We’re wrapping up another eventful year. Influencers have continued to, well, influence consumer spending trends and marketers’ ad budgets. Social media has remained marketers’ top ad channel of choice. And, beauty retailers like Ulta and big-box stores like Target have updated their e-commerce strategies.
Glossy+ Research tracked it all throughout the year, with quarterly surveys of brand, retailer and agency professionals, plus additional industry data we collected and analyzed. Below, we round up the biggest trends of the year, based on the data that resonated the most with our readers.
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2024’s biggest takeaway: Influencer Index — How influencers drove engagement for brands
Key findings:
- The majority of marketers agreed that Instagram is a great tool for influencing purchasing behaviors. In Glossy’s Q1 2024 survey, marketers chose Instagram (55% of respondents) and YouTube (14% of respondents) as the top platforms for branding.
- After beauty and fashion sponsorships, entertainment and media sponsorships were the third-most common type of influencer partnerships on Instagram and YouTube. In particular, entertainment sponsorships are well-received by audiences, and include influencers collaborating with media companies like TikTok or publications like Vogue.
- Still images and carousel ads receive more attention than Reels on Instagram. Sponsored still images had the highest engagement rate, meaning the number of likes and comments per following count. Interestingly, Reels had the lowest engagement rate.
- Glossy found that audiences prefer long-form video content over short-form content on YouTube. These longer videos give more insight into the personalities and lives of popular YouTubers. In Glossy’s index, sponsored long-form videos received higher rates of engagement than sponsored Shorts for the second year in a row.
- Instagram micro-influencers had 12 times the rate of engagement of macro-influencer accounts with 1 million to 5 million followers, and 14 times the rate of engagement of accounts over 5 million followers. On YouTube, the opposite relationship exists. Influencers with smaller subscriber counts showed a lower average rate of engagement than accounts with over 500,000 followers.
- Influencers in this index were most likely to use tutorials followed by “get ready with me” videos for Instagram and YouTube sponsorships. The casual yet informative nature of these posts allows influencers to showcase a sponsored product or brand without it feeling too gimmicky.
- Giveaways and review videos received the highest rates of engagement, with giveaways having double the rate of engagement of reviews. On average, giveaway videos garnered 60,000 likes and 17,000 comments per sponsored post. Reviews received 7,000 likes and 135 comments per sponsored post.
The charts that tell the story:
Runner up: CMO Strategies — Brands remained most invested in social media marketing, but also took advantage of retail media’s renaissance
Glossy’s 2024 CMO Strategies series analyzed key marketer strategies and challenges across leading marketing channels including social media and retail media. During the last year, retail media surged in popularity with many brands spending more in the channel and others venturing into retail media for the first time. New platforms popped up from specialty retailers like luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue and travel company Expedia, and the wide range of new entrants marked a renaissance for retail media networks. However, among all marketing channels considered in Glossy’s CMO Strategies series, social media had the highest usage rate for the second year in a row. Ninety-seven percent of marketer respondents said their company currently uses social media for marketing, according to Glossy’s first-quarter 2024 survey.
Key findings:
- Meta-owned platforms Instagram and Facebook remain the predominant players within social media, holding the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, but marketers’ use of Pinterest, Reddit and Snapchat has increased in 2024.
- Marketers’ use of TikTok declined slightly in 2024. TikTok faces a potential ban or sale in the U.S., and marketers are exploring contingency plans, such as moving ad spending to other platforms. Marketers’ use of X dropped by 6 percentage points in 2024. X has experienced continued turbulence since Elon Musk’s takeover, including mass layoffs and seemingly never ending platform and policy changes.
- Engagement is the primary measurement of success marketers turn to on all social platforms, with the exception of Pinterest. Engagement on social media is unique among marketing channels in that it shows marketers the types of products consumers gravitate toward.
- Amazon holds the majority of marketing budgets for retail media. However, Walmart’s Walmart Connect and Target’s Roundel platform saw increased adoption from 2023 to 2024, with Walmart in particular almost doubling in percentage points from 24% of marketer respondents who said they used Walmart Connect last year to 46% who said they use it this year.
- The majority of marketers said that they measure retail media success via commerce or sales rather than awareness metrics like impressions or engagement — 86% of respondents said commerce or sales is their primary measurement of marketing success across all retail media platforms in 2024, versus 9% who said the same of engagement and 1% who said impressions is their top success metric.
- As more retailers introduce their own RMNs, marketers have had to stretch their budgets in order to balance their platform mix. Some experts have even said that this influx of new RMNs is not sustainable and can harm retailers and advertisers.
The charts that tell the story:
In third place: The New E-commerce Playbook – How major retailers upgraded their e-commerce strategies
Glossy’s sibling publication Modern Retail released the annual Modern Retail Index. The Index analyzed retailers’ e-commerce experience and fulfillment strategies, and compared the different ways retailers cater to customers’ online needs. We drilled down on the core components of every retailer’s business — and the ways they’ve modernized digital platforms to stay relevant with customers.
Key findings:
- Specialty retailers Ulta and Sephora performed exceptionally well in the Index’s reviews dimension. Ulta pulls in reviews from other sites, while Sephora has an incentivized review program in which customers receive free products in return for writing reviews.
- Amazon excelled in e-commerce through its paid Amazon Prime membership program. Amazon created extended touchpoints for its consumers by striking agreements with Shopify and Meta: shoppers can use Buy With Prime on Shopify-powered merchant sites; ads on Meta-owned sites show Amazon products that can be purchased within the apps if the user connects them to their Prime account.
- Big-box store Best Buy revamped its membership program to include a new tiered model and also an additional middle-priced tier, while Walmart expanded its membership program to include early access to promotional deals.
- Specialty retailers increased their investments in larger distribution facilities dedicated to online order fulfillment to increase capacity for digital orders, as well as investing in speedy delivery options through third-party delivery services and big-box partnerships.
- Big-box stores Target and Walmart expanded their stores’ local fulfillment capabilities by building more micro-fulfillment centers and large-format stores that act as fulfillment hubs for online orders, including drive-up and same-day local deliveries.
- Department stores struggled to fulfill online orders as efficiently as specialty retailers, but they have partnered with DoorDash and Instacart for quicker deliveries and built new store formats that allow for more convenient shopping and curated browsing.
The charts that tell the story:
