2023 Social Media Predictions

And take a deep breath. You have made it through 2022 (nearly, at least). After a turbulent year of war, questionable Twitter buyouts and one of the best Eurovision in recent memory, we now have our eyes (and ears) set on the future.

Whilst we aren’t mystic meg, here to tell you your particular future (although we do host an in-house astrology expert ♈️), we can put our social-first brains together to compile a list of the must-know upcoming social trends. So, put your labcoats on and hop in the time machine because we are taking a brief trip to 2023.

Insider Tea ☕️:

A well-written blog post always has some great sources. So here are some of the Spin teams’ predictions around social in 2023 (trust us, we are experts 😉):

Max (Co-founder and CBO 🕶):
“We’ll no doubt find more brands exploring the halfway-house to the Metaverse by bringing sensory elements and further gamification to social.

With the increased demand for integrity and authenticity on social content, I can’t help but think there will be a moment of reflection on the vehicle itself that’s driving this.”

Sophie (Senior Content Creator 📸):
“Live shopping is going to take over! Think QVC for TikTok. Interactive, live content with influencers giving live, unfiltered, unedited product commentary. Honest, risky, but very effective.”

Emily (Senior Account Manager 🧠):
“With brands like McCain inserting themselves into the Metaverse through their latest campaign collaboration with Roblox, it’s only a matter of time before even more follow suit. Finding an original link to these exciting innovations within social will be a game changer for brands. Clearly, a standalone campaign doesn’t work, and those most native to the Metaverse aren’t impressed. This forward-thinking approach needs to be explored with a long-term strategy rather than a flash-in-the-pan campaign to win over the gaming community.”

Courtney (Account Manager 🪄):

“I can see parodies of social apps being created, my faves being Delayagram, Toebook, and BeFake being introduced into the mix. It’ll allow users to do the exact opposite of what you can do on the real version of the apps.”

(New Spin packages coming soon?)

Cherie (Mid-weight Creative Designer 🎨):

“The rising ‘curated chaos’ design style (@bigsexypizza, @sourpatchkids) of 2022 will continue into next year, with even less focus on clean aesthetics.

With Gen Z’s love for Y2K still prominent, there may be a rise in the older, nostalgic design trends of the early 2000s. Think magazine collages, WordArt ( :/ ) and 90’s digital computer graphics!”

Julian (Account Manager and Horoscope Expert ♎️):

“AR filters will be used for shopping. In fact, Snapchat has already started to experiment with this.

Shopping on social media will become a lot more common across more platforms. Twitter shop, maybe?

The short-form vs long-form content debate will die out. With TikTok allowing longer videos and YouTube introducing shorts, people will avoid prioritising a certain video length.”

Grace (Senior Paid Account Manager 💰):

“Audio and sounds will only become more prevalent for advertisers on social media in 2023. We’ve seen how TikTok transformed the music industry by turning old songs or unknown musicians into total chart-toppers. I think this will be even more important in the coming year. With social advertising platforms such as Meta bringing out new ad enhancements, such as automatically adding music to your video ads, this can only signify how important audio will be for brands on social in 2023.”

Jacob (Copywriter✍️):

“In line with TikTok and BeReal, the push for honesty and authenticity will finally reach copy next year. After quite a brash and ballsy scene for copy in 2022, next year could be all about relatability throughout the copy. Imperfections, colloquialisms and honesty will become central.”

Now, onto the blog…

Personas are DEAD 🪦

We’ve all seen them. Time and time again, our brand decks have been filled to the brim with made-up individual personas. What do they like for breakfast, what do they watch on Netflix, and how do they spend their evening? Except, there’s a bit of a problem. In 2023, social brands will move further away from personas and target their broader brand communities.

Various social sites echo these through their developments, where Twitter Communities and Facebook groups have been the spaces where consumers treat product recommendations with the utmost sincerity and respect. Navigating these social communities will be critical in 2023. It will soon become less about individual influencers streaming content and more about the dialogue between all community members in these spaces (groups, comment sections, twitter threads etc.).

Here, we must focus on developing connections with communities by truly understanding online interactions – and acting quickly to join them. Good community management will be essential. These micro-communities may have smaller audiences, but they’re worth their weight in gold with high engagement rates.

Over here at Spin, we embed ‘community’ across every brand pillar and every post type to reach and cultivate loyal brand fans.

Listen VERY Carefully 👂

Can you hear that? That’s the sound of sonic marketing. But, no, we aren’t talking about the blue super-fast hedgehog; we are talking about the world of sounds and audio. From a focus on words (Twitter and Facebook) to images (Instagram and Snapchat) to the new epoch of sounds (Enter: TikTok), Social media sites have always played with the senses to keep the user glued to their timeline and engaged with the content produced.

So, how can brands utilise this? The sound stops the scroll in this world where content streams are omnipresent and infinite. Photos, stories, tweets, and videos are now a given, and producing content that activates multiple senses is essential. 88% of TikTok users said sound is crucial to the app’s experience.

From claiming a specific sound to creating your own (Users have used this TikTok sound across 10,400+ TikToks), sonic branding will surely pop off in 2023. So keep an ear out for it.

Live and Let Die 🎥:

With various platforms’ constant push for live affordances, such as Facebook Live, YouTube Live, TikTok Live, and Instagram Live, live video became more widely used throughout the year.

Not too dissimilar to the ancient practice of telemarketing, now anybody with a phone in their pocket can begin to record unprocessed, unedited and unfiltered live videos. Anybody can now start to communicate exciting developments to their audience, capture the excitement of a brand event and even begin to sell some of their products natively on Livestream.

By enabling online buyers to view their products in real time, this trend allows marketers to forge better bonds with their clients. Lives will be critical in 2023 for brands pushing for authenticity and relatability – as the risks of lives often outweigh the positives. And it’s precisely those unmediated risks that bring in waves of dedicated viewers.

(Here at Spin, we expect a more prominent announcement on Instagram live shopping sometime early in 2023.)

AR / VR has arrived (again?) 👾:

Every year AR makes its way onto the trends list. But this year is the time to start capitalising on this trend. With a big expected push from Facebook, who are making the ‘meta-verse’ their thing, we expect to see great metrics across the board on all things Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Potentially a scary space, this will all be about utilising filters, gaming, audio and virtual influencer marketing to push online spaces forward. So, with a potential market of $800bn, get ready to enter the 3D world with your followers.

Tip: 💡 Creating virtual representations of products is a great way to begin to prepare for this coming shift.

Sooooo… Twitter 🐦:

Yeah, so a lot has been going on at Twitter, even in the last few days. The manic and volatile social media has become even more unpredictable thanks to Elon Musk’s acquisition. After dissolving Twitter’s board of directors, the site is clearly heading in a new direction.

One thing we can begin to plan for is the introduction of subscriptions, which Musk has spoken about many times during the buying process. For example, Twitter could start to charge brands a monthly fee to access analytics and a blue tick.

This, combined with celebrities beginning to leave the platform, could signal an end to Twitter. Or, at least, Twitter as we know it. We’ll keep our eyes peeled on this one!

More Fragmentation? 🤔:

Admit it, we all love an underdog. And, after Bereal’s overnight success (and to some extent TikTok’s), who knows what the future holds regarding new platforms? New social media sites like BeReal are projected to appear in 2023 to break into a VERY crowded industry.

However, while new platforms arise yearly with lofty claims of ‘revolutionising social media as we know it’, they mostly remain niche sites. Nonetheless, keeping an eye on any recent advancements in the sector is critical! That’s what our blog is for, though, right?

Are you feeling a little bit lost? We don’t blame you, and we are here to help. Spin is an award-winning pure-play social media agency that combines the sharpest creative minds with the most innovative performance specialists.

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So why are brands still defaulting to TV?

Comfort.
Familiarity.
A (false) sense of scale?

But what if just 10% of your TV budget went to Meta?

Say you’re investing £5M in TV. Reallocating just 10% of that to Meta could reach 4.4M unique users at best-practice frequency, across a six-week campaign. And that reach wouldn’t be theoretical. It would be:

Trackable
Optimisable
Tailored to real human behaviour in real time

That’s the difference. Social media doesn’t just reach people. It tells you who’s engaging, what’s resonating, and where to go next.

Still think social’s just a support act?

The University of Oxford’s ‘No Silver Bullet’ study, the largest academic investigation into brand-building effectiveness, found the most effective media mix is TV, Meta and YouTube. Not just one. Not two. All three. But used strategically. We’ve long seen where the attention’s heading. It’s why we brought Be a Bear into the Spin fold, the YouTube and audience strategy specialists who help us go bigger, broader, and sharper across channels. Because in 2025, full-funnel doesn’t mean “a bit of everything.” It means knowing how to make each channel work harder.

And when Meta owns the four most-used daily apps in the UK (👋 Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp), the opportunity to amplify ATL impact and extend reach is unmatched.

And here’s the kicker…

Social doesn’t just scale your ATL. It adds lift:

Greater unaided awareness
Higher consideration
Lower cost per acquisition

We’re talking social-first adaptation, where we translate ATL creative into a high-performance suite of assets designed to scale, test, and convert. It’s how we helped Brothers Cider exceed their reach targets with 12 modular assets from one TVC. It’s how we helped People’s Postcode Lottery turn a brand shoot into a DR sign-up engine on Meta.

So what makes social more measurable?

Unlike TV, social doesn’t rely on panels or extrapolation. You get live, platform-native performance data across every asset, audience, and placement.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Creative-level breakdowns: See which specific edits, hooks, or formats are performing across Meta, TikTok, and YouTube.
Funnel-stage metrics: Track not just awareness, but how assets influence consideration, intent, and conversion, mapped to real user journeys.
Custom conversions & pixel data: Set up granular, first-party tracking to understand true ROI beyond surface metrics.
Holdout testing: Run incrementality studies to isolate impact - what would have happened without paid social?
Creative scoring & fatigue tracking: Know when an asset’s burning out before your performance drops.

Through SpaRk, our ad creative solution, we use this data to iterate in real time. We test modular creative, scale what works, and retire what doesn’t. It’s performance and brand-building, working together.

And here’s the stat that says it all: 56% of action outcomes on Meta are driven by creative alone.

TL;DR: If you're still debating “TV or social”... you’re asking the wrong question.

The right one?
‍How much of your TV budget could work harder on social?
We’re here to help you find out.

Blog

UK Junk Food Ad Ban: An Advertising Challenge or an Opportunity?

In October 2025, the UK government will implement a landmark ban on junk food advertising across social media and TV, aiming to curb childhood obesity and promote healthier eating habits. This move presents a significant challenge for brands in the food and beverage industry, particularly those reliant on digital marketing to engage consumers. However, as history has shown, where restrictions arise, innovation follows. In this piece, we’ll explore creative, compliant, and effective ways for brands to navigate these new regulations—maintaining brand visibility, consumer engagement, and continued growth in a rapidly evolving advertising landscape.

Advertising restrictions are nothing new—industries from tobacco to alcohol, gambling, sex, and pharmaceuticals have all faced regulatory hurdles, yet the most successful brands have thrived by bending these rules creatively. Many tactics involve focusing budgets into less overt paid mediums, such as event sponsorships both offline (sports, festivals) and online (live-streamed events, YouTube influencer partnerships). This is something we’ve seen in the alcohol and gambling industries and isn’t currently withheld under any advertising regulations. But unlike traditional paid advertising methods, these do come with a catch in attribution complexities. Which isn’t always so great for the marketer. In the DTC pharmaceutical and sex industries, advertisers have explored creative ways to alter the focus of messaging away from the product and onto the emotion-led outcome that having the product provides to appeal to the consumer. Within some regulatory clauses, this allows advertisers to remain active on paid media channels, particularly on social, which is more lax than TV. Spin successfully navigates this with our client, Lovehoney, by creatively concealing their products in normal everyday environments (i.e. hiding the Rose within a bouquet of real roses) or using the products as background props to a scene otherwise focused on emotion-led lifestyle messaging, i.e. connecting with your partner & lifting your mood. These techniques not only allow us to continue using social and digital channels as paid media channels, but access data that allows us to optimise and grow these channels as revenue-driving heavy lifters.

Having advertising restrictions can actually be a blessing when it comes to using paid social as a communication channel. Paid social is a rare hotbed in the available marketing mix that brands can harvest zero-party data from to draw insights into their consumer behaviour, engagement, and motivations. When intentionally used in this way, it can be a great marketing tool to optimise other channels. Taking the above Lovehoney example, knowing advertising efforts must be focused on emotion-led messaging, we can focus in on a handful of problem/solution combinations when crafting our creative. The data passed back from the algorithm after launch highlights the winners amongst each subdivision of our audience, informing subsequent creative thinking to optimise activity but also providing valuable insights that can be applied to CRM segments, website copy and UX, organic social, and influencer partnerships.

Instead of seeing the 2025 junk food ad ban as a roadblock, brands should view it as an opportunity to innovate. When regulations tighten, the most successful brands adapt—often emerging stronger, more strategic, and more connected to their audience. By shifting focus to influencer partnerships, sponsorships, and emotion-driven messaging on paid social, as well as increasing their exposure on unaffected marketing mediums such as organic social, brands can maintain visibility and continue to connect with their communities while also gaining deeper consumer insights. Those who embrace this shift early will not only stay compliant but will also future-proof their marketing strategies in an increasingly regulated digital landscape. The key is to think beyond traditional paid ads and start investing in creativity, storytelling, and authentic engagement—because the brands that evolve are the ones that win.

Blog

Spin Wins Culture 100 Award 2024

Spin is thrilled to announce that we have been recognised as one of the UK’s top companies in the prestigious Culture 100 Awards for 2024. This award highlights our commitment to building a people-first workplace that prioritises flexibility, inclusivity, and personal growth.

The Culture 100 Awards celebrate organisations that are redefining what it means to be a great place to work, and Spin is proud to be counted among them. Our culture is built on lifting each other up, fostering strong relationships, and ensuring that every team member feels recognised and valued.

Our CEO, Alex Bodini, commented, "This recognition reflects our dedication to creating an environment where our team can thrive, both professionally and personally. At Spin, we believe that a strong, supportive culture is key to driving creativity and innovation."

Spin's commitment to mental health support, continuous professional development, and an inclusive, collaborative atmosphere were key factors in our selection. We will continue to champion a culture where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work and achieve their full potential.

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