Is your business ready for these 5 shifts in social media?

Staying up to date with social trends is essential for businesses to keep up with today’s ever-evolving market, where consumer preferences and behaviors can shift rapidly. In today's connected world, social networks, creators, influencers, friends and family are key to helping people discover and evaluate products and services.

According to research by eMarketer, the Asia Pacific (APAC) region continues to dominate the global social network user base with 2.3 billion users. This represents faster growth compared to the global average, solidifying the region’s position as the largest social network user base in the world.

As brands and business prepare for the new year ahead, Meta has unveiled five of the biggest social trends that business should dial into in order to best connect with their customers in 2025. 

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1. Generative AI to boost content creation

In 2025, generative AI will continue to captivate both consumers and businesses as it drives efficiency while boosting capacity to create new content, ideas and solutions. Meta continues to see strong adoption of its generative AI ad creative tools, with more than 1 million advertisers using the tools and more than 15 million ads created with the tools in August 2024.

In APAC, 30% of Meta’s largest clients used 'background generation'. According to the social media giant, ad campaigns which used Meta’s generative AI ad features resulted in an 11% higher click-through-rate and 7.6% higher conversion rate on average. This is compared to campaigns that didn’t use the features.

2. Gen Z leading business messaging 

The shift to messaging is one of the most profound shifts observed in APAC, said Meta. This comes as consumers want to communicate with businesses in the same way they communicate with friends and family - via messaging. This trend is evident with more than 1 billion people connecting with a business account on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp every week, said Meta. 

In addition, Meta revealed that there are more than 600 million conversations between people and businesses every day on its platforms. This is even more pronounced in APAC where at least 1 in 3 consumers chat with businesses once a week. It added that Gen Z is leading the way in this change in behavior, as this group of consumers continue to look for ways to connect with others in smaller circles.

3. Video content consumption continues to rise

Meta revealed that 60% of time spent on both Facebook and Instagram is consuming video content. In fact, according to Insider Intelligence, APAC will see a 15% increase in time spent watching TV and video content in 2025.

Livestreaming is also a growing trend in Southeast Asia, this is especially with 73% of people saying they have watched a livestream to learn more about products and services, according to a study by Decision Lab. A further 66% of them have purchased a product from a livestream. 

4. Abundance of options drive cross-border shopping

People are increasingly using technology to make purchases from across the globe, meeting their growing need for an abundance of options. In APAC, at least 50% of shoppers surveyed in Meta’s annual holiday study said they had made a cross-border purchase during the sale period.

Globally, among people who made a cross-border purchase, 59% of them discovered the product on Meta platforms, with 41% saying they engaged in post-purchase behavior on Meta. The cross-border purchases were not just driven by price, but by the desire to acquire brands not available in their country of residence and higher-quality products, said Meta. 

5. Creators key to campaign success

According to Meta, the creator economy in APAC continues to grow in strength. Research by Goldman Sachs supports this, adding that the global creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027.This is because creators have emerged as a new breed of entrepreneurs and are building scalable business models by forming strategic partnerships with global brands. As such, finding the right creator to tell a brand's story is a key factor in a campaign’s success in 2025. 

In fact, 53% of people surveyed agree they are more likely to purchase an item if it’s been promoted by a creator on Reels. Moving forward, Meta is testing 'Creator Testimonials', a new ad format that offers advertisers an additional, low effort way to improve partnership ads performance.

This report comes as We Are Social and Meltwater revealed that there are now 5.22 billion social media identities across the globe. In its "Digital 2024 October statshot" study, it found that social media user identities in Southeast Asia are slightly higher than the global average. The report found that the region continues to be some of the most active users across different messaging apps. In Philippines, users spend an average of 15 hours and 31 minutes on Messenger with an average of 768.9 sessions per month in its Android app. Indonesians are the second highest users of WhatsApp clocking just over 26 hours each month in the app with an average of 1,374.3 sessions per month.

Meanwhile, TikTok has the highest average time per Android user, clocking in 34 hours and 15 minutes per month. These average times are higher across most of the region, with Vietnamese users leading with almost 10 hours more than the global average each month on TikTok. 

Following TikTok, YouTube takes second place globally with the average user spending 29 hours and 21 minutes per month on its Android app. Thailand is one of YouTube's most active markets, spending 46 hours and 25 minutes per month on the app. Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia are all above the global average too, according to the report. 

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