Digiday+ Research Briefing: A look at the state of social marketing as the TikTok ban draws near

In Digiday+ Research’s first-quarter survey of marketing professionals, respondents told Digiday that Instagram and Facebook still hold the majority of their companies’ marketing budgets. YouTube and TikTok came out behind Meta’s platforms in third and fourth place. TikTok saw brands’ and retailers’ usage and marketing spend on the platform decline this year, according to Digiday’s survey. Marketers’ use of TikTok fell by 17 percentage points in Q1 2025 compared to Q3 2024, following the platform’s brief outage in January and as the April 5 deadline for a U.S. ban approaches.

What social media platforms will marketers focus on if TikTok is banned? Examining consumer usage of various social media platforms may help answer this question. According to the Pew Research Center, TikTok’s main users are Gen Z, or consumers aged 18 to 29. Gen Z uses TikTok at higher rates than other age groups, even though the group’s most-used social media platform is YouTube, followed by Instagram. Among all age groups, YouTube is the most-used platform, Pew’s study found. Gen Z uses Snapchat and TikTok more heavily than other generations.

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