Hello social strategists and welcome to another week! There are plenty of new tools to discuss, including Facebook’s nickname option and Threads’ new profile summaries.

AI enables digital marketers to target audiences with previously unattainable data, helping run cross-channel campaigns that understand a brand, its products, and audience motivations, revealing insights beyond traditional performance metrics.

This infographic overview from the team at Red Website Design covers what they see as the key trends of note, along with pointers on what they mean for brands.

A new study highlights the strong impact of combining streaming TV and social in cross-media campaigns. It found viewers are 43% more likely to watch ads on streaming TV than on social media, and 67% spend more time viewing them.

YouTube has launched its first-ever recap summary, which looks at the top trends and creators in the app from 2025, while it’s also launching a personalized summary of users’ own top content trends in the app for the year.

Google is rolling out a feature that automatically links Google Ads accounts with YouTube channels when the systems detect a strong data relationship between the two. The goal is to give advertisers access to stronger audience signals — automatically.

The study found that almost 80% of a streaming video advert is viewed attentively on average, versus around 20% in digital environments. The disconnect between an advert being served and an advert being seen obscures substantial waste.

Google today released its 2025 Year in Search list, but don’t mistake it for a ranking of the “top searches” or the “most searched” terms. This year’s recap focused on trending queries – the topics that grew the fastest compared with 2024.

Are you in the middle of mapping out your 2026 digital marketing strategy? This will help.

Social media is becoming less social, TV is increasingly online, and a world-first law in Australia sets out what is and isn’t social media – but this opens up questions about what social media is and how marketing should think about investment in a world of blurred lines.