In August 2026, Instagram quietly refreshed its logo. Not the camera icon, that stayed put, just the cursive wordmark that’s been sitting under it for a decade. A small, low-stakes tweak, the kind of thing a design team probably spent months debating internally and expected zero people to notice.

The internet noticed. Within hours, the new lowercase “r” had fused visually with the “g” next to it, and half of social media was convinced the app now spelled its own name “Instagzam.” Then came “Instagwam.” Then “Instaguam,” for reasons nobody can fully explain. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, called the change “cleaner and more modern” in a post announcing it, which is exactly the kind of sentence that ages badly within a day.

It’s a funny story on its own. But it’s also the latest entry in a much longer, much pettier genre: companies changing something nobody asked them to change, and the internet making them regret it. Sometimes the backlash is background noise. Sometimes it’s a warning shot the company should have listened to. The tricky part, and the actual subject of this piece, is that you often can’t tell which is which just by looking at how loud the mockery gets.

Why “Instagzam” Actually Happened

The typo-that-wasn’t-a-typo has a pretty simple explanation once you look at the letterforms side by side. The old wordmark kept its “r” and “g” visually distinct. The new one leans harder into a single continuous cursive stroke, and when the diagonal tail of the r rolls straight into the bowl of the g, your eye does what eyes do with ambiguous shapes: it reaches for the nearest thing it already recognises. For most people scrolling at arm’s length, that nearest thing is a z.

There’s a more interesting thread hiding underneath the joke, too. Plenty of the online commentary leaned into a “kids can’t read cursive anymore” narrative, and there’s a real, if messy, data point behind that instinct: cursive instruction has been quietly declining across the US, Canada, and parts of Europe for years, so the joke landed on a nerve that was already exposed.

That said, it’s worth resisting the tidy version of this story. Plenty of design critics pushed back on the idea that this is really a Gen Z literacy problem at all, pointing out that ambiguous, overlapping letterforms will trip up readers of any age when a wordmark prioritizes flourish over legibility. In other words, the logo didn’t get harder to read because young people forgot cursive. It got harder to read because it’s genuinely harder to read.

The “Why Touch It At All” Question

Here’s the thing about Instagram’s logo refresh, though. Once the jokes die down, it isn’t actually a big deal. The icon didn’t change. The colors didn’t change. Nobody’s grandmother is going to open the app store looking for the old one and fail to find it. It’s cosmetic, and cosmetic changes have a pretty forgiving safety net: if people hate it, you quietly revert a wordmark and nobody remembers it in six months.

Compare that to Jaguar. In late 2024, the car company didn’t refresh a logo, it gutted its entire brand identity, and it did so on purpose, as a personality transplant rather than a paint job. Jaguar had spent decades as the choice of, in the branding world’s own phrasing, a “masculine,” heritage-obsessed, largely British buyer who wanted a car that felt like old money. The rebrand deliberately walked away from all of it, chasing what Jaguar’s own leadership described as a “design-minded, cash-rich, time-poor” younger audience who’d never bought a Jaguar in their life. The teaser campaign that announced this shift didn’t show a single car, just models in colorful outfits standing in empty rooms, alongside a tagline, “Copy Nothing,” lifted from founder William Lyons. Even Elon Musk couldn’t resist asking the obvious question in public: “Do you sell cars?”

Here’s the part that makes Jaguar different from every other case study in this piece: the company didn’t stumble into alienating its base, it planned to. Jaguar’s own brand chief, Rawdon Glover, said upfront that the company expected to keep only 10 to 15% of its existing customers through the transition. That’s not a rebrand that miscalculated the backlash. That’s a rebrand that budgeted for it, on the theory that the old customer base was aging out anyway and the brand needed a completely new personality to survive its next century.

The market’s response wasn’t a meme cycle, it was a balance sheet. By April 2025, Jaguar’s European sales had dropped 97.5% year-on-year. Not a rough quarter. A near-total collapse. Some of that decline is genuinely a supply story rather than a demand one: Jaguar had deliberately paused production of its entire lineup ahead of the EV-only relaunch, so dealers had almost nothing left on the lot regardless of what anyone thought of the new ads. But that supply gap was itself part of the same personality transplant, the company cleared out its old identity, old products and old customers all at once, betting that a new luxury audience would show up before the old one finished walking out the door. Jaguar’s leadership didn’t exactly treat any of this as a crisis, either: one executive argued that people were talking about the brand more than they had in years, so from where he sat, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Whether “everyone is talking about how we disappeared” counts as a marketing win is a question I’ll let you sit with.

The gap between Instagram and Jaguar is really the whole thesis of this piece in miniature. One touched the letters. The other rewrote its entire personality and dared its own customers to leave. Getting mocked online happened in both cases. The actual consequences did not look remotely the same, and worth flagging now: Jaguar hasn’t reversed course, but “didn’t reverse course” and “it worked” are not the same claim, a distinction we’re going to keep coming back to.

The Reversal Club: Gap

If you want the platonic ideal of a rebrand nobody asked for, Gap’s 2010 logo change is still the gold standard, fifteen years later. The company swapped its classic, boxy wordmark for a generic sans-serif logo with a small blue gradient square floating off to the side, the kind of design you’d expect from a mid-tier tech startup, not a mall retailer with decades of brand equity.

The backlash was immediate and, honestly, kind of impressive in its speed. A parody Twitter account appeared almost instantly. A site literally called “Craplogo” let anyone generate their own version of the new mark as a joke. Gap even tried to save face by crowdsourcing a replacement design from the public, which also failed. The whole saga coincided with roughly $247 million in stock value lost, though that figure lines up with a disappointing sales report Gap put out around the same time, so the logo wasn’t necessarily carrying that number alone.

The logo lasted six days.

Here’s the detail that makes this story worth telling, though, and the one I think gets lost in the “haha, Gap panicked” retelling: an Ipsos poll conducted just three days after the launch found that 80% of respondents hadn’t even noticed the logo had changed. Read that again. The backlash was loud, fast, and expensive, and the vast majority of Gap’s actual customer base had no idea anything was different. The reversal wasn’t really a response to broad customer sentiment. It was a response to a very loud, very online minority who happened to have the internet’s full attention that week.

The “Ignore It And It Works Out” Club: Airbnb

Airbnb’s 2014 rebrand got roasted just as hard as Gap’s, maybe harder. The new logo, a looping symbol the company called the “Bélo,” was widely mocked online for looking like body parts that had absolutely nothing to do with vacation rentals. It became an instant punchline, complete with the requisite wave of parody images.

Airbnb did not revert it. Not after six days, not after six months, not ever. Rick Barrack, chief creative officer at the brand agency CBX, told Fortune at the time that the outrage would go away very quickly, and that Airbnb should stay the course rather than react to it. That’s exactly what happened. The Bélo is still Airbnb’s logo today, over a decade later, and most people who use the app couldn’t tell you the internet ever found it hilarious.

This is the case study that should make you slightly uncomfortable with the “always listen to your customers” instinct, because here, listening to the loudest reaction would have been the wrong move. Airbnb didn’t have Gap’s problem, either: nothing about the new logo asked people to relearn how to find or use the product, it was purely a symbol sitting next to a name that hadn’t changed. The backlash was real, it just wasn’t about anything that mattered to the business.

X: The Rebrand That Didn’t Mark the Spot

And then there’s the rebrand that makes Instagram’s font tweak look positively cautious by comparison.

In July 2023, Twitter became X. Gone was the bird. Gone was the name. Gone, within a couple of years, was any pretense that this had been a strategic branding decision rather than an announcement of ownership. Twitter hadn’t just built a product, it had built one of the small handful of brand names that became a verb in everyday use. We tweet the way we google something or uber home from a bar. “Tweet” made it into Merriam-Webster in 2011. That is about as high as brand equity gets, and it’s exactly what got thrown out.

Years later, the numbers make it pretty clear the new name never actually landed. A 2024 survey of British adults found that 70% still called the platform “Twitter,” compared with just 4% who said “X.” Even among people who used X daily, 78% defaulted to the old name. This wasn’t early-adopter lag that would smooth out with time. It held steady well past the one-year mark.

Then came the detail that really seals it: X Corp itself later filed a lawsuit to protect the Twitter trademark when a separate startup tried to claim it. Buried in that legal filing was the company essentially admitting, in writing, that Twitter never actually left and remained exclusively its own property. So the company that spent millions ripping the old branding off its own headquarters ended up in court defending its right to keep owning the name it had supposedly discarded.

Why didn’t this one stick, when Airbnb’s arguably weirder logo did? A few things were working against it at once. First, verb-brands are uniquely hard to dislodge, because you’re not just asking people to recognise a new logo, you’re asking millions of people to change how they talk. Second, the motive read as obviously personal rather than customer-facing. Where Instagram and even Jaguar at least gestured at a rationale about modernising for their audience, the X rebrand was widely understood as Elon Musk marking new territory, not addressing an actual user complaint. And third, there was no transition period. No “X, formerly Twitter” phase-in to let habit catch up with the branding. Just an overnight switch, followed by years of the world quietly refusing to follow along.

Plotting It All Out

Line these five stories up and a pattern starts to emerge that has nothing to do with how much mockery a company received, because every single one of them got mocked. What actually separates them is two different questions, and it’s worth being precise about which one you’re asking: how deep the change went, and whether the company kept it. Notice that’s not the same question as whether the change actually worked.

Instagram and Gap both made surface-level changes and both got mocked, yet one was a total non-event and the other triggered a corporate reversal in under a week. Gap, notably, reverted a change that 80% of its own customers hadn’t even clocked, which tells you the decision to revert was about managing a loud news cycle, not about actual damage.

Jaguar and Airbnb both blew up their entire identities, got mocked just as hard, and both companies kept the new branding rather than backing down. But don’t let “kept” do more work than it’s earned here, because these two outcomes look nothing alike once you check on them a year later. Airbnb’s logo quietly became invisible in the best way, nobody thinks about it anymore, which is exactly what a successful rebrand looks like. Jaguar’s logo is still on the cars, and European sales are still down 97.5% year-on-year. One company held its nerve and won. The other held its nerve and is still losing money. “We didn’t reverse course” was true in both cases and meant something completely different each time.

X sits in its own corner: a total overhaul the company also never reversed, technically, X Corp is still X Corp, but one the public simply never adopted. Years later, most people still call it Twitter, and the company itself ended up in court defending a trademark on the name it supposedly buried. That’s a third distinct failure mode: not reverted, not embraced, just quietly ignored by the exact people it was rebranded for.

So “did they keep it” tells you almost nothing about whether the change worked. If backlash volume were the thing that predicted outcomes, these cells wouldn’t be scattered like this, and if “they kept it” were the thing that predicted success, Jaguar and Airbnb wouldn’t be sitting in the same box while pointing in opposite directions. What actually seems to matter is whether the change touches something the audience was genuinely relying on: a near-identical shape they navigate by habit, like Gap’s near-invisible swap, or an entire vocabulary built around a verb, like Twitter’s. Cosmetic tweaks and even bold total overhauls can survive a rough launch week just fine, as long as they don’t ask people to unlearn something they already know by heart. But “surviving the launch week” and “the rebrand actually working” are, as Jaguar proves, two entirely different scorecards.

The Actual Lesson For Marketers

None of this is really an argument for never changing anything, or for changing everything and hoping for the best. It’s an argument for asking a better question before you panic over a mentions spike.

A few worth asking before you decide whether the backlash means anything:

Is this actually showing up in usage or sales data, or only in sentiment and mentions? Gap’s stock took a real hit, but that was driven by media coverage of the backlash itself, not by shoppers actually abandoning the store, which the Ipsos number makes pretty clear.

Is the criticism about the design, or about what the design represents? Jaguar’s ads not featuring a car at all is a substance complaint, not a taste complaint, and substance complaints tend to matter more.

Does the change ask your audience to unlearn something? A shape they navigate by muscle memory, a name they use as a verb, a habit built over a decade. If yes, you’re playing a much riskier game than a font tweak, no matter how confident the internal pitch deck sounds.

And maybe most usefully: has anyone actually checked whether the loud reaction represents your customer base, or just the segment of it currently online and typing? Gap’s answer was 80% of people who hadn’t noticed a thing. It’s worth finding your own version of that number before you decide the internet has spoken.

Instagram’s wordmark will probably be forgotten within a month. Jaguar’s ad campaign will get taught in marketing classes for the wrong reasons for years. And X, all these years later, is still fighting in court for the name it tried so hard to bury. Turns out the hardest part of a rebrand was never the design. It’s figuring out whether anyone actually wanted it fixed in the first place.

A New Placement, A New Opportunity

On January 21st, 2026, Meta announced that ads on Threads would be expanding to all users globally, marking the full monetisation of a platform that has quietly become one of the most significant new advertising channels in years. For paid social marketers, this isn’t just another placement toggle in Ads Manager. It’s the opening of a 400-million-strong audience that, until now, has been largely untouched by advertising.

The rollout is gradual. Meta has stated that ad delivery will initially remain low as global availability scales over the coming months. But for brands and agencies already running Meta campaigns, the time to start thinking about Threads is now.

How Threads Ads Work

If you’re already advertising across Meta’s ecosystem, Threads ads will feel familiar. The placement sits within Meta Ads Manager alongside Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, meaning there’s no separate platform to learn or budget to ringfence.

Here are the key details for advertisers:

• Formats: Image ads, video ads, carousel ads, Advantage+ catalog ads, and app ads are all supported. The 4:5 aspect ratio, already a staple of Instagram feed advertising, is also available on Threads.
• Campaign setup: The Threads feed placement is switched on by default for new campaigns using Advantage+ or manual placements. Advertisers can opt out via manual placements if preferred.
• Account requirements: Your Threads and Instagram usernames must match in order to run ads or manage Threads account permissions in Meta Business Suite.
• Management: Threads accounts can now be reviewed and managed within Business Settings alongside your other Meta properties, simplifying cross-platform campaign management.

In practice, this means existing Meta advertisers can extend their reach to Threads with minimal additional effort. Your current creative assets, audience strategies, and reporting workflows all carry over.

Why Threads Matters: The Numbers Behind the Platform

Threads has experienced remarkable growth since its July 2023 launch. The platform reached 200 million monthly active users by mid-2024, grew to 320 million by January 2025, and now sits at over 400 million. For context, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated his belief that Threads has a realistic path to one billion users within the next few years.

Perhaps more importantly for advertisers, Threads is now outperforming its closest rival in key metrics. According to Similarweb data from January 2026, Threads recorded 141.5 million daily active mobile users globally, compared to 125 million for X (formerly Twitter). Meanwhile, a Buffer analysis of 10.2 million posts found that Threads drives a median engagement rate of 6.25%, compared to 3.6% on X. That’s a 73.6% difference.

These aren’t vanity metrics. Higher engagement rates suggest a more attentive, interactive user base, exactly the kind of environment where paid content has the potential to resonate rather than be scrolled past.

Brand Safety: A Competitive Advantage

One area where Threads has moved quickly to reassure advertisers is brand safety. Meta has extended third-party verification, already available on Facebook and Instagram feeds and Reels, to the Threads feed through its Meta Business Partners programme. Verification partners including DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science (IAS), and Scope3 now provide independent brand safety and suitability reporting for Threads placements, with Zefr support expected in a future update.

These partners use AI-driven analysis to assess the context in which ads appear, providing advertisers with safety and suitability scores, content examples, associated risk levels, and impression-level data.

It is worth noting that Meta received MRC accreditation for content-level brand safety on Facebook and Instagram feeds in June 2025 but subsequently withdrew from the MRC’s annual auditing program in September 2025, resulting in that accreditation being revoked. Meta has stated that it wants the MRC to prioritise third-party brand safety audits instead. This doesn’t affect the independent verification provided by DoubleVerify, IAS, and Scope3 on Threads, but it is a development advertisers should be aware of when assessing Meta’s brand safety posture more broadly.

That said, this is particularly relevant when you consider the challenges facing X, which has struggled with content moderation issues, including the proliferation of illegal deepfakes. For brands operating in regulated industries or those with strict brand safety requirements, Threads still offers a notably more controlled advertising environment backed by established third-party verification.

What We’d Recommend

As with any new placement, the smart approach is to test with intention rather than dive in blindly. Here’s how we’d suggest approaching Threads ads:

Start with Advantage+ inclusion. Since Threads is on by default for Advantage+ campaigns, let Meta’s algorithm determine how much of your budget it allocates to the placement. Monitor performance at the placement level to understand how Threads compares to Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Don’t create Threads-specific creative just yet. Your existing Meta assets will work. The supported formats and aspect ratios align closely with what you’re already producing for Instagram feed. Focus on monitoring performance before investing in bespoke Threads content.

Watch your CPMs closely. Early industry estimates suggest Threads CPMs are currently lower than those on established Meta placements, though official figures from Meta are not yet available. As ad load increases and more advertisers opt in, expect these to rise. There’s a genuine first-mover advantage for those who test early.

Consider the tone of the platform. Threads is conversational and text-first. While image and video ads are the available formats, the surrounding content is predominantly text-based discussion. Ads that feel native to this environment, less polished and more direct, may outperform heavily produced creative.

Keep brand safety front of mind. If you operate in a sector with strict compliance requirements, take advantage of the third-party verification tools available through DoubleVerify, IAS, and Scope3 to ensure your ads are appearing in appropriate contexts from day one.

The Bottom Line

The global rollout of Threads ads represents one of the most significant new paid social opportunities in recent memory. With 400 million monthly active users, engagement rates that outpace X, seamless integration into Meta’s existing ad infrastructure, and robust brand safety provisions, Threads is positioning itself as a serious consideration for any advertiser already investing in the Meta ecosystem.

The window of lower competition and favorable CPMs won’t last indefinitely. For brands and agencies looking to maximise efficiency and reach new audiences, now is the time to start testing.

To learn more about how your brand can make the most of Threads advertising, get in touch with our team of experts.

The internet has always been a weird place. Brands, however, have only recently figured out that leaning into that weirdness might be their best marketing move yet. They’re threatening customers with cartoon owls, selling water under a death metal aesthetic, and building entire identities around not taking themselves seriously. It’s called “unhinged marketing” and for companies targeting Gen Z, it might just be the smartest move they can make.

The Pioneers: Brands That Did It First (and Best)

To understand why unhinged marketing works, it helps to look at the brands that wrote the playbook.

Wendy’s is widely credited with firing the starting gun. In January 2017, the brand ditched its standard corporate social media tone for something sharper and more combative, after recognising that younger audiences gravitated toward humor and authenticity on social platforms. What followed became legend: the #NuggsForCarter campaign, in which Wendy’s challenged a Twitter user to reach 18 million retweets for free chicken nuggets for a year, became the most retweeted tweet of all time until 2019, knocking Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscar selfie off the top spot, and attracting support from Apple Music and Microsoft. The financial results over that period were hard to argue with. Wendy’s net income rose from $129 million in 2016 to $194 million in 2017, though naturally a company’s bottom line reflects many factors beyond any single campaign. Their social following grew just as fast: Twitter followers climbed from 2.1 to 2.4 million in just six months. The social strategy had a simple internal logic: by eliminating the strenuous bureaucratic approval process for their Twitter account and empowering their social team, Wendy’s transformed the account from a one-way communication machine into something that felt genuinely alive. Turns out, letting your social media team actually be funny is a good business decision.

Duolingo then took that blueprint and ran it somewhere far stranger. From the beginning, the brand’s owl mascot Duo had a unique social media presence, acting more as an influencer than merely a logo for a large corporation, becoming famous for an unhinged sense of humor and a knack for jumping on the latest trends. The whole thing culminated in February 2025 with one of the most audacious marketing stunts in recent memory. On February 11, Duolingo users found their familiar green owl mascot dead, tongue out, eyes replaced with cartoonish Xs, marking the start of one of the most bizarre and viral campaigns in the app’s 14-year history. The company released a series of mournful social media posts, including a video of Duo being fatally hit by a Tesla Cybertruck, followed by other Duolingo mascots holding his funeral and then being killed off too. Users were then directed to a website where completing language lessons could “bring Duo back.”

The numbers that followed were genuinely ridiculous. On the day of the announcement, mentions of Duolingo’s mascot spiked by around 25,560%, and the hashtag #ripduo was used more than 45,000 times. According to digital market intelligence firm Similarweb, global downloads on Android jumped 38% the day after the campaign launched and web searches increased by 58%. On iOS, it was the highest number of worldwide downloads for Duolingo all year. By the brand’s own account, news outlets around the world published 450 articles about Duo’s death, 60% of which came from what Duolingo defines as top-tier publications, making it a bigger earned media moment than Duolingo’s own 2021 IPO.

And before anyone calls it a happy accident: Duolingo’s spokesperson confirmed to NPR that “at its core, this campaign was about engaging our community in a way that only Duolingo can, by making entertaining content that reminds our fans to do their lesson.” Marketing professor Matt Williams, a former CEO of the Martin Agency, assessed it plainly: “By using the Owl’s resurrection as an incentive for more users to do their lessons, Duolingo spiked engagement with their product. And they did it in a way that’s completely consistent with the Owl’s character. That’s a win for the business and the brand.”

Why Gen Z Demands Something Different

The stakes for reaching Gen Z have never been higher. According to Bank of America projections cited by EMARKETER, the generation’s global spending power is set to grow from $2.7 trillion in 2024 to $12.6 trillion by 2030, making them the most consequential consumer cohort marketers have ever faced, if those estimates prove accurate.

Getting their attention through traditional advertising, though, is a lost cause. Gen Z is most likely, compared to every other generation, to use social media for product discovery, and being product-centric is one of the attributes they care about least in brand posts. The hard sell doesn’t just fail to work. It actively puts them off.

What they want instead is to be entertained. Marketers need to prioritise content that entertains and makes audiences feel seen, with products integrated into the story as relevant.

The Platforms Shaping the Chaos

Knowing where Gen Z actually spends its time matters here. According to Sprout Social’s 2025 Index, 89% of Gen Z social media users are on Instagram, 84% on YouTube, and 82% on TikTok, and Gen Z consumers report TikTok is their favourite channel for product discovery, closely followed by Instagram.

These platforms reward spontaneity, humour, and native internet fluency. A brand posting polished corporate content gets scrolled past in seconds. A brand posting something genuinely strange gets shared to group chats.

Sprout Social’s Q4 2024 Pulse Survey found that 48% of Gen Z consumers plan to make more purchases through social media in 2025 than in 2024, with TikTok Shop leading the way. Social media is no longer just a discovery channel. It’s the storefront. Which means the content living there needs to work harder than ever.

What the Research Says About Gen Z and Authenticity

Academic research backs up what marketers are learning the hard way. A 2025 paper published on SSRN synthesises industry reports and brand case studies to identify authenticity, short-form video content, and purpose-driven branding as the dominant forces reshaping how brands engage with Gen Z.

Authenticity is the key word. Gen Z values authenticity and community, often using platforms like TikTok and Instagram to express themselves and discover new products. User-generated content and micro-influencers with niche, engaged audiences consistently outperform polished campaigns, because they feel real.

Unhinged marketing, at its best, taps directly into this. The chaos is a signal: we’re not performing a brand, we’re just here. Whether that’s genuine or a very sophisticated performance of genuineness is, perhaps, beside the point.

The Risk Calculus

None of this means every brand should immediately start faking the death of a beloved mascot. The strategy demands a real understanding of your audience, consistency of voice, and a tolerance for risk that not every organisation has. Gen Z is a cynical generation and they can spot a brand awkwardly attempting internet culture from miles away. The backlash, when it comes, is swift and merciless.

Sprout Social’s Q1 2024 Pulse Survey found that 57% of Gen Z took a social media detox in 2023, and 63% planned to in 2024, the highest rate of any generation. A cohort that is simultaneously the most active on social media and the most likely to log off is one that demands brands earn their attention rather than assume it.

The brands winning with chaos aren’t simply being random. They’re being precisely, strategically weird in ways that resonate with a generation that grew up fluent in memes, irony, and the particular humour of the internet. Getting that right is less a creative accident than a discipline. And as Gen Z’s spending power keeps growing, it’s a discipline that brands can no longer afford to ignore.

Be Human. Actually Human.

Here’s the thing that all the data, case studies, and marketing frameworks eventually point back to: people want to talk to people. Not brand accounts. Not corporate entities carefully managed by a committee of seventeen. People.

Wendy’s didn’t go viral because they had a bigger budget than McDonald’s. They went viral because someone, somewhere in their organisation, was given permission to be genuinely funny online and trusted to pull it off. Duolingo didn’t dominate the cultural conversation around the Super Bowl by buying an ad slot. They did it by killing a cartoon owl in a Tesla Cybertruck and making millions of people feel something about it. Industry observers noted at the time that the key was engaging audiences as active participants, not passive viewers. A principle that sounds obvious until you look at how few brands actually manage it.

That distinction matters more than any tactic, trend, or platform strategy. Nearly 40% of Gen Z consumers trust influencers more than they did a year ago, and Gen Z is more likely than any other age group to say that influencer content has the most impact on their decision to buy a new product. What they’re actually responding to isn’t influencers specifically. It’s the feeling of being spoken to by a real person, with a real perspective, who actually understands their world.

The brands that get this right aren’t asking “how do we go viral?” They’re asking something much harder: “who are we, and do we actually know who our audience is?” The unhinged stuff only works when it’s rooted in a genuine understanding of the community around a brand. Without that foundation, it’s just noise. Expensive, cringeworthy noise that ends up getting screenshotted and mocked in the very group chats you were trying to reach.

So no, you probably don’t need to fake the death of your mascot next quarter. But you might want to start by asking whether your social media could pass the most basic test of all: would a real person, scrolling on their lunch break, stop and actually care? If the honest answer is no, no amount of chaos will fix it. The good news is that the bar for feeling human online is, somehow, still remarkably low. The brands willing to clear it are the ones writing the next chapter of this story. The ones that aren’t will keep boosting posts and wondering why nobody’s listening.

Navigating Meta’s New “Consent or Pay” Ecosystem in 2026.

For over a decade, the social media contract was simple: you give Meta your data, and they give you a free platform. But as of January this year, that all changes. In response to strict regulatory pressure from the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Meta has officially rolled out its “Consent or Pay” model across Europe and the United Kingdom.

As marketers, this isn’t just a platform update but a seismic shift in how we reach our audiences. If you’ve seen the new pop-up prompts on your own device, you will know that users will now be more aware than ever of how much of their privacy they are trading for ‘free’ access.

1. How the Opt-Out System Works

The system currently differs slightly between the UK and the EU due to different regulatory landscapes.

In the United Kingdom: Following guidance from the ICO, Meta offers a binary choice to ensure consent is “freely given”:

• Ad-Supported Tier: Users continue for free but must agree to Meta using their information across accounts for personalised ads and tracking via cookies.
• Ad-Free Subscription: For a monthly fee—starting at £2.99 on web or £3.99 on mobile—users can opt out of all ads and tracking for advertising purposes.

In the European Union (EEA): To satisfy more stringent DMA requirements, Meta introduced a third “middle ground” option in January 2026:

• Less Personalised Ads: Users can choose a free experience that uses significantly less data. These ads are based on limited context (like age, gender, and current location) rather than deep behavioral tracking.
• Reduced Pricing: Meta slashed EU subscription prices by 40% in late 2025, dropping web fees from €9.99 to €5.99/month to make the choice feel more “fair” to regulators.

2. How This Affects the Advertising Ecosystem

This new era of choice creates several immediate “ripple effects” for brands and digital agencies.

The “Luxury Privacy” Gap

One of the most significant concerns is audience shrinkage. Data suggests that high-income, tech-savvy, and privacy-conscious users are the most likely to pay for ad-free experiences. For luxury, finance, and premium travel brands, this means a significant portion of their most valuable target audience may become invisible to traditional paid campaigns on Meta.

CPM Inflation

Economics dictates that when supply (ad slots/audience) drops and demand remains high, prices rise. As more users move to ad-free tiers or “less personalised” tiers and therefore fewer available impressions, advertisers may expect a steady climb in CPM.

Measurement “Darkness”

Attribution is becoming increasingly complex. When users opt for less personalisation, the conversion matching between an ad click and a purchase becomes harder to track. This makes retargeting and lower funnel marketing harder than ever. As granular cross-platform tracking fades, advertisers must move away from “last-click” dependency and embrace Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to illuminate the true impact of their spend.

3. Strategic Pivots: Success in the 2026 Landscape

To continue to thrive independent of this change, we recommend careful consideration of the following:

• Lean into the Meta algorithm: allow it to continue to find the most valuable users for your brand amongst the “opted-in” users.
• Diversifying the Retargeting Mix: Multi-channel agility is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. If a significant portion of your site traffic has opted in to Meta’s ad-free tier, those users become “invisible” to traditional social retargeting. To prevent your top-of-funnel investment from evaporating, you must establish secondary conversion bridges. Consider Programmatic Display and YouTube retargeting to maintain signal continuity. By diversifying your retargeting channels, you ensure that high-intent prospects who have paid for privacy on one platform don’t drop out of your ecosystem entirely.
• While Meta is leading the charge into the “Consent or Pay” era, other major platforms like TikTok and Snapchat represent a strategic opportunity to maximise your in-market audience. As of early 2026, these platforms have not yet broadly implemented similar monthly subscription fees to opt out of ads, meaning their “signal continuity” remains more intact for a larger portion of their user base.
• Organic Content is No Longer Optional: Since paid ads cannot reach all subscribers, your organic presence is essential and could be the only way to stay in their feeds. 
• The Power of Influencers: Creators and micro-influencers act as a “backdoor” to ad-free users. A subscriber won’t see your Sponsored Post, but they will see a Reel or Story from a creator they follow voluntarily.

The Bottom Line

Meta’s rollout of the “Consent or Pay” model marks a fundamental shift in the digital landscape, turning user privacy into a premium service across the UK and EU. To thrive in this new ecosystem, marketers must remain agile, trust the Meta algorithm, and consider putting some budget behind influencer advertising. As well as this, a varied and vast media mix becomes essential for effective targeting and remarketing – especially for industries like luxury, finance, and travel.

To learn more about how your brand can thrive in this new ad-world, get in touch with our team of experts.

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A new era for authenticity in digital advertising

BeReal promotes authenticity and spontaneity in everyday sharing, setting itself apart in the social media landscape. After launching ads in the US, BeReal has expanded this feature to users in the UK and EMEA. The platform’s model preserves the genuine spirit that has attracted millions of users worldwide, providing companies with a new, authentic way to connect with audiences.

Advertising formats on BeReal

According to Aymeric Roffé, CEO of BeReal, the introduction of the ads aims to respect the platform’s core values. “We have always put authenticity first on BeReal, and our advertising model reflects the same principle. We offer companies the opportunity to connect with our audience in a way that feels authentic and engaging, while staying true to the ethos that has made BeReal a phenomenon”.

With the arrival of advertising, brands are able to use different formats, including native in-feed ads and high-impact takeovers. These advertising formats are designed to replicate typical posts on the platform, using the dual camera to offer a behind-the-scenes cue or capture consumers’ genuine reactions. BeReal’s goal is to integrate advertising in a way that does not interrupt the user experience, but complements it with content that feels like a natural part of the everyday narrative.

Nike, Netflix and Pepsi: the first brands to launch on BeReal

Among the first brands to take advantage of this are Nike, Netflix and Pepsi, who saw the platform as an opportunity to reach their audience in an innovative and personal way. This marks a significant step for BeReal, which is evolving from being a niche app to an attractive marketing channel for companies that want to communicate directly with their consumers.

The ability to publish ads that integrate naturally with user-generated content is a competitive advantage in a market increasingly sensitive to intrusive advertising overload.

BeReal’s numbers: an active and engaged audience

In January 2024, BeReal reached 23 million monthly active users globally. Although the platform is particularly popular in the US, it is also rapidly gaining ground in the UK and Germany.

70% of BeReal’s daily active users publish content every day and spend an average of 30 minutes on the app. This figure underlines the high level of engagement. The daily engagement is valuable for brands, who now reach a receptive audience ready to interact with content authentically.

What does it mean for brands?

For companies, BeReal offers a unique opportunity to interact with a more selective audience than other social networks. With 70 per cent of users posting daily and spending an average of 30 minutes on the app, the level of user engagement and loyalty is high compared to other social platforms.

BeReal represents a channel able to create more authentic connections, without being invasive. In an era where authenticity is becoming increasingly sought after by consumers, BeReal offers a new frontier for digital marketing. Here, companies can make a difference not only with their products, but with the way they choose to tell their stories.

Want to integrate BeReal into your strategies?

Contact us to find out how to use this platform in the most effective way for your brand.

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TikTok has revolutionized the way we consume content, so it’s no surprise that the platform is now taking the next step in digital marketing. With the launch of keyword advertising in the US, entirely new opportunities are opening up for brands to reach their target audience more directly and effectively.

TikTok has become a go-to search engine, and according to TikTok over half of its users are actively searching and more than 20% search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app. This feature lets brands connect with users at the exact moment they’re searching, tailoring ads to their specific needs. 

What is Keyword Advertising on TikTok?

Keyword advertising on TikTok works similarly to traditional search engine advertising. When a user searches for a specific word or phrase on TikTok, your ad can appear at the top of the search results. This gives you a unique opportunity to reach users actively searching for products or services you offer.

By targeting specific keywords, you can reach a highly relevant audience that’s already interested in what you’re selling. Your ads will appear directly where users are searching, increasing their visibility and making them more likely to be clicked. With detailed performance metrics, you can easily track the success of your campaigns and make data-driven adjustments to your bids and messaging to reach different audiences and keywords.

Preparing for the Future

While keyword advertising is currently only available in the US, it’s important to start preparing now. Here are some tips:

• Identify Relevant Keywords: What words and phrases do your target audience use to find products or services like yours?
• Optimize Your Product Catalog: Ensure your product information is accurate, complete, and easy to find.
• Create Engaging Content: Develop video content that is both informative, SEO-based, and entertaining to attract new customers.
• Stay Updated: Keep up with the latest news and trends in TikTok marketing.

Full-Funnel Marketing on TikTok

To maximize your investment in TikTok, you should use a full-funnel strategy. This means combining different types of ads and content to reach users at all stages of the customer journey.

• Awareness: Use broad audiences and engaging content to create awareness of your brand.
• Consideration: Target specific audiences and use more informative content to show how your products or services solve customers’ problems.
• Conversion: Use clear calls to action and create a seamless purchase process to drive conversions.
• Loyalty: Build long-term relationships with your customers by creating loyalty programs and engaging them in conversations.

Additionally, tracking needs to be in place to leverage your marketing efforts based on your data. Include server-side tracking for the most precise full-funnel marketing.

At Making Science, we have in-depth knowledge of TikTok and can help you with everything from developing a tailored TikTok strategy, create engaging content (either from scratch or based on content you already have), optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI to stay up-to-date with the latest trends. 

Contact us for more information on how you can seize the Q4 Opportunity on TikTok.

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Spaniards spend an average of nearly two hours a day on social media*. But what exactly are we doing during that time?

For older generations like Gen X and Baby Boomers, social media is primarily a way to stay connected with friends and family. Meanwhile, Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to use these platforms to keep up with current events, engage with content like memes and videos, and create their own posts. While each generation has its own preferences, behaviors, and concerns, they all share one common trend: we are spending more and more time online.

For brands, understanding the audience is critical to ensure that marketing efforts reach the right people. In today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving digital landscape, simply reaching an audience is no longer enough—brands need to make an impact.

How can brands achieve this?

It’s not just about knowing who the audience is, but about understanding how to connect with them: what they enjoy, where they spend time online, what concerns them, and the communication styles they use.

To gain this insight, brands have access to powerful tools that help them analyze everything from a user’s age and profession to their daily habits and activities. Additionally, social listening platforms allow brands to track real-time user interactions and responses across social networks and digital channels.

But how can brands make the most of this information?

The answer lies in engaging with users where they are and tapping into conversations that resonate with their interests. This is a golden opportunity for brands to become more relevant by joining discussions that matter to their audience.

A key strategy is to adapt to the unique communication styles of each platform while maintaining the brand’s voice. For example, memes have become a staple of online culture, and tapping into their viral potential is an effective way to increase brand visibility—though it requires quick action, as trends rise and fall rapidly. Social listening tools can identify trending content, allowing brands to adjust their messaging and boost engagement by fostering a more active and personalized online community.

Speed is another essential factor. Reacting quickly to social media trends and events can amplify a brand’s impact. A prime example is “La Velada del Año,” the most-watched digital event on Twitch, which peaked at over 4 million viewers and proved that this platform isn’t just for niche audiences. With nearly half a million social media mentions, many brands, like Vicio, capitalized on the event by listening closely to what their audience wanted, breaking records for new followers and engagement.

In short, social listening not only helps brands understand user needs and preferences but also provides valuable insights for developing marketing strategies. It reveals how competitors are engaging with their audiences, uncovers user perceptions and demands, and highlights opportunities to join relevant conversations.

So, are you making the most of social media to build meaningful relationships with your target audience?

*Source: GWI Spain (16-64 years)

Gen Z encompasses a generation born between 1995 and 2010. This group is defined by being constantly connected, with high purchasing power, and growing up in the boom of smartphone diffusion. These digital natives are well-known for filtering information, their low attention spans (8 seconds), and their preference for visuals over text.

Their main form of entertainment is social networks, which they also use to fill gaps in human interaction. They consider VIPs and influencers as valid advisors for purchases, as long as the suggestions are provided entertainingly. The social network that has best captured this audience is TikTok (though it has also successfully captured the attention of many in the 9-25 age bracket). Users spend an average of 52 minutes daily on the app.

Brands that operate in trendy markets and wish to communicate to Gen Z must therefore integrate this channel into their digital strategy. The platform allows companies to package 15- to 60-second videos with music, stickers, and filters. The most viewed content is characterised by dynamic montages, stop-motion, and forced perspective shots that make viewing quick and enjoyable.

TikTok: The clear choice for maximising brand visibility

Influencer Marketing campaigns on TikTok often achieve results that exceed expectations. This happens because the social network is governed by an algorithm that shows users selected clips based on their content preferences. For example, a video dedicated to a make-up product has the potential to be seen not only by the fan base of the TikToker who posted it but also by many other users interested in the beauty topic who might intercept it in the ‘For You’ section.

Measuring the effectiveness of a TikTok initiative

The number of views measures the success of a TikTok campaign. The views are destined to grow over time, as a clip never runs out of chances to appear in the feeds of new users. To make a comparison: the average engagement of Instagram content is around 3% compared to 29% for TikTok.

Tips & Tricks: How to make the most of this channel

The best way to obtain relevant results is to leave the content creation to creators: TikTokers know the tastes of their generation (because they are part of it), and they know what is potentially viral and how to catch people’s attention.

Creativity is more important than quality: the average TikTok user is primarily interested in originality and fun. It is essential that the branded content speaks the language of young people and stimulates co-creation, i.e. it invites the user to test their creativity by emulating what they have seen Creators do. A dance, an acted scene, an alternative way of wearing a garment: any cue is good to tickle the imagination of users and start a viral chain.

Their secret weapon is the impeccable knowledge of their target audience. But there is a catch. They do not conduct detailed market analyses on style trends or buying preferences. They are so good and effective at getting people’s attention because… they themselves are their target audience! All they have to do is create and publish the content that they would like to see.

Influencers in the brand niche are succeeding where brands are failing: getting the attention of potential customers.

Where to start?

The first logical route you could take is to deepen your knowledge of your customers: their desires, fears, problems, language, style, and ambitions. You would eventually be able to produce content that is perfect for them. But no matter how well you do your homework, you will always be one step behind the influencers. And for a simple reason beyond your control: people trust their peers more than companies.

That’s why investing in an influencer marketing campaign is a great strategy to overcome short attention spans, catch your potential target and get your product and brand in front of a new group of potential customers. By working with influencers, you:

• Don’t have to interrupt the flow of your target’s content with your self-referential advertising.
• Can save thousands of dollars that you would otherwise have to spend on content conception, creation, and promotion.
• Can capture your audience’s interest without the need to worry about their attention span.

Not even sure where to find influencers? Don’t worry – Making Science has got you covered! From conceptual creation through selecting which influencers best suit your brand’s needs, we can find the perfect match.

Get in touch

The effect of an Influencer 

Influencer marketing has helped many companies expand their customer reach, raise brand awareness and exceed sales. But social media platforms are overly saturated with sponsored posts. Users are looking for genuine reviews on products and are observant of cynical ads by brands and overly promoted products or services that fail to fulfil their promises.  But despite that, 17% of internet users report purchasing a product in the past month because of an influencer social media post. 

When partnering with an influencer, you must consider a few points to better structure the perfect strategy :

• Influencer: which influencer will best fit with the values of your brand?
• Content: What do you want your audience to know?
• Platform: Where is the best place to find and connect with your audience?
• Objective: What outcomes do you expect to achieve with your strategy 

When influencing goes right

A good influencer-based promotional strategy builds trust between the brand and their audience; brands must give users the feeling that just another “normal human” suggests this product, service or brand is good because the influencers trust it themselves. The idea of an influencer promoting a brand suggests that the product or service is worth the price. Many marketers believe that having one influencer across their campaigns is the most effective, 56% of brands use the same influencers across different campaigns. Using this strategy can lead to fatigue from the user and is not financial efficient as not every consumer can relate to that one macro influencer. Your target audience will have similar interests, but in that group of people, there will be subgroups who will be able to identify and relate to another micro-influencer.  Contracting one flashy macro influencer can be expensive, especially if you don’t obtain the desired results. By implementing a strategy that focuses on a variety of influencers and who they will attract increases scalability.

To plan the best strategy, brands must first evaluate what they want to achieve with their campaign. We have broken down the objectives that can be met with an influencer marketing strategy. 

                                                                        Awareness 

Influencer marketing is a great way to raise brand awareness; the smallest of brands can quickly catch the awareness of their targeted audience via an influencer. Plan the perfect strategy by choosing the best social channels and an influencer whose profile matches your brand and can reinforce your brand’s identity and expose this to your target audience. Ensure that your brand is visible at all times and that the content isn’t just about the influencer but about what your brand can bring to the user.

Product launch

Using an influencer to bring awareness to a new product launch is a great way to drive sales. The content should come across as a review. Users on social platforms are always looking for inspiration. Hence why Pinterest is rapidly becoming a popular app. Not only can you target users who already use a product or service similar to what your brand has to offer, but you can find potential customers who have never heard of your brand. 

Engagement 

Influencers often have high engagement rates because users see them as normal human scouting for the best products or services that can be trusted. Many influencers, especially in the beauty and fashion industry, began making videos reviewing multiple products and brands and analysing their standards. Users share their own opinions, reviews and suggestions, and engage and consider the influencer’s opinion before their next purchase. Engagement rate is a great metric to evaluate whether or not an influencer campaign is effective. Measuring the impact of your campaign is important to ensure that your actions are driving results. The data can provide insights and learnings about your target audience that will benefit and improve other campaigns.

Finding the right influencer- Micro VS Macro

As previously mentioned, finding the right influencer is imperative to carrying out the best campaign. When deciding which influencer will be the most effective, you must consider:

• Who they are
• How many followers do they have & what platforms do they use
• Where their audience is located
• What content do they post 
• If their values synchronise with your brand

Influencers are the most beneficial when they fit coherently with your brand; make sure that the influencer isn’t promoting a product or service that contradicts the interests of their audience or personal brand. Like audience segmentation in paid ads, you wouldn’t promote a product or service to an audience that has no interest in your brand or what you sell. Each influencer has an audience that matches their interests, hobbies or lifestyle. Users are always looking for inspiration, and influencers can play a significant role in providing users with great content which inspire them to buy, try and even make a significant change within their lives. In today’s digital age, you can find an influencer for every industry.

From mental health to hair and beauty to DIY, there is an influencer for most if not every market. Influencers range from mega, macro, micro or nano, depending on their following. Mega and macro-influencers have the highest reach, it was previously reported that Kylie Jenner charges $1 million per sponsored social media post. If your objective is to raise awareness, choosing an influencer with a higher following would best fit. Your brand will have to be equipped enough to handle the mass attention and customer demands by choosing this influencer. Brand reputation plays a crucial role in brand awareness, and not being able to handle the demands or not being ready for the traffic can damage your brand.  One of the benefits of working with an influencer with a heavy following is that your brand will be exposed to large audiences, but they are most expensive; therefore, it should only be considered if it is within your budget.

Micro and nano influencers usually produce content for specific or niche markets and communities because they have a smaller audience that engages more with their content. These smaller influencers are deemed more authentic, have more rapport with their followers, and engage regularly. Understanding your target audience will help you decide which type or set of influencers are best for your marketing strategy. 

How do we measure the impact of an influencer strategy? 

Each metric is measured differently. Sabrina Molina, Influencer marketing Specialist explains, “There are many different metrics to measure the results of a campaign, but they are each calculated differently”.  For example, engagement is calculated by interactions (comments + likes on a post), divided by the number of followers, and multiplied by 100 to get the percentage. Providing a specific discount code for each influencer is a great way of increasing sales and measuring the influencer’s impact and content. 

 Measuring the impact of your campaign is important to ensure that your actions are driving results. The data can provide insights and learnings about your target audience that will benefit and improve other campaigns. 

Best practise tips

•  Ensure that the content of the influencer matches the tone of your brand. 
•  Note how the influencer interacts and engages with their audience and what content they suggest raises the engagement rate.
• Choose an influencer who knows your brand and is interested in the products or services that are being promoted, the more they know, the more opinions they have, the more authentic their content will come across to the users.
• Supply a discount code to increase sales and track how beneficial the influencers are to your campaign.
• Test your content and use different influencers to optimise your campaign and drive results!

Creativity is one of the most essential components of any advertising campaign. A creatively strong ad is 27% more effective than a weak one. But with just 1.7 seconds to engage a user on a social platform, creativity is more important than ever. With Facebook users clicking on 12 ads every 30 days, brands should experiment with their creative to make their paid social ads distinctive compared to other brands. Additionally, user numbers are increasing rapidly on newer platforms like Pinterest & TikTok. These platforms showcase very visual and engaging content. Brands should experiment with their Creative and data to explore new audiences within these growing social platforms.

Traditional approaches to ad design have relied on opinion, experience and ‘gut feel’. But with the growth of digital, we can now learn more about data and how it can improve creativity. With social commerce becoming increasingly popular, many marketers are fighting for their spot on the timeline. Social ads must be distinctive to engage users. “People think that creativity and data are antagonistic concepts”, Carmen, Head of Creative at Making Science, explains. “Data, analysis numbers vs creativity, ideas and imagination. They feel like opposites! However, these two concepts cannot live without each other if you want your campaign to succeed.”

So how can marketers marry data with creative to design more effective ads for their paid social?

The best way to understand how data can support your creative and the performance of your paid social ad is to acknowledge what you want your ad to achieve. Different brands use their social ad campaigns to entice the user to complete a further action. Analytical tools showcase what audiences are interested in similar brands, products or services and how they react to these certain ads. Data will support the personalisation of the ad’s message, reach the optimal audience and produce a successful social ad campaign. Understanding the brand, product or service and what message you want to convey is very important to simulate the best campaign. For example, if your campaign aims to increase brand awareness, mobile-first videos are twice as likely to enable branding recognition from the user. Understanding user behaviour analytics will strengthen your creative campaign and assist you in reaching your ad goals.

To simulate the most effective ideas, focus on the branding, time, attention, sound and framing of your paid ad; these components determine the engagement rate of the user. Data will support your ad by demonstrating what decision will have the best results. Understanding the commonalities between other effective social ads is very important. The recurring pattern will highlight when engagement is at its highest. Calculating which channels will best support your social ad will also improve the performance of your campaign. Thus, social media users engage well with interactive and visually appealing ads; that’s why applications like TikTok and Instagram are becoming extremely popular. These platforms offer short and interactive videos, also known as stories and reels. Top ranking Instagram stories that are easier to understand are more likely to gain the user’s attention. Experimenting with your creative is very important, but do not over complicate your message and lose the user’s focus and make sure that your brand is imprinted in the first 3 seconds of your ad.

Data supports the campaign, but optimisation sponsors the performance.

Unlike traditional marketing, social ads can be modified and updated with the use of data. As a result, you can learn more about your audience’s likes by testing different versions of your paid ads. A/B testing is a fundamental part of optimising your campaign. 3000 Million stories are posted daily on FB related apps; optimising your campaign will ensure that your content stands out. A/B testing improves content engagement and can provide insight even with low data rate testing. Using this split test method allows you to recognise what can be improved on to better the performance of your social ad, even if you have fewer visitors or conversions. Consequently, the results from A/B testing can lower your ad costs as the data will show you which Ads have the best engagement and then further increase your ROI. 

Ultimately, nothing can be labelled as failed if it provides results of how it can be better. Data allows us to create for a purpose and a specific audience. Without data, many campaigns would run, and investments would have gone to waste. Using data, we can ensure that the investments placed into these campaigns are worthy of the sales and customers that our paid social ads attract.