The Social Scoop - May

Paying for social media is the new normal 💸

Meta is rapidly expanding its subscription strategy across platforms. After the success of Meta Verified, the company is now testing Instagram Plus, which gives paying users exclusive Story features like unlimited audience lists, Story spotlighting, and extended Story duration. Snapchat has been leading the way. Snapchat+ has grown to over 25 million subscribers worldwide, and the platform recently launched Creator Subscriptions, letting creators charge fans directly for exclusive content. The trend is clear: social platforms are building a second revenue stream beyond ads, and users seem willing to pay for it.

TikTok’s AI video tool is getting smarter 🤖

TikTok Symphony (the platform’s AI-powered creative suite for advertisers) just got a major upgrade. ByteDance’s latest AI video model, Dreamina Seedance 2.0, is now integrated into Symphony, making it faster and easier to produce polished, TikTok-ready video content from just a text prompt or reference clip. That said, AI-generated content still has its limitations, it can feel generic or off-brand if you’re not careful. Symphony can be a useful tool to scale content, but human creative input remains essential to make it truly work.

Reddit might not be your first pick for retail – but keep it on your radar 👀

Reddit has long been known as the go-to place for people searching for honest product reviews and recommendations and that behavior is increasingly translating into commercial opportunities. To tap into this, Reddit is introducing several new ad formats specifically designed for retailers. With Collection Ads, advertisers can showcase a carousel of shoppable product tiles beneath a hero image. In addition, the platform is testing Community and Deal overlays: ads that integrate Reddit context through labels such as “Redditors’ Top Pick” and subreddit-relevant discount information. Finally, a new Shopify integration simplifies the technical setup by streamlining catalog and pixel implementation, while the system automatically helps determine which products are most relevant to Reddit users.

Breaking Down Barriers: Smarter Ad Performance for Every Business 🚀

Meta is introducing new updates to the Pixel and Conversions API designed to make high-performing ad setups accessible to businesses of all sizes. By leveraging AI, the upgraded Meta Pixel can now automatically capture and share valuable product and page data, reducing the need for manual, technical work. In addition, a new one-click Conversions API setup eliminates complexity, enabling businesses to get started without coding or ongoing maintenance. Together, these improvements help advertisers access more complete data, optimize campaigns more effectively, and achieve better results, without the traditional technical barriers.