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As the poem goes: “Consumers scour social media with care, knowing that the holidays will soon be here.” Or something like that.
The most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching, and the influence social has on consumer purchasing behavior is undeniable. According to the Q3 2026 Sprout Social Pulse Survey*, more than three quarters (78%) of consumers plan to use social as much if not more to find gifts compared to last year.
Social has evolved into consumers’ favorite holiday marketing resource: a one-stop destination for discovering gifts, finding the latest deals and seeking customer service.
In this article, we’ll uncover key holiday shopping trends on social, including when consumers want brands to kick off their holiday campaigns, where consumers will look for gift ideas, what will make them more likely to buy, and how social media will play a key role in the customer experience.
Early holiday marketing campaigns don’t deter consumers from purchasing
Holiday milestones (and marketing) are starting sooner than ever. Social users celebrated Summerween in June, Starbucks launched their pumpkin spice latte in August and Hallmark even started promoting their online Christmas shop along the same timeline.
But in 2026, holiday campaigns creeping into the summer months are the opposite of what data shows consumers want: campaigns with a more traditional October start date.
This year, we saw a later shift in when consumers want brands to start their holiday campaigns, with 50% saying brands should start holiday advertising in October. This is a change compared to 2025, where August and September were the preferred months.
Yet even with consumers signaling a preference for later campaigns, that preference isn’t enough to influence actual buying behavior.
In fact, 40% of people said campaigns starting as early as August have no impact on their decision to buy from a company, while nearly 50% said they are either somewhat more likely or much more likely to buy from a brand who advertises as early as August.
Brand takeaway: Ideal campaign timing isn’t a core motivator for most shoppers. In most cases, posting a holiday message too soon (or too late) isn’t going to determine if people buy from you or not. Instead of focusing on timing, shift attention to your campaign content and what will resonate most with your target audience.
Tariffs and the economy are impacting this year’s holiday shopping habits
While campaign timing preferences don’t translate to buying behavior, tariffs and a tight economy do.
In 2026, consumers plan to shop earlier and spend less due to lower budgets and tariff-related price increases. More than half of people (69%) are concerned about price rises due to tariffs this year, and more than a third (36%) plan to shop earlier to avoid potential future price hikes.
And overall, 56% of consumers plan to reduce their holiday spending due to economic conditions.
What will make consumers more likely to buy?
With less than ideal shopping conditions, what will motivate consumers to make a purchase?
Promo codes are the top tactic for brands to grab consumer attention, with 30% of consumers saying a code, whether from the brand itself or from an influencer campaign, would persuade them to buy, reaffirming how much budget consciousness will define this holiday season. Your campaigns and influencer partnerships need to emphasize value—even more than years past.
Consumers are also looking for brands to show their products in action (28%) and create original, holiday-specific social media content to grab their attention (23%). This comes as a notable shift from 2025 preferences, where a brand’s customer service and user-generated content were the most influential factors in driving purchase intent.
Brand takeaway: The habits of price-conscious consumers are at odds with their preferences—but the wallets win. While consumers might not want their feeds flooded with holiday content in August, tight budgets are forcing shoppers to plan and purchase earlier than years prior. Since we know campaign timing isn’t a leading motivator, lean into what is. This year’s consumers want discounts, to know how your product works and creative holiday content, making 2026 ripe for influencer partnerships that cover all three bases.
Social is a top source for holiday shopping and product discovery
It’s been a few years since we saw the initial surge in people turning to social media as a search engine. And Sprout’s Q2 2026 pulse survey proved that social search is even more popular than traditional search when people look for experiential, highly-visual or peer-led information, with social search acting as the preferred method for seeking out restaurants, bars or things to do (38%), and product reviews or recommendations (30%).
It makes sense that these behaviors translate to the busiest shopping season of the year. In 2026, social media tied for the number one spot for holiday gift discovery, with 46% of consumers turning to social media for gift ideas, exactly the same number that said they would go to physical stores. Social rises to the sole top spot for both Gen Z and Millennials, with at least half of consumers scrolling on social to decide on gifts.
But social’s influence on holiday shopping doesn’t stop at product discovery. Consumers are routinely using social networks to purchase products directly, too. More than half of consumers said they’re open to making purchases directly within a social media app this holiday season, making experiences like TikTok Shop, Facebook Shops and Instagram Checkout all the more appealing for brands to use in holiday promotions.
Brand takeaway: With influence on behavior from discovery through purchase, brands can bet on social as a top driver of holiday campaign success. Create full holiday campaign journeys on social media, instilling trust and leading consumers along the whole buyer journey with the least amount of effort for them.
How holiday shopping trends impact customer care
Compared to the 2025 holiday season, 86% of users plan to use social as much if not more to get customer service questions answered.
They are most likely to turn to TikTok (50%), Facebook (46%) and Instagram (44%), while also using X (28%) and WhatsApp (17%). DMs are still the preferred method to reach out to brands for most consumers across generations (55%), but the comment section is also gaining traction, with nearly one-third (31%) saying they’ll reach out in the comments.
When handling customer service on social media, speed is paramount, with 70% of consumers expecting a response from a brand within a day of reaching out. Fast responses paired with high demand for many retailers leaves brands looking for options to address gaps in service. With the holiday rush, many brands are likely to turn to AI to help deal with the influx of customer messages. AI tools can help brands prioritize incoming messages, determine sentiment and even draft initial responses. Luckily, 70% of consumers are at least somewhat comfortable with brands offloading tasks to AI in the name of better customer service. This number rises to 77% for Gen Z.
While fast service is critical, speed doesn’t always mean a better experience. It’s best to use AI to expedite tasks behind the scenes and keep a human in the loop to respond to customers directly, so you can maintain the level of quality and personalization consumers expect.
Brand takeaway: Even with the use of AI, brands still need to make a plan to prioritize personalized, timely customer service during the busy holiday season. Given that 89% of consumers say response time matters to them after they reach out to a brand for help, customer service becomes a core driver of your brand’s reputation. And with the new emergence of consumers taking to the comments section for customer service, your brand has a higher chance of public exposure when something goes awry. Prepare now with a knowledgeable team, self-help resources and FAQs you can post to social media to alleviate social customer service strain before it happens.
Use holiday shopping trends to set your brand up for a happy new year
Consumers are turning to social not just to discover gifts and deals, but to make informed, trusted purchase decisions shaped by friends, family and other users. As tariffs tighten budgets and timelines shift earlier, brands that blend originality, responsiveness and value will stand out. Whether through early promotions, relatable content or seamless service, social media is the foundation of consumers’ holiday shopping experience.
To make your brand more discoverable during the ‘ber months, use this workbook to optimize your content for social search optimization.
*About the data
Unless otherwise noted, all data cited in this article is from a Q3 2026 Pulse Survey of 2,286 consumers in the US, UK and Australia conducted by Panoplai on behalf of Sprout. The survey was conducted online from August 11 to August 18, 2026.
For years, brands on social have chased follower count. More followers meant more reach, more reach meant more engagement, more engagement meant more sales, more sales meant more budget. Rinse and repeat. But that playbook is dated.
Today’s social networks run on algorithmic feeds, not follower counts, and a post can rack up thousands of views from non-followers, which often outnumber followers that see the post in modern feeds. Relevance is now the key, not audience size.
And the importance of discoverability even extends past the network itself, since social content is increasingly feeding into search engine results and used in AEO answers. That means the content of a post can drive awareness and traffic long after it disappears from the feed.
The takeaway for brands is the importance of content that is discoverable, not catering to just the audience you already have.
Reach has moved on from scaling with followers to scaling with relevance. The rise of algorithmic recommendation feeds means that on Instagram’s Reels tab or TikTok’s For You page, a majority of viewers for a given piece of content are people who don’t follow the account whose content they’re watching. Sprout’s own data shows that more than 70% of views come from non-followers 60% of the time.
And audiences have adjusted to this pattern. Only 17%* of users say they check an influencer’s follower count before deciding to follow for themselves. That means it’s less about audience size as a trust signal, and more about having the right content to engage your target audience.
For brands, that contains lessons for both content creation and the partners they work with. Follower count, especially for picking influencer partners, isn’t a reliable enough metric in 2026, when topic relevance, content quality and engagement rate are the best predictors of performance. Brands looking for new creative partners should be looking for these metrics first and foremost when assessing potential fit.
In fact, the one time you might want to look at the follower count is to make sure they don’t have too many.
Niche creators and micro-influencers can deliver superior engagement and purchase intent
Niche creators are the clearest proof of relevance over reach, as their naturally smaller audiences can still be very highly engaged and influential. Our survey data shows that buyers are more likely to purchase based on a recommendation from a niche creator than a mega-influencer (21% vs. 15%, while about a third reported no preference.)
This says a lot about community trust, with smaller influencers often having highly engaged audiences that pay closer attention to their recommendations, and produce more genuine feeling content because of that smaller audience.
It all comes back to authenticity.
And that authenticity also matters in direct product promotion, with 80% of consumers believing influencers should actually use the product they’re promoting, and 44% wanting them to be long-term users before promoting anything. That’s much more likely to happen for smaller influencers who are promoting something that’s genuinely relevant to their audience, rather than a mega-influencer being used as a broadcast-style megaphone.
When you’re building a shortlist of partners to work with, relevance and authenticity matter more than follower totals. A creator with a highly engaged niche audience can easily outperform one with higher reach and less credibility with their own audience.
And speaking of credibility, audiences are increasingly going straight to the source to hear from the people that work at the brand itself.
Frontline employees are your brand’s newest discovery engine
Brands’ own employees are beginning to take over the algorithm. We saw this anecdotally with the attention the Staples Baddie got this year, with her content about everyday occurrences at the office supply store getting huge traction and national recognition, even laddering up to a profile in the New York Times.
Employee-generated content now drives product discovery at least monthly for 40% of consumers according to our research (rising to 62% for Gen Z), so this has already become a major channel, and that’s before most brands have made any significant investments in it as an official program.
The quest for authenticity is reflected in who audiences want to hear from when it comes to employee advocates. For example, consumers would rather hear from frontline employees doing their actual job than the marketing team or C-suite presenting a polished vision of the brand. A stockroom employee explaining how products get ordered, or a barista showing you how a new drink gets made is much more engaging than a campaign asset delivered through a different mouthpiece, especially for B2C brands, though it does extend to B2B teams too.
But this channel needs to be treated with care, just as any partnership would be, and consumers believe that workers should be paid extra for the extra work if it extends beyond their normal job description. A clear majority (61%) believe brands should pay, and some brands such as Gap and Starbucks are already leaning into formalizing the programs to give employees clear guidelines while proposing fair pay and giving them the creative freedom to be themselves within the brand’s constraints.
Social Media SEO: The tactical side of discoverability
Beyond algorithmic discoverability, social networks now also function as search engines. According to our Q2 2026 Pulse Survey data, social media is the second most commonly used platform for search across all age groups and demographics, behind traditional search engines but ahead of chat-based AI and asking friends and family directly. Among younger users, the gap between social search and traditional search engines is narrowing significantly, with consumers routinely splitting their search habits based on their exact intent.
That means brands need to not only have an SEO strategy, but also a strategy for social search (SOSEO). That starts with understanding what your audience is searching for on social and making sure the keywords you’re using contain those same search terms, exactly as you would for a blog post or website page.
And it goes beyond just keywords used in the captions; algorithms are digesting much more than that. They also use the spoken audio, on-screen text and captions to understand the theme of the video and decide who sees it and who doesn’t, so even if they don’t search directly, the right keywords also aid discoverability. A video on the right topic but missing the right keywords for that topic will have less reach than one engineered for maximum discoverability across onscreen text, audio and captions.
These are small, consistent tweaks you can make to your content, much like experimenting with the hook to improve retention, but are crucial to making sure discoverability is maximized.
Discoverability beyond social networks through SEO & AEO
SOSEO has been a rising trend for years, but even more recently SEO and AEO through traditional search engines and AI answer engines have become more relevant to social professionals, and discoverability has extended beyond the walls of the networks themselves. For example, Google added a Short Videos tab to its search results, pulling directly from Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, meaning the benefits from the SOSEO work that forward-thinking brands were doing now extend to traditional search as well.
And AI answer engines (the likes of Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini) are accelerating this trend. These tools pull directly from social content such as LinkedIn and Reddit when searching the web for indexed content to provide an answer.
This makes social content much more evergreen. Content used to lose relevance and disappear from the feed within 24-48 hours, but the mix of SEO, SOSEO and AEO extends that shelf life significantly, and often allows content to go viral multiple times over a longer period of time providing it remains relevant.
In practice, this is optimized the same way SOSEO is, with clear audio, good captions and keyword-aligned topics. That way, you get an algorithmic boost and potential search discovery in-platform, and then an additional discovery opportunity when that content gets indexed and resurfaced across the broader web.
How brands win in the post-follower era
All of the above points to the fact that we’ve gone well beyond the audience building that was the objective before the For You page came along. It’s an input into the broader algorithm, not the end goal itself.
The brands winning right now are building for discoverability first, across every layer of the social ecosystem. That means partnering with creators that make content that’s relevant to your brand, no matter how big they are, building out employee creator programs with frontline employees and ensuring all content is optimized with the right keywords. Done correctly, these optimizations compound, and your content becomes more discoverable across all parts of the internet.
Follower count will keep declining as a meaningful metric, and it’s not something that brands should be optimizing for in 2026. The most successful brands will be the ones that increase their discoverability through optimizations and partnerships, which they can track through increased engagement and reach on their own and partner posts, as well as AEO discovery and organic search traffic.
Want a deeper understanding of how creator partnerships are performing in this new landscape? Sprout’s 2026 Influencer Marketing Report has the full data set.
*About the data
Unless otherwise noted, all data cited in this article is from a Q3 2026 Pulse Survey of 2,286 consumers in the US, UK and Australia conducted by Panoplai on behalf of Sprout. The survey was conducted online from August 11 to August 18, 2026.
It’s time to pull the ripcord on creating content for content’s sake.
We hear the same sentiment again and again (and again): social media saturation is leaving audiences overwhelmed and social media professionals burnt out. Like the number of tabs open in my Chrome browser, keeping up with all the information in our social feeds is unsustainable.
Today, more than 5.5 billion people use social media worldwide, with the average person spending around two hours and 20 minutes on social networks every day.
Audiences are everywhere and seemingly nowhere, as network algorithms surface content based on interests rather than tangible connections. The rapid fire pace of trend and meme culture, paired with a stream of AI-generated content flooding feeds, has created a ceiling on the volume of content people are mentally and emotionally able to process.
We examined how BMC used social intelligence to overcome social media saturation and how brands can build strategies rooted in the quality content that earns audience attention.
Why we’re at peak social media saturation
As so much about the social media landscape changes, the one constant is content—and a lot of it. On average, brands published 9.5 posts per day across networks in 2024, according to Sprout’s 2025 Content Benchmarks Report. For certain industries, that number doubles and even quadruples.
Let’s look deeper at what’s contributing to the challenge:
Content production pressures
It’s impossible for consumers to actively engage with all of the social content they see. Literally: One research team found humans’ screen attention spans dropped from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2023.
The irony is, as trends move faster and audiences flock to short-form content formats, the pressure to churn out a higher volume of posts intensifies. The sheer number of accounts competing for users’ fleeting attention exacerbates this dynamic.
Brands are constantly feeling the pressure to do more. It’s the same reason 87% of marketers said they planned to expand their presence to new social networks in The 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report. Declining engagement rates highlight a need to connect with audiences, and while the path of least resistance may look like churning out more content in more places, in reality it’s only adding to the social media noise.
AI’s impact on social media feeds
Bots have been crashing the comments section on social for years. But now AI slop is flooding the zone.
From December 2025 to August 2026, Sprout Social Listening found more than 10.8 million mentions of “slop” or “AI slop” circulating on social. This doesn’t even account for the actual volume of slop posts themselves—only for the conversation around it. That signal alone tells us how inundated our feeds have become with subpar content.
And in less than one month since launching their “seems like AI slop” button, LinkedIn reports more than 1 million people have already flagged content as AI slop.
From a brand safety standpoint, this also means marketers will increasingly have to juggle their own content production on top of monitoring feeds for misinformation about their businesses.
Platform uncertainty
Today’s social media ecosystem is fragmented across networks with unique algorithms and audiences. How consumers use each to meet their needs for connection and consumption is always evolving.
The last few years alone have seen the emergence (and quick decline) of networks like BeReal, along with steady growth of alternatives like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. Pair that with constant changes to network features and algorithms that decide what content formats will be served up the most, and it raises questions around what will resonate today and how that may change tomorrow.
How one Sprout Social customer led with resonance to break through social saturation
In a saturated landscape, less can be more. A focus on quality can pivot a brand’s posts from those that fade into the feed to the timely moment that captures attention. Here’s how one brand used Sprout Social to pinpoint what their audience wanted more of, then acted on it.
BMC moved from daily posting to insight-led storytelling
BMC’s lightbulb moment came when social data revealed their thought leadership content consistently resonated with BMC’s audience. Rather than one-off promotions of specific assets, their engagement metrics told a story of resonance when they connected posts to industry trends, customer challenges or BMC’s specific point of view.
This pushed the team to rethink how they were using social media channels, and how they could evolve their storytelling to match audience interests. Social data revealing the value of thought leadership led to a strategy reset where BMC launched The BMC Briefing, a monthly LinkedIn newsletter packaging product education, customer stories and industry perspectives into an editorial experience. The newsletter became a primary channel for brand narrative, moving the team away from daily posting goals toward intentional, insight-led storytelling.
What your brand can do to overcome social media saturation
The challenge of social media saturation isn’t going anywhere. AI technologies will continue their ascent and the platform landscape will continue to diversify, regardless of whether marketers are ready. What social teams can do, however, is adopt new rituals to improve their odds of cutting through the noise.
Invest in original content
According to Sprout’s Q3 2026 Pulse Survey, one-third of customers say the originality of a brand’s content is what makes them stand out as a favorite on social media, second only to the quality of their products and services.
Original thought is the only way to stand out in a world of slop. It’s why brands like Away and Nuuly are producing microdramas, a unique way to highlight their products while serving as a form of escapism for an audience flooded with brand content that all sounds the same.
Lean into your brand’s differentiators and create something that your competitors can’t.
Calibrate your content around audience preferences
The first step to capturing your audience’s attention is to deeply understand what they want to consume.
For example, with almost every network supporting a menu of video options, social teams have to get even more precise with where they post, the length of their content and whether it’s grid-worthy.
According to Sprout’s Q1 2026 Pulse Survey, when videos longer than one minute are served in the Instagram or TikTok feed, Gen Z rarely skips them immediately (14%) while Baby Boomers are the generation most likely to swipe to the next post (33%). But overall, 44% of consumers say they would watch longer content if the first five seconds are engaging.
And across generational divides, people still want to be entertained and educated on social media the most, making edutainment posts a mainstay in a fleeting world. Knowing your audience and their preferences is key to investing in the right formats.
Align audience interests to cultural moments
This is a topic where the pendulum continues to swing: should brands keep up with cultural moments?
The verdict is in: yes.
Our Q3 2026 pulse survey found that 84% of consumers surveyed either strongly or somewhat agree it’s important for companies’ social media content to keep up with online culture.
But your brand has to strike a balance when trendjacking. Not every moment is the right fit for your brand, and jumping in on a trend when it’s not a good fit only adds to the slop. Take a data-first approach and use social intelligence to understand what your audience is talking about, the topics that resonate, and the moments that could create brand harmony. Avoid all the rest.
Take Pinterest’s IRL activation at Coachella as an example. Pinterest could have taken the easy route and created a digital experience for their activation at Coachella, but instead, they leaned into the “analog aesthetic” trend popping up on their own network, with searches for the term up more than 260%. They created a phone-free experience with custom charm making, beauty touchups and junk journaling. It was a fresh take on a trend, but they made it unique to their brand.
Redefine how you measure success
As social platforms continue to test the limits of just how much content audiences can process, now may also be a good time to advocate for new social success metrics. Our Index data shows that most marketers already prioritize engagement metrics (shares, comments, etc.) over reach and impressions. After all, what’s more valuable: someone seeing your post and scrolling on, or someone finding it so relevant they tag a friend in the comments?
Social teams can use this over-saturated moment to make the case for setting more targeted community growth and engagement goals (rather than reaching a certain number of eyeballs).
Social media saturation is a challenge—and an opportunity
Today’s social platforms are more nuanced, and the people who use them are more plugged in than ever before.
As a result, brands have to be even more strategic—and flexible—to ensure their investments in social pay off.
Despite the obstacles social media saturation presents, it also gives social teams an opportunity to reset their content strategies altogether. Run a short-term experiment to test the impact of lowering production volume and creating more original content. Prioritize a new approach to entertain your audience, or a new way to relate to a trend.
Social media may run on algorithms, but finding success is anything but formulaic.
We’re back with another installment of the Social Futures Report—a series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the brand impact, too.
This time, we’re narrowing that focus to just one network: Instagram. From electric World Cup activations to a NASA post inspiring whimsy, 2026 has been a standout year for brands producing highly visual content that leans into culture.
You’ll be familiar with a lot of the names on the list. Others are newer faces we couldn’t ignore. Here’s our lineup of the best brands on Instagram in 2026, and the parts your team can use in your content.
The best 2026 World Cup campaigns on Instagram
The 2026 World Cup was the biggest sporting event of the year by a distance. But for a lot of brands, it was the biggest social moment too, even those who weren’t active sponsors, though we’ll start with some that were directly involved.
Nike and Adidas spotlight world-class athletes
It’s fitting for a sporting rivalry that the two greatest players of their generation work with different brands. Cristiano Ronaldo is with Nike, while Lionel Messi is an Adidas man, and both brands leaned heavily on their stars for their World Cup campaigns.
Ronaldo is one of the top-performing accounts on Instagram, and Nike took full advantage of that, even running a campaign that also included Lebron James.
Adidas also fully used Messi’s profile on the network, co-posting his signature boots in advance of ‘el ultimo tango’ of the final. This racked up huge levels of engagement, with more than 15 million interactions on that post alone.
From the beginning of May to the end of July, Adidas Football (the main account the brand used for these promotions) drove almost $100M in estimated earned media value (EMV) on Instagram, according to Sprout Social Influencer Marketing data.
Adidas also used Messi in its advertising, which it uploaded to social media. Its #YouGotThis ads that also featured Bad Bunny were a success on the network in a way that ads often are not, garnering millions of engagements and an active audience through its references to a culturally relevant moment and star power.
This is a lesson in what it means to be plugged into culture. Instead of just repeating a TV spot with no context, the campaign also lives on social, and is a timely reference to a broader cultural moment, featuring two bona fide stars of their respective fields.
The play: If you’re going to borrow star power, make sure you’re making full use of it. Use their accounts as leverage for part of the campaign by cross-posting alongside your content. And sure, it helps if it can be Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but this works at a fundamental level for any influencer or creator you work with.
Levi’s stadium stunt
Not every brand can lean on being an official partner at a huge event. And that created some interesting workarounds, the most prominent of which came from Levi’s. Strict stadium sponsorship rules meant that the brand’s logo at the Bay Area arena had to be covered. Rather than write this off as a lost opportunity, Levi’s leaned into the bit and posted a Reel welcoming people to the “beautiful [redacted] stadium”, paired with a well-placed bit of trending audio.
This worked because of the iconic branding and name recognition Levi’s has built over decades. It became the denim company’s biggest Instagram post of the year with 2.5 million engagements, outperforming even its BTS look at its ad for the Big Game. It also had business impact, with the brand following up by selling a limited-edition shirt featuring the redacted logo.
The play: Let restrictions inspire creativity. People want to feel like they’re in on the joke, so playing along with a nod and a wink and inviting people to laugh with you builds community.
British Airways and Norwegian bet on success
British Airways and Norwegian took a footballing rivalry to the skies. The two brands are strongly associated with their respective countries, and when England and Norway were scheduled to meet each other in the quarter-finals, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Norwegian publicly called out British Airways for a friendly bet: whichever country lost, their national airline would have to change their logo to the other’s for a day.
This was a huge win for both brands. British Airways saw a significant spike in their Instagram engagement compared with their baseline levels of performance.
Norwegian’s top post, meanwhile, was the brand actually changing its logo and acknowledging the loss for a day, which drove more than a million likes and $1.1 million in EMV. A win-win, despite the final score in the game itself.
Spoiler alert for those unfamiliar; despite the Norwegian encouragement, it did not, in fact, come home.
The play: Look for partnership opportunities on social. There will come a time during cultural moments that these kinds of opportunities will bubble up. Make sure you’re paying attention for when that does happen.
WSDOT informs and entertains, often in the same post
Not every account is trying to sell something. Sometimes the goal is to inform the public with a safety announcement or a PSA. And the best way to do that on Instagram is often through humor.
The Washington State Department of Transportation’s account on the network manages to thread that needle. One example included an announcement of a truck full of corn turning over and spilling corn all over the road. The account joked it was one way to make street corn, while also playfully accusing the Iowa DOT and Nebraska DOT of nefarious involvement.
The humor works because there’s a real message underneath, and people want to feel connected to the institutions that serve them. But the most successful messages from the account actually go beyond humor and highlight how they serve the community at large.
The SR 20 North Cascades highway was closed for repairs, but one couple had on their wedding registry that a perfect gift would be for it to reopen in time for their wedding.
The WSDOT got wind of this and accelerated the timeline for its reopening to four days before the wedding, all being well. This drove more than 150k engagements for the institution, as people celebrated the extra effort and praised the department for engaging with the celebration.
But the biggest post of the year celebrated an achievement of the department’s own. July 2026 marked the 10,000th successful animal crossing across the Snoqualmie Pass that allows animals to go over I-90 and reduces the risk of traffic collisions. That Reel got almost half a million engagements, and the comments were full of praise for it, with many saying this is exactly the kind of project they want their tax dollars to go towards.
The play: Information doesn’t have to be boring. If you can use humor as a low-stakes narrative hook, that’s a great way to get people to stop scrolling. But always think about how you can tie your message to a larger emotional narrative, as that’s what truly gets people to engage.
Grillo’s Pickles goes absurdist
Amid a sea of jumping on trends, Grillo’s Pickles has created a world of its own, with its pickles as the main character. We know from research that brands having a mascot helps with recognition in advertising. And the brand has taken that to an absurdist degree by making an actual pickle its primary character, taking it out for adventures around the world.
This has included everything from showing a pickle the Statue of Liberty (8M+ engagements) to one being involved in a speed race.
This works because of the juxtapositions in a lot of the situations. There’s a jarring mix of high effort and seemingly low budget, with a simple pickle consistently the star of the show. So far this year, the brand has more than 14 million engagements on its content, as well as $40M+ in EMV.
The play: Don’t be afraid to get weird. People are looking for something different to the normal beyond traditional trend surfing. If you can create a world of your brand’s own, a lot of your audience will join you there.
NASA inspires wonder and whimsy
NASA is one of the biggest brands on Instagram even when it doesn’t actively have a moon mission ongoing. The Artemis II project helped push the space agency to new heights in 2026 through a mix of wonder and whimsy, leading to more than 130 million engagements this year so far.
The top performing posts all came in April around the launch and return of the astronauts, and were responsible for more than a third of the total engagement for the year.
In a funny way, this is a heightened version of the employee-generated content we have seen rising in popularity across brands this year. But NASA also managed to create a cultural moment of its own during the moon mission, with people tuning in across networks to see the latest updates. Viral moments like the floating jar of Nutella interspersed with photography and astronaut logs humanized the magnificence, and led to heightened levels of engagement and interest from the public.
The play: Not everyone is able to launch a rocket into space, that’s obvious. But every brand will have moments that are unique to them that they can build a narrative around, with visual moments that nobody else could replicate. Lean into those, and build that mix of wonder and whimsy for your audience.
McDonald’s wins with cultural relevance
You can get a good sense of what’s culturally significant right now simply by looking at the McDonald’s Instagram account.
Most of their top posts feature a reference to popular culture in some way, whether that’s a Happy Meal collab with a new movie or World Cup stars hanging out at the restaurant. McDonald’s is a leader when it comes to cross-promotions with major media moments, and its Instagram is a reflection of that.
One of the more interesting posts was the Backrooms video that it did, which was less of a collaboration and more of a nod and a wink at the brand’s place in the lore the movie taps into. The brand created its own liminal spaces filled with branded items as the protagonist explores the set.
Having a view into internet culture beyond the brand itself emboldens teams to make decisions early that predict where the market is going, rather than reacting to it. It’s part of a social intelligence framework that gives first-mover advantage in a trend everyone is now trying to jump on. That advantage led to more than half a million engagements across platforms for the McDonald’s Backrooms posts, and one of its top performing Instagram posts of the year.
The play: It’s crucial to be aware of the cultural zeitgeist and of your brand’s place within it, whether that’s launching an official collaboration with a new product or just finding your fit within the online conversation. This is more refined than jumping on trends, and requires a thoughtful approach to how you can add to the conversation, rather than adding to the noise.
The best brands on Instagram prioritize cultural fluency over hard selling
With the exception of some Happy Meal promotion and a pair of Messi’s boots, none of these brands spent any of their time talking about what they sell. A corn spill became a bit about street corn, McDonald’s tapped into its role in the Backrooms lore, and Norwegian and British Airways focused on their countries’ soccer teams rather than their planes. The common thread here is leaning into cultural relevance, which is what drives success on Instagram. That means knowing the network, your audience and your brand well enough that it doesn’t feel intrusive when you join the conversation.
The most successful brands on Instagram create their own moments within a larger moment in a way that feels natural. That can be by partnering with influencers, carving out your own niche within a larger conversation, or through creating a world of your brand’s own through a content series or other similar content where your brand can naturally shine.
Learn how influencers and employee-generated content can help you tap into cultural moments on networks like Instagram in Sprout’s 2026 Influencer Marketing Report.
Your native social media analytics show you how your brand is performing on social. But what happens outside of the platform? How do you track performance once the clicks turn into website traffic—and ultimately, conversions? This translates social media performance into business outcomes.
Yet according to the 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing report, only 44% of leaders rate their social teams as experts in measuring business impact. Meanwhile, brands get a significant portion of their traffic from social. To be specific, social media accounts for 10.12% of global traffic. The number rises to 15.23% for socially driven markets like the United States.
Tracking social media traffic gives you a comprehensive picture of how social drives your broader business goals. And Google Analytics (GA4) offers a robust solution for tracking social media performance once it leaves native platforms.
This post explores how to measure social media with Google Analytics and gain more in-depth performance insights. Let’s get started.
Why measure social media with Google Analytics?
Google Analytics enables you to measure your social metrics holistically, adding context to your social media reports by aligning with your broader marketing goals. Specifically, it delivers value in two crucial ways:
Connect social to business goals
Social metrics don’t live in a vacuum. They need to be aligned to the broader marketing efforts and org-wide business goals.
Connecting Google Analytics and social media ties social media performance to business goals. This is vital because 65% of marketing leaders in the 2025 Sprout Social Index™ say this is the top way to secure social investment.
For example, Google Analytics for social media will tell you how visitors coming from specific platforms are interacting with your content. You can compare the key performance indicators between different traffic sources to see how social ultimately drives engaged visitors.
Google Analytics captures funnel metrics such as goal completions and identifies where conversion discrepancies occur. This ensures your top-funnel and mid-funnel efforts are in sync. Together, these efforts prove your social media return on investment (ROI) and show the impact on business growth.
Understand your audience
Social metrics from Google Analytics track audience behavior, interests and where they spend their time on your site. As you gain a better understanding of your audience, you have the insights to craft compelling content and social tactics that resonate.
How GA4 sorts your social traffic: Organic social vs. paid social
Social media tracking in Google Analytics is available for both organic and paid social. For organic social, Google Analytics will track a recognized social source or an accepted utm_medium. Meanwhile, paid social needs a paid medium.
Here’s how GA4 sorts the traffic coming from social:
Channel
Description
Verbatim logic summary
Typical example source/medium
Organic social
The channel through which users visit your site or app using non-ad links on social media sites
Source matches a regex list of social sites
OR
Medium equals (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social network”, “social media”)
instagram / social
Paid social
The channel through which users visit your site or app using paid ad links on social media sites
Source matches a regex list of social sites
AND
Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$
facebook / paid
Tag your social links with UTM parameters
UTM parameters allow you to tag your social links, so you can tie traffic to specific campaigns and posts. The link can consist of various parameters like:
utm_source: Identifies the specific platform, like facebook or linkedin.
utm_medium: Identifies the marketing channel type, such as social or paid-social.
utm_campaign: Identifies a specific product launch, promo or seasonal push, like summer_sale.
utm_content: Distinguishes specific links or creative variations within the same post, like image or video
Say you want to track traffic coming from Facebook for your spring collection launch. Your promo post could have the following tag:
https://ift.tt/7gC0aAB
But UTM tracking for social involves keeping track of every link for multiple posts, platforms and campaigns. This quickly becomes messy and confusing, especially for time-strapped solo marketers.
Sprout Social’s Bitly integration streamlines this process, letting you shorten UTM links in one click while creating a new post. It’s easier to track and manage your links without pulling up a separate spreadsheet.
4 social media insights to track in Google Analytics
To get the most out of Google Analytics for social media, you need to pay attention to the metrics that will connect social to business performance. These data points prove how your social strategy is driving website traffic. You’ll demonstrate how your social media efforts deliver ROI beyond the vanity metrics.
A key event is any valuable user action on your website or app that you can track natively within GA4. Meanwhile, a conversion is a key event that you share with Google Ads for ad campaign performance and bidding.
GA4 automatically tracks several events marking specific interactions or occurrences on your site or app. This includes events such as someone reading an article, viewing a product, submitting a form or adding an item to their cart. You can mark any of these relevant events as a key event to track your social media conversions.
For most websites, purchase is the default key event that GA4 tracks. Besides this, you can manually set up a key event that better aligns with the specific conversion action you want to measure.
Say you want to track signups coming from social media. Here’s how you can set up a signup action as a key event on GA4:
Step 1: Ensure the sign_up event is tracking
You need the exact event name sign_up (Google’s recommended event name for registrations) flowing into your GA4 property.
If it’s already tracking: Check if sign_up appears under your existing event list.
If you need to track it via a “Thank You” page or URL: Go to your GA4 property, navigate to Admin > Data display > Events > Create event, and set a condition where page_view matches your signup confirmation URL.
If you use Google Tag Manager (GTM): Create a GA4 Event tag with the event name sign_up and fire it on your registration success trigger.
Step 2: Mark the event as a key event
After you register the event and GA4 starts recording it:
Click the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner of your Google Analytics dashboard.
In the property column, click on Data display and select Events.
Look for sign_up in the table of Recent events.
Turn on the toggle under the Mark as key event column.
Note: If the event is not listed in “Recent events” yet because it’s brand new, you can go to the Key events menu in the admin column. Then click + New key event, and type sign_up manually.
Go further: Connect GA4 with a social platform
Your Google Analytics data shows you how your social media efforts are driving traffic and conversions. You can put together reports that demonstrate how social impacts the rest of your organization, making it easier to secure executive buy-in.
Sprout Social streamlines the whole process of connecting social media performance to business goals. While the one-click Bit.ly tool lets you shorten your UTM links in seconds, the integrated Google Analytics report gives you a closed-loop view of what posts convert your audiences.
And with the Essentials plan, you get to enjoy these tracking and reporting capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Sign up for a free 30-day trial to get started.
Conditions online can be harrowing. All of us are susceptible to doom-scrolling—absorbing the intensity of global political, humanitarian and climate crises with the flick of a thumb. Not to mention comparing our lives to influencers’ glossy content or our acquaintances’ highlight reels, letting unhealthy comparisons rear their ugly head.
With such dark sides to social, lawmakers worldwide have started to wonder: Do they have a responsibility to enact social media bans that protect children? Consumers think so, with 68% saying they support such bans, according to Sprout Social’s Q1 2026 Pulse Survey. Those with young children are the most likely to rally behind them.
For social media marketers, who already face a number of internal and external challenges in the course of doing their jobs, this means even more stress and brand safety risks.Many countries have already implemented, passed or strongly considered a social media ban. And Meta’s landmark youth safety settlement means a new series of safeguards will be required on Instagram and Facebook, with a call for more networks to follow suit.
This new legislation may make it more difficult to reach certain audiences, publish content efficiently, and stay compliant with ever-changing rule books and country-specific laws. Zooming out, as the world’s economies become more connected, it’s going to prove challenging for global brands to comply with so many disparate policies and maintain relevance.
To make it easier to navigate, we’ve laid out the facts we have so far about current and proposed social media bans. We’ve also asked global marketers for their takes on how social teams should adjust their workflows and content strategies as regulations around social media become more common.
Please note the information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice. Please review our full disclaimerbefore reading any further.
Networks are regulating in response to public concern and settlements
Social media networks are responding to proposed legislation and judicial decisions by updating their functionality and adding safeguards, like parental controls, for youth safety.
Per the Q1 2026 Sprout Pulse Survey, consumers were more likely to support networks implementing parental consent measures and age verification technology over outright bans. In lockstep with consumer preferences, many major platforms now give parents more control over their children’s experience online.
Networks like Meta, Snapchat, WhatsApp and YouTube are tightening parental controls, designing family-friendly app experiences, enforcing time limits and restricting sensitive content to improve the social media experience for younger generations. They’re also giving parents a broader window into what kids are doing online–offering ways to manage child privacy settings, supervise activity and limit conversations with AI chatbots.
The overarching impact of the Meta youth safety settlement
While networks have slowly started to self-regulate, the latest Meta youth safety settlement has fast tracked several changes to pay attention to.
Through the terms of the settlement, Meta has agreed to enforce the following restrictions to make their platforms safer for kids:
Two-hour daily time limit
Turning off nighttime access to their apps
No notifications during school hours to limit interruptions during critical learning periods
Prompts that interrupt teens after 15 minutes of continuous screen time to lessen mindless scrolling
More parental controls to empower parents to design the experience they want for their children
These terms cement changes that will likely extend beyond Instagram and Facebook, too, with part of Meta’s payout depending on TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat adopting similar rules.
It’s also worth noting, this settlement sets a precedent: constraints on reaching minors are arriving faster through settlements than through official legislation.
How brands can adjust to social media restrictions
Even if you aren’t operating within the jurisdiction of a legislative social media ban, the incoming changes based on the Meta settlement begs the question: what does this mean for brands?
Know what to expect
First and foremost, it’s critical to understand how these changes will impact your brand (if at all). Changes to your brand’s strategy and overall marketing tactics should be minimal since these new safeguards benefit youth demographics that brands don’t market to.
But, there are a few downstream impacts to understand:
Creator audiences could deflate:Experts predict stricter age restrictions will expose creator audiences inflated by youth demographics that aren’t a fit for your brand. It’ll be even more critical to audit creator demographics to ensure audiences aren’t younger than advertised, making it the right time to shift to a partnership model based on topical alignment rather than demographics alone.
Vanity metrics will decline: Capped usage, hidden likes and non-personalized feeds mean marketers could see a decline in vanity metrics (think: likes and impressions). This is a net-positive for all involved—a safer experience for youth and less of a focus on metrics that don’t have material impact on your brand. Instead, shift focus to look at stronger engagement and conversion metrics to understand what’s happening with the people who actually have buying power.
Prioritize age-aligned content
While the days of trying to reach everyone on social are long behind us, teams can’t only rely on the algorithms to deliver their content to the right people. Legislation headwinds will require brands to be more audience-specific when crafting their content.
Sam Morgan-Smith, Head of Social at the UK-based PR agency The Romans, describes this shift: “The days of blanket posting (or ‘throwing confetti’ as I refer to it) and trusting the algorithm are over. Brands will need to get far more strategic. Content needs to be age-aware and legally defensible.”
Tiffany Sayers, co-founder at Australian agency Loft Social adds, “If underage users are legislatively restricted or platforms are penalized for blurred lines, we’ll need more rigour in how brands brief talent, capture first-party data and define success.”
Morgan-Smith and Sayers outlined what that could look like:
Organic content: Instead of speaking directly to teens, brands will shift their tone to reach parents, educators or older siblings. Brands should also stay vigilant to emerging requirements, like network-enforced content tags for specific age groups.
Paid social: Marketers should expect to see increased costs to secure audience reach and tighter targeting, while dealing with a smaller youth inventory. Brands will need to double down on transparency and age-tracking tech to remain compliant. Especially if operating across multiple jurisdictions.
Influencer marketing: All influencers and creators with young audiences will need to comply with robust age-verification protocols, guardian approvals and platform tracking. This could mean more family creators and less attention paid to follower count alone. It will also influence how briefs are written, with more emphasis on co-creating briefs that ensure brand safety and resonance.
Refined brand safety protocols
While many social teams already have some version of brand safety guidelines, their approach needs to get more sophisticated to not only meet network requirements but to comply with legal regulations and show up ethically.
Sayers explains, “We need to move beyond relying solely on platform policies and start embedding internal frameworks. Outside of the obvious—like disclosure and creator education—this includes tighter briefs with age-appropriate messaging, stronger vetting processes, content archiving and moderation protocols, and legal-reviewed guidelines for giveaways, comments and CTAs (more than just captions). Brands need to build processes for long-term digital governance, even if it hurts their vanity metrics. It requires long-term vision, not short-sightedness.”
Morgan-Smith agrees, adding, “Compliance can’t be a bolt-on—it needs to be built into the workflow. That includes governance playbooks (what’s permissible by age, region and platform), data protocols for consent data, age segmentation and targeting rules, and tools that adhere to emerging publishing rules (tagging, audit trails, etc.). Above all, training is fundamental. Not just for social, but all digital-facing departments need regular updates on global legislation, like Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the US, the UK Online Safety Act and Australia’s age-verification laws to avoid accidental noncompliance.”
Real-world immersion
Though younger consumers are known for operating in a digital ecosystem, you shouldn’t overlook the opportunity IRL activations offer to complement your online efforts. Especially as operating on organic social becomes more complex.
Sayers advises: “We’re seeing a strong shift back to IRL-led storytelling: micro-events, brand installations, peer-to-peer word of mouth and influencer content that lives beyond a grid. UGC and ambassador-led content seeded via paid media also continues to perform even if organic reach declines.”
Morgan-Smith adds, “As direct social access becomes a little more restricted, the strategic (and smart) pivot is toward hybrid ecosystems that bridge digital influence and real-world immersion. Online, brands should explore gaming integrations, instant messaging and youth-safe content platforms. While in real life, we’re seeing a creative resurgence—including university activations, experience-led marketing and retail theater. This isn’t about abandoning digital—it’s about recalibrating to environments where attention, access and trust intersect.”
Current and proposed social media bans
While the state of social media bans is always changing, here are the pieces of legislation that have been proposed or passed at the time of publishing.
This list doesn’t account for bans in the pre-legislative phase. It encompasses the country where the bans will be enforced, the minimum age requirements and effect on your addressable audience, plus who’s responsible for complying with the regulations—in nearly every case, the responsibility falls on the networks themselves.
In the US, we’ll dive into the different models states are exploring to impose regulations.
Youth under the age of 16 would lose access to algorithmic networks, ages 16-17 get overnight curfews and certain precautions extend to gaming platforms
Separately, the European Commission has called for a bloc-wide approach for EU members to impose a ban for all youth ages 16 and under, though specific terms haven’t been negotiated yet.
Youth under the age of 13 can access products designed for children, those 13-16 require parental consent for an app and networks considered “high risk” are restricted to youth 16+
Youth under the age of 16 can’t access networks considered “high risk”
Networks
No
United States
The US has a variety of ongoing state legislation surrounding social media bans. Nearly half of the US states have proposed restrictions, but many state-level bans are being challenged in court.
Rather than giving a state-level play-by-play, instead we’re examining the proposed restriction models popping up the most.
Restriction Model
Requirements
Duty to Regulate Falls On
Effect on Addressable Audience
Age restrictions + parental consent
A minimum youth age limit for accessing social media, with a parental consent pathway for the age-range above the minimum
Networks
This model removes the youngest audience from social media and provides conditional access for the next age group
All audiences are still on social, but algorithmic distribution goes away. This is where declines in creator audiences + vanity metrics would show up
Usage and time limits
Daily time limits for minors, for each network
Networks
Rightfully limits the ability to reach younger audiences, another avenue that would lead to decreased vanity metrics
App-store verification
Age verification and parental consent handled in the app store when youth attempts to download social media apps
App stores
This model would remove the youngest audience and provide conditional access for older minors, but it shifts the burden onto companies like Google and Apple to comply
Navigating social media bans requires agility: Social media marketers’ superpower
“This is an evolution, not an erosion. Social media is maturing. Compliance challenges signal legitimacy, not demise. It’s moving from the Wild West to a regulated media environment—like TV did decades ago. Rather than abandoning social, this is the moment to reimagine it. Invest in multi-channel ecosystems, build first-party relationships with younger consumers (with consent) and champion network accountability so you can influence how these spaces grow,” says Morgan-Smith.
Sayers adds, “Social still delivers ROI at every stage of the funnel. It just requires smarter systems and more intentional content now. Show leaders that ethical, compliant social is not only possible but powerful. It’s about shifting the conversation with your leaders from ‘how many likes’ to ‘how many hearts and minds.’”
This is just one piece of the larger brand safety picture. Download our comprehensive checklist, which helps you address risks from AI-generated threats to influencer partnerships.
Disclaimer
The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice; all information, content, points and materials are for general informational purposes. Information on this website may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. Incorporation of any guidelines provided in this article does not guarantee that your legal risk is reduced. Readers of this article should contact their legal team or attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter and should refrain from acting on the basis of information on this article without first seeking independent legal advice. Use of, and access to, this article or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader, user or browser and any contributors or contributing law firms. The views expressed by any contributors to this article are their own and do not reflect the views of Sprout Social. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this article are hereby expressly disclaimed.
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