Paid Social Trends

1. Creators and TikTok become more scalable shopping channels

Creators will have a higher impact in direct purchase as platforms like TikTok as they scale creator marketplaces and commerce features. This allows influencers and creators to directly sell products DTC quickly. This should lead to higher ROI and ROAS in 2026 compared to other years.

We have seen this shift start over previous years with larger consumer brands like THG’s MyProtein, P.Louise and L’OREAL creating stores and having TikTok only drops showing the value of the channel.

Users want to see credible people showcasing products in a way that relates to their everyday lives. This shift sees TikTok set to become a key channel for eCommerce brands and beyond.

-Helena Taylor, Head of Operations & Innovation

2. Brands building dedicated teams for social commerce

TikTok Live Shopping has become the new shopping channel for the younger generations. The reason why I believe this is that they both follow the same ethos which is to sell someone a product live. If we look at the physical elements, TikTok Live backgrounds are very similar to TV studios: the product range are on display behind the presenter and when they’re focusing on a particular product it’s front and centre where the presenter can easily show off the USPs to the viewer.

Over the last year or so we’ve seen brands adapting to the new way of selling and invest in infrastructure to facilitate LIVEs. Some have seen gigantic growth like P.Louise who beat their existing record with their Christmas themed live where their 2025 Advent Calendars took centre stage. The result? P.Louise generated £2 million in revenue over 14 hours and their calendars accounted for 17% of the total items sold on the TikTok LIVE.

Next year we’ll start seeing more brands leverage TikTok Live Shopping by building specialised teams that live and breathe social media but also understand the value of community engagement – as the main benefit of these LIVEs is that you can ask the brand questions and get a reply instantly!

-Kasey Healy, Paid Social Manager

3. Platform adaptation and securing long-term success

As the Paid Social landscape continues to evolve in 2026 – with constant platform innovations, smarter algorithms, and rapidly advancing AI tools – success will come from precision and adaptability. Strategies must be tailored to the strengths, features and audiences of each platform. For example, LinkedIn will continue to reward more polished, professional creative that speaks directly to decision-makers, while TikTok’s powerful discovery algorithm will favour authentic, short-form, human-led storytelling.

Budgets and platform allocations should remain fluid, allowing marketers to quickly shift investment toward the channels driving the highest engagement. Emerging social platforms are expected to create new opportunities for early adopters, making testing an essential part of a successful strategy. Ultimately, diversification across multiple platforms will expand reach, strengthen brand presence, and deliver a competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic social landscape.

-Emily Waywell, Paid Social Manager

4. The impact of AI on Meta

Meta will continue to adapt and evolve as AI takes the lead, with Advantage+ recommendations becoming ever more significant. Through AI-powered tools, the platform will continue to deliver enhanced ad performance by improving targeting, placement, and bidding, making the system more efficient and less reliant on manual audience selection.

Over 4 million advertisers are already using Meta’s generative AI tools, proving brands to be increasingly more comfortable with leaning into AI to steer them to success. Its creative focus on better-performing assets has already shifted advertisers and brands to focus on creating a diverse set of content, utilising AI generative tools to create images, videos, and copy efficiently. Optimisation enhancements, such as visual touch-ups, overlays, and adding music, are currently among the options available to improve performance and so we can only see these features becoming more prominent within digital strategy as we enter 2026.

-Alex Fisher, Senior Social Strategist & Zulaiha Hansen, Senior Paid Social Executive

5. Privacy, personalisation & regulation will continue shaping targeting

As we move into 2026, privacy-first advertising is no longer optional, it’s the new standard. With the deprecation of third-party cookies and the tightening grip of global privacy regulations platforms are being pushed to rethink how they collect and use data.

This shift is driving a move toward first-party data and consent-based marketing. At the same time data minimisation is becoming a best practice, with brands expected to collect only what’s necessary and store it responsibly.

This is where AI-powered personalisation enters the chat. Rather than relying on invasive tracking, platforms are leveraging contextual signals and declared user preferences to deliver relevant ads. AI-driven segmentation is enabling brands to reach the right audiences using:

• On-platform behaviour (e.g. video views, likes, comments) to suggest interests.
• Learning phases to train models without exposing individual data.
• Synthetic audiences – AI generated lookalikes based on anonymised traits.

With less access to granular user data, we’re also called to rethink measurement. Tools like aggregated event measurement, server-side tracking and API-based attribution (e.g. Meta’s conversions API) are becoming essential. These robust measurement frameworks help maintain campaign performance without relying on cookies or device IDs.

In 2026 the brands that thrive will be those that embrace privacy as a competitive advantage, building trust through transparency and ethical data practices.

-Carla Nearchou, Social Team Manager