ICYMI: Social + Creator Trends — Your 2025 Mid-Year Update
+ The Information's Creator Economy Summit recap
[Photo by Erin Beach for The Information]
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
TikTok launched Manage Topics to better control what you see in your FYP
The era of free traffic to TikTok Shop is ending, being replaced by paid ads
LinkedIn announced a partnership with Adobe Express to offer platform-optimized ad templates
Meta: Sharing videos and memes is Gen Z’s love language
Pinterest predicts we’re entering a Digital Detox Summer
Ideas: What to do if your audience logs off this summer
Report: Marketing budgets have stalled at 7.7% of overall company revenue
Brand MVPs: P.F. Chang’s, McDonald’s and Loewe excelled at creator outreach and customer engagement this week
The first-ever bipartisan Congressional Creators Caucus was announced
Plus, a breakdown of the hot topics discussed at The Information’s Creator Economy Summit with Snap’s Evan Spiegel, Substack’s Christ Best, mega creators Dhar Mann and Adam W and more
💻 ROADMAP
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok hosted its 5th annual TikTok World product summit, launching new advertiser tools. The one that stood out was TikTok One’s Insight Spotlight, a new tool that helps advertisers discover emerging trends as they gain momentum and helps validate if specific trends are relevant to their target audience. There have been third-party tools to do this but it will be really interesting to see if TikTok can help advertisers predict viral moments on its own platform. This is one the paid and organic teams should be watching.
TikTok launched TikTok for Artists, a music insights platform that helps track music and post performance. All artists with a certified TikTok Artist Account can get access.
TikTok launched a new feature called "Manage Topics," which helps you customize how often content related to over 10 popular topics is recommended. They're also rolling out "Smart Keyword Filters" to help you limit content you don't want to see recommended.
The era of free traffic to TikTok Shop is fading, according to Business Insider. Brands are turning instead to paid ads to promote their shopping videos. The drift away from free views began last year, but has really picked up in 2025 according to partners and staffers.
📲 LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn announced new ad offerings and CTV capabilities, pointing out that 93% of B2B marketers agree video is better at driving brand recall than single image ads.
LinkedIn announced a partnership with Adobe Express to offer LinkedIn-optimized ad templates which you can export directly to your LinkedIn Ads account.
LinkedIn released a guide to working with B2B creators — Working with B2B Creators: Collaborate with Confidence — which revealed that 79% of buyers and key decision makers are engaging with creator content at least monthly and 82% saying that it influences them.
LinkedIn shared 13 tips for creating compelling B2B video content.
📲 Meta Updates
Meta released a new report: Generation Zeitgeist - Taking the Social Pulse of Gen Z. Some of the insights include:
Sharing videos and memes with family and friends has become a love language for Gen Z
Short-form video acts as a qualitative search engine Gen Z uses to make decisions about their lives
Gen Z naturally incorporates shopping behaviors into their social media habits. They are almost always in “consideration” mode
Instagram’s Edits app announced more updates: Apply All (volume), 5 new transitions, and track handles sensitivity.
Meta is reportedly aiming to enable brands to fully create and target ads using AI by the end of next year.
Meta reportedly plans to replace humans with AI to assess privacy and societal risks.
📲 Twitch Updates
Twitch is testing dual-format streaming and vertical viewing, so streams look better when watched on a phone
📲 Snapchat Updates
Snap announced a new Snapchat app on Apple Watch that allow you to preview and respond to messages.
😵💫 SURVIVING GEN Z’S DIGITAL DETOX ERA
Pinterest dropped its 2025 Summer Trend Report this week, and the main theme is clear: we’re entering a Digital Detox Summer. Searches for “digital detox ideas” are up 72%, and “digital detox vision boards” have spiked a staggering 273%.
Expect to see a rise in book retreats, urban farming, and boho fashion inspired by the early 2000s, all reflecting a growing nostalgia for analog experiences — and maybe even a quiet backlash against creator culture.
Eventbrite’s latest data shows that 73% of Gen Z are experiencing digital exhaustion, sparking interest in Granny Core, a trend that embraces slow, hands-on activities (think quilting, baking, knitting) as a form of modern self-care.
Meanwhile, a K12 survey found that 34% of high school grads feel pressure from social media to become content creators or entrepreneurs. The pendulum has swung from “creator isn’t a real job” to schools actively encouraging alternatives like trades, gig work — and yes, content creation.
So what’s a brand to do when everyone’s logging off?
Anticipate lower engagement. Set realistic expectations with leadership. Then double down on what actually creates impact.
Here’s your cheat code: Creators (still). Experiences. Less (but better) content.
Tap Into Comfort Creators. Just because people are digitally burned out, or are resistant to becoming creators themselves, doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trusting creators. They’ve just become more selective. Comfort creator isn’t a new term but this style is especially relevant now as people look for predictable favorites and signature series they can come back to.
Create Experiences, Not Just Content. If you’re able to, try hosting your own IRL activations. We’ve seen branded happy hours, branded breakfasts (my favorite!) and endless pop-ups. Or create content that overlaps analog and digital experiences, eg. on- and off-line line book clubs, TikTok show and tell videos, terrestrial radio stations.
Cut the Filler Posts. When you do get in front of online audiences, make it count by posting less frequently but with higher impact content. Right now that’s highly relatable and/or funny updates. The idea that posting more = more engagement is over. Nearly two-thirds of marketers (64%) don’t post daily, according to HubSpot’s Global Social Media Trends report.
🎟️ INSIDE THE INFORMATION’S CREATOR SUMMIT
Kaya Yurieff and The Information team hosted their annual creator summit — The Future of Influence: What’s Next for Creators, Entertainment & AI — at Hollywood’s NeueHouse event space.
Who was there: Execs from Facebook, YouTube, Snap, Substack, Roblox, Spotify and Vox Media all had a presence on stage; Dhar Mann, Adam W, Victoria Garrick Browne and the CEO of Dude Perfect were there on the creator side; and Coke, Unilever, John Deere represented for the brands, plus folks from agencies like UTA and OneTeam Partners.
The focus of the event depends on where you sit within the industry — creators want recognition (and ad dollars) to reflect the millions of views they’re driving; brands want to cut through the noise (creators are helping with that); and Evan Spiegel wants to collab with people to grow his Snap account.
BIG THEMES OF THE DAY
1️⃣ Podcasts FTW
The theme of the day IMO was the podcast renaissance. That was obvious in sessions like Podcasting’s Next Decade, where Real Pod host Victoria Garrick Browne pointed out the format had moved from audio only to so much more: “You have to recognize that it’s going to be video, social content, strategy, community — do your listeners have a name like Alex Cooper’s Daddy Gang? It’s become culture.”
Everyone wanted to claim a piece of the podcast pie: Spotify’s Roman Wasenmüller delivered a mini history lesson on how that company got into podcasting (audio books were the spark); YouTube’s Kim Larson pointed out their platform was “the number one podcasting destination;” and Substack’s Chris Best said the company he co-founded had actually built their “first podcast support in 2018.”
Even when podcasts weren’t the focus of conversation, the topic kept coming up.
Snap’s Evan Spiegel paid tribute to the format between talking about AR glasses and advances in computing: “I think podcasts are such a compelling and valuable format to talk about the business. In terms of being able to really authentically connect with an audience, and to have a long enough format to do that and cover topics in depth.” But how do people have time to listen to all these podcasts, joked the tech exec who said he listens on 4X.
2️⃣ Creators Drive Reach and Resonance
Jen Hartmann, Global Director, Corporate Reputation & Brand Marketing at John Deere, shared a great anecdote that she uses with executives who aren't on social to help them understand why working with creators is worth it:
“We have a nonprofit called Farm Rescue that John Deere sponsors. We sent a film crew to shoot some of our volunteers out there doing a Farm Rescue. Five years later, it has 5,000 views on YouTube. We hired a millennial farmer, his name is Zach Johnson. He is the biggest AG influencer out there. We hired him to go out to a Farm Rescue last year. Within 24 hours, his post about Farm Rescue was one of the top 10 trending posts on YouTube, and had 2 million views.”
Valeria Herzer, Sr. Director of Global Entertainment & Influence, at The Coca-Cola Company (there was all the Diet Coke we could drink ❤️) agreed that budgets have gone from “linear to digital, from digital to social, from social to influencers.”
Meanwhile, Unilever’s Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Esi Eggleston Bracey, said creators help her connect with the 3.4B consumers the company has around the world: “They don't care about what my brand has to say. They care about what people like them have to say.”
3️⃣ Mega Creators Want Their Moment
Mega creators are waiting for media buyers — and the rest of Hollywood — to catch up.
“We have over 100 million followers, over 60 billion views, and more than 54% of our views come from television,” said Dhar Mann, founder of Dhar Mann Studios. “So what’s the difference between studio content on TV and YouTube content people are watching on TV?”
In LA, the mega creator scene is so dense it’s earned a new nickname: Holly-Tube. “Within 10 minutes I can go from Dhar Mann Studios to Smosh to Good Mythical Morning to Alan Chikin Chow,” said Larson, YouTube’s Managing Director, Head of Creator & Gaming. “That physical footprint… that’s relatively new.”
And unlike traditional talent who rely on reps to share Nielsen ratings or box office data, creators live in their analytics.
“There’s always been this pressure: ‘Hey, you built this following — now take it to Netflix, take it to Hulu.’ But why would I do that?” said creator Adam W (Waheed). “I already have my audience here. Why can’t I make a $5 million movie and drop it on my channel? I feel like creators, not just me, are sitting on gold.”
Adam is actually doing just that — he’s currently working on a 90-minute movie he plans to premiere on YouTube by the end of the year.
Similarly, Dude Perfect’s CEO Andrew Yaffe said they’re trying to build a best in class process, putting them in competition with the NBA or the NFL. “For a much lower cost, we can provide a lot of similar reach and engagement on digital and social — and afterwards, the recap decks, surveys and consumer lift studies that CMOs of Fortune 500 companies expect.”
🧠 💡 INDUSTRY VOICES
I asked other attendees for their key takeaways and got some really interesting observations:
“I really appreciated the depth of the conversations. One moment that stuck with me was when Jen Hartmann from John Deere said, ‘This probably won’t age well in five years, but I don’t see us using AI influencers in our content.’ That perfectly captured where the industry is right now: curious but cautious. Most creators are using AI for ideation or editing but haven’t yet meaningfully integrated it into the content itself. That said, based on how quickly these tools are evolving, I predict AI will soon touch every stage of the creative process, unlocking new formats and new possibilities for creators around the world,”
- Adrienne Lahens, Founder (building in stealth), ex-TikTok exec
“The public conversation is finally catching up to what many of us have seen behind the scenes: Creators aren’t just marketing channels, they’re building entertainment companies and can be valuable strategic partners in the entertainment ecosystem. We’ve seen that play out through brand deals that look more like JVs or strategic hires, vertical launches, and creator businesses thinking more like operators.
Offstage, my conversations were all about how creators are now driving some of the most important business and cultural dynamics — not just through content, but by building diversified companies across media, IP, consumer, and live experiences. They’re influencing how Hollywood and the broader industry think about talent, ownership, and long-term value. Audiences are increasingly turning to independent creators for “serious” things like news, politics, sports, and culture. It’s less about adapting to the change-du-jour on the social platforms, and more about ownership, infrastructure, and long-term influence.”
- Alex Barinka, Managing Director at communications and advisory firm Upland Workshop
😏 QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Trying to run a business and make content at the same time… It's not easy. I need help if anyone wants to collab?”
- Snap’s Evan Spiegel while speaking to Kaya Yurieff at The Information’s creator economy summit
🏆 THIS WEEK’S BRAND MVPS
P.F. Chang’s was the hero this creator needed, hand-delivering 3 Great Wall of Chocolate cakes and 2 New York Cheesecakes to her house. She had faked a cake business to stalk people on Instagram and suddenly found herself with 5 orders to fulfill.
McDonald’s put a unique twist on a social post announcing the return of the Snack Wrap. The social team wrote what amounted to a love letter to the fans who willed the return of Snack Wraps back into existence.
Loewe is tapping into online trends almost as they happen — subtly inserting themselves into creator content series versus imposing their own messaging. See @anthonybackup9 (his feed and Loewe’s) and @antthrowny (his feed and Loewe’s). Flagged by Audrey Dahmen!
👀 ICYMI: JUST THE HEADLINES
Creators have new representation in D.C. with the first ever Congressional Creators Caucus, a bipartisan effort to provide insights and recommendations to policymakers -Rep. Van Duyne and Rep. Yvette Clarke (creators apply here)
Can influencer brands survive influencers? -Elle (I shared my thoughts here!)
How creator marketing has become key to Mastercard’s culture-hacking strategy -Digiday
How Converse, Levi’s, Hollister and Puma are recognizing and supporting the LGBTQIA+ community online and IRL -PR Week
The complete guide to finding your Instagram target audience -Sprout Social
The 7 Macro Shifts Reshaping Social Media -Social 3.0
66% see YouTube as destination for long-form movies, TV shows -StreamTV Insider
72% of shoppers would stay loyal to brands they loved even if it meant paying more -Retail Brew
Marketing budgets have stalled at 7.7% of overall company revenue -Gartner
Thanks for reading!
So helpful as always!!!!
"Ideas: What to do if your audience logs off this summer" - The only idea should be: 'Let them'. Please. ✌️ I appreciated the suggestions, though, especially cutting down on filler. Filler should not be a thing! Life's too short to waste people's time.