State of Social Listening 2024
In June we launched our annual survey to find out how the global social listening landscape has changed over the last 12-18 months. Around 300 people took part and shared their experiences of how they’re using social data in their day-to-day work.
Wanna know what they said?
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What's the state of social listening in 2024
Earlier this year, we surveyed 279 social listening professionals from around the world, including the US, Europe, India, Asia, and Latin America to get their perspectives on a whole load of different aspects of social listening. And despite being just over a year since the last one, we’ve seen quite a few changes. Generative AI is being incorporated more into social listening technology and practice (for better or worse), data access continues to be squeezed along with budgets, and we’re seeing consolidation within social listening teams. We’re also seeing growing frustration in some areas, and in this year’s report we dig into this a little deeper (more on that in the report).
But to get you started, here are a few key things we learnt from this year’s survey:
Key statistics from the state of social listening
As in previous years, we asked people questions on a range of topics, including social listening technology, data usage, their processes and methodologies for social data analysis and the culture around social listening in their organisations. Here’s what we found:
- People are using fewer social listening tools in 2024. This year, 25% are using only one tool compared to 16% last year. They’re also spending less, in general, on tech.
- The five most relevant data sources are Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok, Reddit and YouTube, however these aren’t the most used ones.
- People are more concerned about data access in future, ranking their concern at 6.4 out of 10 compared to 4.9 in 2023.
- The biggest challenge for in-house social listening pros is the lack of understanding from senior decision-makers. A whopping 25% felt this.
- Generative AI in social listening is on the rise with 90% using it to help their work in some way.
How are people investing in social listening tools and technology?
One of the most interesting things we found from this year’s survey is that people are using fewer tools than in previous years. In 2023, for example, most people were using two or three tools (27.6% each). This time, however, the largest proportion (25%) are just using one. On the other end of the scale, there seem to be more people using 5-10 tools. This is probably down to the fact that more agencies completed the survey this time, and they’re known to use a wider variety of technology to meet their clients’ needs.
People also seem to be spending less on social listening technology too…which kinda makes sense if they’re using fewer tools. The top two budget brackets in both 2023 and 2024 were the same (US$ 50-99K and US$25-49K). However, in 2023, the third most typical budget was US$100-199K, whereas in 2024 this goes down to US$10-24k. There’s also a higher percentage spending less than US$10K in 2024 than in 2023.
Another thing we discovered this time is the sheer amount of tools that are on the market. When we asked people which tools they use, we got a list of around 100…YES, ONE HUNDRED…different ones. We knew the industry has been growing, but this really confirms it. Whilst the most referenced tools are still the more generalist social listening ones, there were a lot more mentions of niche tech that supports teams in a specific area of social intelligence.
Which social media platforms are social intelligence professionals using?
Again, in 2024 we asked people what social data sources they use most and the results were pretty similar to 2023. The top five are Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and TikTok. However, this year we also asked people which were the most relevant data sources for their work. A very subtle difference to the question, but one that changes the results slightly. In this case, the top five are Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and YouTube. This goes to show that whilst people are, on the whole, using the most relevant sources, in some cases they’re having to make do with different ones.
We can probably link this to the challenges around data access of the social media platforms, but this leads to a bigger problem. The quality of the insights people are generating will be compromised if they’re not able to access the most relevant data. And, according to sentiment across the industry, this is only going to get worse. When we asked people how worried they were about getting access to data in the future, they ranked their concern at 6.4 out of 10, compared to 4.9 in 2023.
How are people working with social data?
2024 showed that people are mainly using social listening to support short-term, measurable use cases, rather than more long-term strategic ones. When we asked them their main objectives for analysing social data, this year’s respondents listed competitive intelligence, brand perception, crisis monitoring & management, category & cultural trend analysis and brand health tracking. This differs slightly to 2023, when we saw attitudes & opinions and brand strategy & positioning making it into the top five. This also impacts that type of insights that are being generated by social intelligence professionals for their organisations, something we delve into later in the report.
Something new that came out this year is how people are using generative AI in social listening. Given how much this technology is being integrated into a variety of social listening tools, we thought it was important to understand if and how people are actually using it. So we asked them. And a whopping 90% told us that they’re using it in some way. The main uses are summarising large amounts of text (such as Reddit threads), trend identification and research for relevant themes, query writing, including keyword research, analysis and insight generation, automated reporting and sentiment analysis. We’re interested to track how this develops over the next few years, as the technology evolves and improves, and also as people figure out the best ways to use it.
What are the biggest challenges facing social listening teams in 2024?
In 2024, the top three challenges people face haven't changed much since last year. Data accuracy & quality, budgetary issues and a lack of organisational wide vision for social listening are still the most important. However, this changes depending on whether they work within an agency or in-house at a brand. This time, 49% told us they worked in some sort of agency or consultancy, whilst 43% work in-house. Those working in-house still see these as the top three challenges, however the biggest for them is the lack of organisational wide vision for social listening.
We also saw that the number of external agencies being used has gone down dramatically compared to 2023. Almost 50% of brands don’t use any agencies, compared to just 26% last year. Combining this information with the stats above, we can see that even though brands are in-housing their social listening capabilities more than ever, there’s a growing feeling from those actually working there that the organisations don’t quite know what to do with them. Social intelligence hasn’t found its place in the organisation yet.
How are social intelligence professionals generating insights?
This idea that social listening teams are struggling to find their place within an organisation got us thinking about why. One of the reasons, we believe, is because it’s not 100% clear to leadership and other departments where exactly social data analysis can bring value. There are so many ways it can, yet organisations are only focusing on one or two areas. This was shown by the fact that the most typical use cases are more measurement-led ones that generate insights that can show the value of marketing and communications activities. The more strategic ones that focus on analysing qualitative data and generate insight about human behaviour are less common.
Something we delved into in part two of this year’s report is the different types of insights that social intelligence professionals can generate. We used to think that people were using social data either for measurement - campaign performance, brand awareness, etc - or for insight - into consumer behavious, purchasing decisions etc. However, over the last year, we’ve come to realise that all of this is insight. It’s just that the type of insight changes depending on the type of work you’re doing.
In fact, we’d go as far as to say that there are several types of insight that sit on a continuum, from concrete use cases - these more measurable ones - to the abstract use cases which use qualitative data to sell vibes. To understand more about this and to see where your team sits on the continuum, make sure to download the full report.
Download the full report for more social listening statistics
So now you’ve seen some of the key findings from this year’s survey, we’re sure you can’t wait to see the whole thing, right? Download the full report to get the deeper insight into the state of social listening this year, including:
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