Instagram's next act: The plan to get even bigger

The government’s latest media green paper proposes prominence for trusted news on online platforms (separately to potential prominence for public service media content). This involves a collision of totally differently regulated parts of the media landscape.

Prominence could take different forms and include different providers. At present, news is a small part of platform viewing, but many types of providers engage in that space, for a range of public service or commercial reasons.

Defining ‘quality news’ is extremely difficult; designating providers is almost as tricky. There is also the matter of deciding who decides what news to promote.

AI was the story of Cannes, both growing the market with new formats and cannibalising it. Not all AI increases to production are monetisable, creating disruption though the fundamentals of building engagement and resonance are unchanged.

Major platforms are still the main winners as supply ownership becomes key for differentiation. Agencies, adtechs, and commerce media are converging in function but diverging in approach as AI blurs the value chain.

Creative is at the centre of tensions between AI-led mass-market automation and human-centred bespoke connection. Platforms are defending SME audiences with end-to-end integration as agentic AI poses both opportunity and threat.

Tech companies are reinventing themselves in a once-in-a-generation revolution, with a sweeping reassessment of staff, and product makeovers working their way down to media partners.

Memory and other component costs will impact the 2027 upgrade cycle for consumer tech from PCs to phones—just as local processing of AI features is supposed to sell more devices.

There is a rationalisation of AI’s inevitability across all businesses, despite risks spanning privacy, legality and ‘misfiring’ agents. Media’s red lines on using AI to create content may be overtaken by platforms and creators.

Despite its scale, YouTube can get overlooked. But its tremendous reach and impact across all demographics make it the internet's universal service provider. 

YouTube is still the golden child for creators who want to make a living from their content. For YouTube, this broad base of suppliers ensures a position of strength from which to claim a large revenue share. 

Competition from TikTok took some of the shine off YouTube's usage, and forced it promote lower-monetising Shorts. YouTube is pushing heavily into subscriptions, TV sets, and premium content via sports rights to boost the money it makes per minute spent. 

TikTok has reached a billion users worldwide just four years after its global launch, much quicker than social media rivals, though its ban in India is a drag on growth.

TikTok’s popularity with under-25s has contributed to a hollowing-out of Meta’s active userbase. During the pandemic, TikTok also expanded its reach among older demographics, cementing its position within the mainstream and posing a further threat to Meta. 

TikTok could earn twice as much revenue as Snap in 2022, making it the first app to break out of the mid-league in years, with a huge runway for growth backed up by ByteDance’s remarkable success in China.