January 22, 2025 •Chris Simpson
TikTok reveals the secret to social success in 2025
TikTok has released its What’s Next 2025 report, which lifts the lid on successful social marketing strategies. “Brand Chem” is the key buzzword for 2025, which TikTok defines as a careful balance of “listening, adapting and transforming”.
“Itʼs not magic; it's chemistry, or as we call it at TikTok, Brand Chem – a balance of listening, adapting, and transforming. When brands open up to fresh creator communities and intentionally create spaces for real engagement, they're not just connecting – they're tapping into the pulse of their audience.”
To achieve Brand Chem in 2025, TikTok is urging brands to prioritise three key areas:
- Brand function: Collaborating with more creators, sparking genuine conversations and being there for consumers – not only when you have something to sell.
- Identity osmosis: Speaking to consumers’ evolving priorities with genuine, personal and diverse perspectives.
- Creative catalysts: Using technology to maximise insights, efficiency, content output – and success.
Why this matters
Aside from the fact that people spend more time on TikTok than any other social app, no network has redefined how consumers engage with brands as much as TikTok in recent years. Increasingly, TikTok is where consumer attention is won, but it’s also shaping how brands win attention – across all platforms. If you'd like to master creative on TikTok, your next stop should be our Creative Growth Engine Webinar where TRGT Head of Creative Performance reveals the strategies for creative diversity and scale.
Study: 47% frustrated by irrelevant search results when researching products
Research carried out by Reddit finds consumers are turning to online communities over traditional search when they want to learn more about products. According to its findings, 47% say irrelevant search results are the most frustrating aspect of product research. Furthermore, when people want “immediate answers to specific questions,” 71% of respondents agreed that Reddit is the top source for reliable information.
Reddit itself is saying that “conversation is the new influencer” and “Reddit conversations are the new landing page for business discovery”. Reddit isn’t simply hyping itself up here, either. This aligns perfectly with TikTok’s insights on brands working with creators and building genuine conversations with consumers.
Why this matters
Our key message throughout 2024 was that visibility on Google alone isn’t enough for brands anymore. People are using a wider variety of tools throughout the consumer journey and, in some cases, specifically seeking out alternatives to Google and traditional search.
Google AI Overviews pushing organic results further down the SERPs
Moving away from consumer concerns for a moment, let’s talk about one of the biggest complaints marketers and brands have with Google Search: AI Overviews. Unfortunately, the problem is only getting bigger – quite literally – as analysis finds the pixel height of AI Overviews increased dramatically in 2024. According to BrightEdge, AI Overviews took up 600 vertical pixels of screen space in May 2024, but this increased to over 800px by the end of the year.
The company also finds AI Overviews are showing for more queries with finance topics seeing the biggest increase – from 5% to 20%. Meanwhile, healthcare topics continue to show the highest prevalence of AI Overviews, increasing to 80% from 70% of queries.
Ultimately, AI Overviews are showing for more queries in 2025 and they're pushing organic results further down the page.
Why this matters
Losing potential traffic to AI Overviews is a major concern to SEOs, marketers and brands. Unfortunately, Google’s live testing of AI Overview prevalence in results and pixel height makes it difficult to measure the impact they have on traffic volumes and adjust strategies. If you're interested in how search is changing more generally, this article from sister agency Vertical Leap has some broader context: Search Everywhere - The New SEO.
Amazon Ads is now open to other retailers
Amazon is the third-largest (7%) digital advertising platform, behind Alphabet (39%) and Meta (18%). However, Amazon’s latest move could reshuffle those market share percentages.
Amazon’s new Retail Ad Service allows other retailers to run ads on their own websites. In other words, retailers can tap into Amazon’s ad technology, even if they don’t sell their products through Amazon itself.
At this point, Retail Ad Service is still in the beta stage and it’s only available to retailers in the US. However, the current implementation enables retailers to:
- Display contextually relevant ads on product pages and on-site search results
- Customise ad designs, placements and frequency
- Access Amazon’s ad measurement and reporting tools
Why this matters
Retail Ad Service opens a new kind of advertising opportunity for eCommerce brands. Interestingly, Amazon is offering a product that puts the emphasis back on retailer websites when most tech companies seem to be doing everything they can to keep consumers locked into their own platforms.
Study: Google search rankings correlate with ChatGPT mentions
A new study from Seer Interactive finds a strong correlation between organic rankings and mentions in LLM (large language model) responses by tools like ChatGPT.
Testing OpenAI’s GPT4o API, the company analysed 10,000 questions to compare mentions with organic search factors. In its findings, ranking on page one of Google shows the strongest correlations with LLM mentions (~0.65). Meanwhile, it found no significant correlation between backlinks and LLM mentions.
Why this matters
This isn’t the first study to find a correlation between search rankings and generative AI mentions. However, SEOs and marketers need to consider the impact of brand hype, mentions, press coverage, social conversations and other factors as generative AI plays a bigger role in consumer journeys.
Google Ads preparing for 2025 ‘seismic shift’ in consumer behaviour
Google Ads Vice President, Brendon Kraham, has outlined the advertising giant’s plans for 2025 – namely, preparing for a “seismic shift” in consumer search behaviour.
The VP says Google expects AI to have an even bigger impact on consumer behaviour than mobile devices. That’s a bold statement, but it’s also an attitude that says a lot about Google’s intentions moving forward.
According to Brendon Kraham, Google will be focusing on three key areas:
- Multimodal experiences as the line between actively searching and passively discovering continues to blur.
- AI-powered tools to help advertisers create effective ad campaigns faster.
- Enhanced measurement tools with an emphasis on machine learning, predictive analytics and other AI-powered insights.
Essentially, it sounds like Google is going all-in on AI technology for search and advertising.
Why this matters
AI is already redefining the search experience for users, as well as advertising solutions with campaigns like Performance Max. Ultimately, the way people discover and buy products online is changing – and so are the tools advertisers use to reach them.
Making sense of the latest marketing news
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