The Social Scoop - Week 37

Welcome to The Social Scoop! Your go-to bi-weekly update on all things social media: brand new features, key trends and platform shifts, all in one place.

TikTok Search Ads: Because Gen Z thinks Google is for boomers 🔍
TikTok is positioning its Search Ads as a powerful discovery tool, especially as in-app search activity has grown 40% year over year. New research from WARC shows that younger audiences increasingly turn to TikTok over Google when searching for product insights – particularly in categories like beauty, fashion, entertainment and recipes. Campaigns that include Search Ads drive 2x more purchases highlighting the format’s effectiveness. TikTok is more and more becoming a key platform for product discovery and intent driven marketing. 

How to spot trends before they trend 📈
Each social platform offers its own tools to help track real time trends and audience interests – from TikTok Trends and Reddit Pro Trends to Grok on X. AI-powered ad tools like Meta Advantage+ and TikTok Symphony are also playing a bigger role in automatically identifying relevant audiences and content formats. The goal? Helping brands align their content and campaigns with what truly resonates in the moment. For example, Pinterest Trends lets you explore trending search terms and Pins based on keywords, offering a clear view of seasonal interests and product discovery behavior. Check out the full overview of all tools per platform here.

Smarter carousels with frame level likes ❤️
Instagram is testing frame-level like counts on carousel posts, attributing each like to a specific slide. This gives you a clearer read on which images or hooks actually land so you can reorder your next carousel and lead with a top performer. The feature is still in testing, but if it rolls out broadly it will be a very practical way to refine storytelling, sequencing and thumbnails for more reach and engagement.

AI is everywhere – but where do its answers come from? 🤖💬
A Semrush study finds Reddit is the leading source feeding tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, contributing about 40% of responses and outpacing Wikipedia and YouTube. Real people debate, upvote and vet information on Reddit, which surfaces authentic, high-value insights. AI is powerful, but it still leans on human judgment. Reddit supplies that human layer at scale.