemporary, fascinating, and customarily a brand new tackle previous concepts.

Is it potential than a generative AI system might produce an amazing thought? Positive, however systematically, that’s probably not how they’re designed, which reduces the chance that an AI instrument would be the supply of the subsequent nice idea.

However regardless, AI instruments are getting used an increasing number of. Which might really additional improve the worth of actually distinctive, fascinating ideas, amongst a rising tide of previous concepts which have been regurgitated by AI techniques.

Primarily, leisure, and growing time spent together with your content material, is what’s going to drive extra attain in social apps, because the platforms shift additional away from their social roots, in keeping with consumer behaviors.

Previous finest practices, together with engagement bait, hashtags, calls to motion, all of those are going to change into much less vital, as extra platforms shift to concentrate on AI suggestions.