New research from the University of Cambridge has revealed something that should concern anyone involved in digital advertising, not just gambling brands. Social media platforms are delivering gambling ads to young men at more than double the rate of women, even when those ads were not specifically set up to target men. It is a finding that raises serious questions about how algorithmic ad delivery works, and what responsibility brands and platforms carry for the audiences their campaigns ultimately reach.

What the research found

The Cambridge-led study analysed over 400 advertisements from 88 licensed gambling operators running campaigns in Ireland, using data made available through Meta’s Ad Library under EU transparency rules. The results were stark. Across Facebook and Instagram, men were reached 2.3 times more than women. The most exposed age group was 25 to 34-year-olds, who accounted for over a third of all accounts reached. One single ad from Betfair alone reached more than 1.3 million unique accounts, equivalent to roughly a quarter of Ireland’s entire population. Crucially, the skew towards men was not simply the result of advertisers choosing to target them. Even ads set to reach all genders defaulted towards young men, suggesting the platforms’ own delivery systems were driving the imbalance.

Why this matters beyond gambling

The significance here goes beyond one industry. This research demonstrates that social media ad delivery does not simply reflect the audience you set up in your campaign. The algorithm makes its own decisions about who sees your content, and those decisions are not always visible or predictable. For any brand advertising on Meta, it is a reminder that the audience you target and the audience you actually reach can be very different things. Understanding that gap matters, both for campaign performance and for the growing regulatory scrutiny around responsible advertising.

What advertisers should take from this

Regulators are paying attention. Ireland has already introduced restrictions requiring users to actively opt in before seeing gambling ads on social media. The UK and other markets are likely to follow. But the broader lesson for advertisers is this: knowing who your ads reach is not optional. Demographic delivery data is available within Meta’s reporting tools, and reviewing it regularly should be standard practice. If your campaigns are reaching audiences you did not intend, or missing audiences you did, that is both a compliance risk and a wasted budget. The algorithm works for you when you understand it, and against you when you do not.

Google has quietly shipped one of the more useful additions to Search Console in recent memory. Platform properties, launched earlier this month, allow you to connect your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube accounts directly to Search Console and see how your content on those platforms is performing within Google Search. Not on those platforms. Within Google Search itself.

It sounds like a subtle distinction but it is a meaningful one. For any business that posts content on social or video platforms without knowing whether it is generating search visibility, this gives you the first direct window into that question. And given that recognition across multiple channels now drives downstream search behaviour in ways that standard analytics have never been able to capture, platform properties is a feature worth setting up properly.

What platform properties actually shows you

Once you have verified a platform property in Search Console, you get access to three types of reporting, each showing a different layer of how your social and video content surfaces in Google Search.

• Performance report. Total clicks, impressions and engagement metrics from your social content appearing in Google Search. You can filter by specific posts and sort by the search queries that are driving traffic to your accounts or content. The data is also exportable if you want to pull it into a separate reporting dashboard.
• Insights report. A higher-level view showing traffic trends, your top-performing posts and the mechanisms by which people discover your accounts in Google Search. Useful for a quick overview without drilling into individual query data.
• Achievements. Milestone tracking for growth in clicks from Google Search, measured in 28-day windows. Less analytical, but useful for demonstrating momentum to clients or stakeholders.

The rollout is gradual, so not every account will see platform properties immediately. Google has confirmed it is expanding access over the coming weeks. If you do not see the option yet, it is worth checking back rather than assuming it has been skipped.

How to set it up

Setting up platform properties requires you to verify each social account separately within Search Console. The process is the same for all four supported platforms and takes a few minutes per account.

• Open Search Console and go to the property selector dropdown, or navigate to the verification page directly.
• Click ‘Add property’ and select one of the four available platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
• Follow the on-screen verification steps to authorise the connection. Google uses a secure authorisation flow rather than asking for login credentials.
• Once verified, the platform property appears alongside your standard web properties in Search Console and data begins populating, typically showing historical data going back several weeks.

For businesses managing multiple clients, you will need to verify each platform account separately. There is currently no bulk verification option, and each platform property sits in its own reporting view rather than being rolled up into a combined dashboard.

Why this matters more than it might initially appear

The reason this is genuinely useful rather than just a nice-to-have is that it closes a specific and long-standing measurement gap. Until now, if a business posted a video on YouTube or a set of stories on Instagram, there was no reliable way to know whether that content was generating impressions or clicks within Google Search. You could track traffic from Google to your social profiles in some analytics tools, but you could not see what search queries were triggering those results or which pieces of content were responsible.

Platform properties flips that. You are now looking at the data from the Google Search side rather than from the social platform side. That means you can see which search terms are surfacing your YouTube videos, which Instagram posts are appearing in Google Image Search, and which queries are driving traffic to your X profile from within Google. That is a different and more useful frame than social platform analytics provides on its own.

The timing of this feature is also worth noting. Recent data from Similarweb confirmed that more than half of the downstream traffic generated by AI recommendations arrives via branded search rather than direct AI referral clicks. Branded search lifts are increasingly a downstream signal of visibility across multiple channels, not just traditional SEO. Platform properties gives you the first standardised tool for measuring whether your social content is contributing to that broader search signal.

The practical implications for content and reporting

For most marketing teams, the immediate value of platform properties falls into three areas:

• Proving the SEO value of social content. This has historically been difficult to demonstrate in a way that satisfies sceptical stakeholders. Platform properties gives you direct click and impression data from Google Search for content posted on social platforms. That is a credible, source-backed number rather than an inferred relationship.
• Understanding which queries drive social discovery. Seeing the specific search terms that are surfacing your YouTube videos or Instagram posts in Google Search tells you something useful about the intent of people finding you through that route. If a dental clinic’s treatment videos are appearing for ‘how long does teeth whitening last’ in Google Search, that is content worth making more of. Without platform properties, you would not know those searches were leading to your video.
• Informing content decisions with actual search data. The performance report shows which specific posts are generating clicks and impressions in Google Search. That gives you a direct signal about which content formats, topics and posting approaches are earning Google search visibility rather than just social engagement. The two do not always correlate.

What to check once you have connected your accounts

Once the platform property data starts populating, the most useful starting point is the performance report filtered by query. Look for search terms that are driving impressions to your social content that you are not yet targeting with your main website. These represent keyword opportunities where Google is already surfacing your brand through social content, and where a corresponding page or article on your website could strengthen that visibility further.

The insights report is worth reviewing monthly rather than weekly – it is a trend indicator rather than a granular data source. The most commercially useful data is in the performance report, particularly for video content on YouTube where the correlation between Google Search impressions and watch time can help inform both SEO and content production decisions.

For businesses running YouTube channels alongside a website, the combination of YouTube platform property data and standard Search Console data in the same interface starts to give a more complete picture of how their content performs across Google’s various surfaces. That has never been possible before within a single tool, and it is worth taking the time to set it up properly rather than treating it as a nice-to-have.

At Cannes Lions 2026, the world’s most influential festival of creativity, Meta used the spotlight to announce a significant leap forward in how businesses can advertise, connect with creators, and engage customers. The announcements span three areas: AI-powered creative tools, a unified creator marketing platform, and smarter customer engagement through AI. Together, they represent a clear signal of where digital advertising is heading, and why brands that move with these changes stand to gain the most. To put the opportunity in context, Meta shared that its own analysis of over one million campaigns found advertisers were generating an average of $4.13 in revenue for every dollar spent on Meta, a 25% improvement since 2022.

AI That Learns Your Brand and Builds Your Ads

The most substantial announcement for advertisers is a new end-to-end creative solution that allows marketing teams to generate, test and refine ads far more quickly than before. At the heart of it is a feature called Brand Memory, which allows Meta’s AI to absorb the look, tone and identity of your brand from your existing advertising history, so that new content it creates feels consistent rather than generic. Rather than starting from scratch every campaign, your team gets a system that already understands what your brand looks and sounds like. Meta is building this with agencies in mind from day one, with early integration through WPP Open, meaning the process slots into existing workflows rather than replacing them. Additional improvements include better AI-written ad copy, multilingual capabilities across image and video formats, and built-in approval tools that reduce the back-and-forth involved in getting campaigns signed off.

Finding and Working With Creators Just Got Simpler

For brands using influencer or creator partnerships, Meta is consolidating its previously separate tools into a single destination called Meta Creator Marketing Hub, due to launch later this year. Rather than switching between platforms to find creators, review content and activate ads, businesses will be able to do all of this from one place, covering both Instagram and Facebook. New discovery features will also surface relevant content from creators you are not yet working with, including product-tagged posts and user-generated content, along with performance data to help you make smarter partnership decisions. For brands that have found creator marketing fragmented and time-consuming to manage, this is a meaningful practical improvement.

Turning Customer Conversations Into Sales Opportunities

Perhaps the most forward-looking announcement is the expansion of Meta’s Business Agent Platform, which allows businesses to deploy AI directly within their customer messaging. Rather than using channels like WhatsApp purely for notifications, brands can now create personalised, conversational shopping experiences at scale. The potential is real: one early adopter reported over 15,000 AI-powered shopping conversations in its first week live in a new market. With over one million businesses already using the platform, this is not a distant possibility but a growing commercial reality. For brands that want to convert everyday customer interactions into revenue, this is worth exploring now rather than later.

Meta launched AI Mode in Facebook Search this week. Instead of returning a standard list of results when users search inside Facebook, AI Mode now uses Meta AI to generate direct answers drawn from public Groups, Reels and other content across Meta’s apps. It is a significant move that has not received the attention it deserves, largely because it came in the same week as several other AI search announcements. It is worth looking at properly, because what it signals about the direction of social search has commercial implications for any business that maintains a presence on Meta.

AI search is no longer just a Google story. The same shift we have been tracking across Google, Perplexity and ChatGPT has now reached the platform that most of your clients’ audiences use every single day. That changes the conversation.

What Meta AI Mode actually does

When a user searches inside Facebook with AI Mode active, instead of being presented with a feed of posts, pages and profiles, they receive an AI-generated answer. That answer is built from public content posted across Meta’s platforms, including Facebook Groups, Reels, and posts from accounts that are publicly visible. The responses are grounded in what real people are saying, which is a meaningful distinction from how other AI search products work.

The practical implication is that Facebook is repositioning itself as a place to get answers, not just to consume content. A user asking “best aesthetic clinic in Manchester” or “what’s the best care home software” inside Facebook Search could now receive an AI-generated response that draws on public Group discussions, Reels reviews and recommendations posted by other users, without ever clicking through to a website.

AI Mode supports both broad discovery queries and specific questions. It also means Facebook Groups and Reels, which have historically been treated primarily as engagement surfaces, are now becoming source material for AI-generated search answers. The content users post publicly in those environments is now directly informing what other users see when they ask questions.

Why this matters more than it might initially appear

The standard reaction to a product announcement like this is to ask whether it will gain meaningful adoption. That is the right question, but it misses the more important strategic point: Meta has just confirmed that the AI answer engine model is the future of search across every major platform, not just Google.

We wrote recently about how the SEO goal has shifted from rankings to recognition: being cited, mentioned and trusted across the contexts where your audience is forming opinions and making decisions, not just appearing in a list of search results. Meta AI Mode extends that argument directly into social. If your brand, product or service is being discussed positively in public Facebook Groups, those discussions are now potential source material for AI-generated recommendations shown to other users.

That is a different kind of visibility than anything Facebook has previously offered. Paid ads on Meta work by targeting defined audiences with content you control. AI Mode works by surfacing what people are already saying. You cannot buy your way into an AI-generated answer in the same way you buy ad placement. You earn it through the quality and authenticity of the conversations taking place about you in public social spaces.

What you should actually do about it

Meta AI Mode is early-stage and will develop over time. The practical steps worth taking now are not dramatic, but they are worth doing before the feature becomes more widely adopted and the competitive dynamics around it become clearer.

• Audit your public Facebook presence. If you have a Facebook Page, check whether the content you are posting publicly is the kind of content that would make a good AI-generated recommendation. Generic promotional posts will not. Specific, useful, community-relevant content will.
• Identify which Groups your audience uses. The public Facebook Groups most relevant to your sector are worth monitoring and, where appropriate, contributing to genuinely. Being a useful, visible participant in relevant community discussions is now directly relevant to AI search visibility, not just brand awareness.
• Review your Reels strategy. Reels are one of the content types Meta has confirmed feeds into AI Mode responses. Short-form video that answers specific questions relevant to your sector is now directly useful for AI search visibility, not just algorithm-driven reach.
• Watch for the UK rollout. AI Mode launched in the US first. Meta AI itself has had a staggered rollout in different markets. The UK launch timing is not confirmed but is likely to follow as the feature stabilises. Now is a good time to build the content habits that will feed the feature when it arrives.

The broader pattern

Meta AI Mode is part of a pattern that is now impossible to ignore. Google has AI Overviews and AI Mode. Perplexity is a direct AI answer engine. ChatGPT Search has over 600 million weekly users. Bing launched AI search reporting tools for marketers this week. And now Facebook, with its 3 billion monthly active users, is generating AI answers directly inside its search function.

The implication for businesses is not that social media strategy needs to be completely rethought. It is that the argument for maintaining a genuine, active and useful public presence across multiple platforms has just become significantly stronger. In a world where AI systems are assembling answers from wherever credible, relevant public content exists, the businesses that are genuinely present and genuinely useful in those spaces will be cited. The ones that are not will be invisible – not because of a ranking algorithm, but because they are not part of the conversation that the AI is learning from.

As marketing experts, we constantly preach the importance of meeting your audience where they are. Right now, that “where” is undeniably short-form vertical video. Fresh data reveals a massive shift in Meta’s ecosystem: half of all ads globally on Instagram are now running on Reels.

If you are still allocating the majority of your paid social budget to traditional static feed placements, you are missing the cultural and behavioural shift happening right in front of your eyes.

The Numbers Behind the Shift

The transition to Reels-first advertising isn’t a slow burn; it is an accelerated takeover. Findings show that Reels accounted for 50% of global Instagram ad placements, up from 35% the prior year. In the U.S. market specifically, Reels secured 46% of the entire ad inventory. This trend isn’t isolated to Instagram either; Facebook Reels saw 29% of its global ad inventory shift to the short-form video format.

Why Meta is Going All-In on Reels

This surge in ad inventory is no accident. Meta has intentionally reoriented its platforms around Reels, algorithmic recommendations, and direct messaging. According to Meta’s internal data, video watch time is up 20% year-over-year, and Reels now command more than half of the total time users spend on Instagram. By testing layouts that replace the traditional home tab with a dedicated Reels view, Meta is training users to consume content vertically and continuously.

What This Means for Your Marketing Budget

While short-form video traditionally yields lower immediate monetisation rates than classic feed ads, it is the ultimate engine for user retention. Instagram’s daily active users grew by 2% alongside this Reels boom.

To bridge the gap, Meta has rolled out advanced, AI-driven ad tools like “trending ads” to help brands seamlessly curate culturally relevant creative. As marketers, our mandate for the upcoming quarters is clear: stop treating Reels as an optional add-on campaign extension. It is time to treat vertical, narrative-driven video as the foundation of your social ad strategy.

An Instagram repost is an action that allows accounts to reshare other accounts’ content. Reposts then appear on the main feed with an icon showing the account that reshared the content.

For brands, reposts typically involve sharing user-generated content (UGC) such as customer photos, videos, reviews, or Stories where the brand has been tagged. This allows businesses to amplify authentic customer voices while maintaining an active, engaging feed.

What are the benefits of reposting capabilities on Instagram?

For business accounts, there are many benefits that can be taken from incorporating reposts into a content strategy. Utilising user-generated content helps evidence real customers, rather than relying solely on brand claims. It brings visibility to the real people and stories behind a product or service.

Brands become more credible when they highlight genuine customer interactions and experiences. Reposts also demonstrate that a business listens to and values its audience, showing engagement with its customer community in an unedited, honest way.

Additional benefits include:

• Increased trust and credibility, as potential customers are more likely to trust peer recommendations than branded messaging alone.
• Stronger community building, because reposting makes customers feel recognised and appreciated, encouraging further engagement.
• Cost-effective content creation, as user-generated content supplements branded content without the need for additional production.
• Improved reach and discoverability, since reposts can introduce brands to new audiences via the original creator’s followers.

How to utilise reposts to demonstrate reliability and build trust

To effectively use reposts as a trust-building tool, brands should be intentional and strategic rather than resharing content at random.

Prioritise authentic customer experiences
Focus on reposting content that shows real-life use of your product or service. Testimonials, before-and-after results, behind-the-scenes moments, or candid reviews help potential customers visualise themselves having the same experience.

Maintain brand consistency
While reposts should feel authentic, they should still align with your brand values and visual identity. Adding subtle branded elements, captions, or context helps keep your feed cohesive without over-editing the original content.

Showcase a variety of voices
Reposting content from different customers highlights consistency and reliability. A mix of demographics, use cases, and formats such as Reels, Stories, and posts reinforces that positive experiences are not one-off occurrences.

Add social context through captions
Use captions to reinforce trust signals. Briefly explain the customer story, highlight outcomes, or quote feedback directly. This adds credibility and clarity while keeping the focus on the customer.

Engage and give credit
Always tag and credit the original creator. This transparency not only builds goodwill but also reinforces authenticity and ethical social media practices.

When used consistently, Instagram reposts become more than just shared content. They act as powerful social proof. By amplifying genuine customer voices, brands can build trust, demonstrate reliability, and create stronger emotional connections with their audience.

Meta, the company behind Instagram, has announced a new age rating system that works similarly to the film industry’s PG-13 classification. The idea is simple: make Instagram safer and easier for parents and young people to understand.

What the New System Does

From now on, accounts belonging to users under 18 will automatically be set to a “13+” experience. This means Instagram will limit or hide posts that include adult themes, risky behaviour, or strong language.

The platform will also block certain search terms — such as “alcohol” or “gore” — and even catch creative misspellings of those words. Meta says this helps reduce exposure to harmful or age-inappropriate material, while still letting teens enjoy a social experience that feels natural.

Why Meta Is Making This Change

The update comes after a critical review by former Meta engineer Arturo Béjar, who found that many of the company’s earlier safety tools weren’t working well enough. Meta disagreed with some of the findings but acknowledged that clearer systems were needed.

UK media regulator Ofcom has also been pushing social media companies to prioritise user safety — especially for children and teenagers — or face tougher regulation. By using a familiar rating model like PG-13, Meta hopes to make these rules easier for families to understand.

What It Means for Everyday Users

For most teens, Instagram will now feel a little more filtered and focused on well-being. Parents will have a clearer sense of what their children see, and brands or influencers will need to make sure their content fits within the new boundaries.

This move is part of a wider industry trend: social platforms are trying to prove they can be both engaging and responsible. Meta’s new age-rating system could set the tone for how social media handles teen safety in the future.

What is social media SEO?

Social media SEO refers to optimising social content and profiles for discoverability on a search engine results page (SERP). Search today has drastically shifted since the advent of the internet, with more and more opportunities for social channels and the content on them to be displayed on search engines.

Optimisation also offers internal benefits for social channels. Search on social has shifted researching behaviours, with reports from Sprout Social recording a 41% of Gen-Z use channels like TikTok, Instagram, Reddit or YouTube to find information, instead of traditional search engines.

Do I need to optimise social content?

If you are using your social channels as a tool, then yes, absolutely. Businesses can reap several benefits from implementing social media into their marketing strategy, both on the SERP and on the platforms themselves.

Creating content that leads to better discoverability and can enable a brand to raise brand awareness. This creates more opportunities for new potential customers to find and invest in the brand’s product or service. This gives businesses a better chance of improving engagement for both their website and social content.

Other benefits include improving local SEO efforts. Displaying this information makes it easier and efficient for the person searching. More so, it offers value to those searching across social media search engines.

How to optimise your social channels

Social content optimisations

One of the fundamental aspects of successful content is being session aware, ensuring every piece of content or asset put out is context driven. Optimisations are really small but important ways we signal to search engines and the customer that the content is valuable.

Using similar frameworks to those of traditional SEO enables the process of discoverability. Some of the ways this can be done are by:

• Defining the purpose of content, ensuring every asset has a reason for being posted. Intention is key when creating valuable content and reaching attainable goals
• Utilise your keyword research in your content captions.
• Use an editorial calendar to create structure and intention for your content
• Use high-resolution assets
• Create accessible content with subtitles and alt text
• Re-format appropriate content to suit the destination channel

Social Profile optimisations

Social profile optimisations are there so your audience finds the important information about your business with ease and speed.

Make sure the following information is readily available on your profile, which will ensure you’re prepared for potential customers:

1. A clear social media handle, making it simple for your existing and potential customers to find you, is the goal. Keeping it simple and using the exact name of the brand, using symbols for variation.
2. Use your bio to reflect your business’s offering. This ensures that when your profile is displayed, those searching understand what it is your business does.
3. Include your business address. This is critical for both local SEO and ease of physically finding your business. The easier it is for customers to find you, the better the experience.
4. Using brand imagery for your profile photos. Making it easier for new and existing members to recognise the brand.
5. Including a link or Linktree. Using your social platforms to promote your other channels is a simple yet effective way to increase the volume of followers/subscribers.

With small, consistent steps—like refining your bio, using keywords strategically, and ensuring content accessibility—you’re signalling to both search engines and potential customers that your brand is valuable and trustworthy.

The key takeaway? Treat your social channels with the same strategic mindset as your website. Done right, social media SEO doesn’t just boost discoverability, it builds stronger connections, enhances customer experience, and ultimately drives growth.

As of July 10, 2025, Instagram has taken a major step forward—public posts from professional accounts are now searchable on Google and other search engines. This means your Instagram content—photos, videos, Reels, and carousels—can appear directly in search results, expanding your visibility far beyond your followers. For brands and creators, this is a game-changer.

Instagram Content Is Now Web-Visible
If you have a business or creator account and are over 18, your public content is now eligible to appear in Google search results by default. This is controlled in your Instagram settings (Settings → Privacy → Allow public photos and videos to appear in search engine results). If you’d prefer your content to stay within Instagram only, you can turn this off at any time.

Why This Matters to Your Business
Your Instagram posts are no longer just social content—they’re now part of your online presence, just like your website or blog. The first line of your caption functions like a headline in Google search, and your alt text (image descriptions) helps search engines understand the content’s subject matter. Even your hashtags now help you appear in search results. In short, Instagram is becoming a new front door to your brand.

What You Should Do Next
If you’re a client with an active Instagram presence, now is the time to think strategically. We’ll help you update your bios, polish captions with relevant keywords, and ensure your most important posts are pinned or highlighted. From now on, we’ll also be tracking how your Instagram content performs not just in the app, but in Google search, too.

This update means more ways for potential customers to discover your brand. It’s visibility you don’t want to miss—and we’re here to help you make the most of it.

Google is rolling out a powerful new AI video tool called Veo 3 on YouTube Shorts later this summer – and it could completely change how marketers and creators make short-form videos.

What is Veo 3?

Veo 3 is an AI tool that creates short videos from just a few lines of text. Instead of filming, editing, or hiring a production team, all you need to do is type in what you want the video to show and Veo 3 will generate the visuals and even sound for you.

This is a step up from Google’s previous experiments with AI tools like Dream Screen. Veo 3 aims to deliver full videos with high production value, created entirely from a written prompt.

Why does this matter to digital marketers?

Faster content creation: Marketers can now generate engaging, short video ads or brand content without needing a camera or editor.

• Lower costs: This makes video creation far more accessible for small teams or brands with limited budgets.
• More experimentation: You can test more creative ideas quickly, since you’re not tied to expensive or time-consuming production processes.
• In short: it could revolutionise how branded content is made on YouTube Shorts, giving even smaller brands the chance to compete creatively.

What are the risks?

While the tech is exciting, there are concerns:

• The Shorts feed may get overcrowded with AI-generated content, making it harder for authentic, high-quality videos to stand out.
• There’s a risk of low-effort or misleading content being created at scale.
• Some creators worry about being pushed out, as AI videos take up more space and attention on the platform.

To address some of these concerns, YouTube is developing a “likeness protection” tool in partnership with talent agency CAA, to help protect creators and public figures from having their image used without permission.

What does this mean for the future?

Veo 3 has the potential to open the doors for more brands and voices to join the Shorts space — but it also raises serious questions about content quality, originality, and trust.

As a marketer, this means:

• AI video content might become the norm so thinking about how your brand maintains authenticity and quality will be key.
• You may need to adjust your creative strategy as the content landscape shifts.
• Keeping up with YouTube’s algorithm and evolving rules around AI-generated content will be essential to staying competitive.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan described Veo 3 as a way for “anyone with a voice” to reach an audience. For marketers, it’s a powerful opportunity but one that comes with the responsibility to use it thoughtfully.