The spread of misinformation, toxic user bases and the prevalence of bots are the reasons why more than 50 per cent of consumers will either abandon or significantly limit their interactions with social media by 2025.
A Gartner survey found that 53 per cent of consumers believe the current state of social media has decayed compared to either the prior year or to five years ago.
Concern about the impact of anticipated GenAI use in social media is high and over 7 in 10 consumers agree that greater integration of GenAI into social media will harm user experience.
“Social media remains the top investment channel for digital marketing, but consumers are actively trying to limit their use,” said Emily Weiss, Senior Principal Researcher in the Gartner Marketing Practice.
“A significant slice says that, compared to a few years ago, they are sharing less of their own lives and content. As the nature of social media use and the experience of the platforms changes, CMOs must refocus their customer acquisition and loyalty retention strategies in response,” Weiss added.
Mistrust and lack of confidence in AI’s abilities will drive some consumers to seek out AI-free brands and interactions.
“A subsection of brands will shun AI and prioritise more human positioning. This ‘acoustic’ concept will be leveraged to distance brands from perceptions of AI-powered businesses as impersonal and homogeneous,” explained Weiss.
By 2028, brands’ organic search traffic will decrease by 50 per cent or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search. The rapid adoption of GenAI in search engines will significantly disrupt CMOs’ ability to harness organic search to drive sales.
“CMOs must prepare for the disruption that GenAI-backed search will bring to their organic search strategies,” said Weiss.