July starts off with a bang, courtesy of Independence Day fireworks.
In addition to celebrating the birthday of the U.S. with barbecues and ballgames, the summer month also includes days to celebrate emoji, tequila, and parents, but not at the same time, or that could get messy.
Social Media Holidays to Mark on Your Calendar
- July 4: Independence Day
- July 17: World Emoji Day
- July 24: National Tequila Day
- July 27: Parents’ Day
Social Media Platform Updates
TikTok
TikTok Market Scope Debuts, Along With Additions to TikTok One
TikTok introduced TikTok Market Scope, calling it a “first-of-its-kind analytics platform that enables advertisers to identify, understand, and activate audiences across every stage of the funnel.”
New mid-funnel buying solution Brand Consideration ads enable marketers to determine what captures the attention of their audiences through TikTok Market Scope and target the most likely users to transition from awareness to consideration.
Creative platform TikTok One unites agencies, creators, and tools in a single destination, and TikTok added TikTok One Insight Spotlight, which taps first-party insights to inform brands about emerging trends their audiences are engaging with, helps them understand those interactions, and compares their efforts against those of their competitors, helping them fine-tune their strategies.
The new TikTok One Content Suite, a searchable library of user-generated content that has been pre-vetted and ranked by ad potential, lets brands locate UGC mentioning their brand or products on the platform and instantly turn that UGC into ads.
TikTok Creative Exchange is now Partner Exchange on TikTok One, where brands can connect with vetted and trusted agency partners, and TikTok Creative Exchange provides similar opportunities for brands and creators to connect.
Saying that searches on the platform are up by more than 40% year-over-year, TikTok rolled out Search Center, a new artificial-intelligence-powered platform within Ads Manager that simplifies the process of buying search ads and provides new keyword suggestion tools, measuring capabilities, and creative tools.
Also on the AI front, TikTok Symphony’s functionalities are being integrated into Smart+ to maximize the scale and impact of content in performance campaigns, and advertisers using Smart+ now have more control over who they reach via account-level targeting and where their ads appear through first-party and third-party brand safety tools.
TikTok is combining Smart+ with Catalog Ads so that brands across industries such as automotive, ecommerce, streaming, and travel can integrate their catalogs and data connections.
New solution Affiliate Creatives for Ads lets TikTok Shop merchants automatically use authorized affiliate content in their GMV Max campaigns.
Finally, TikTok said it is investing in holistic measurement solutions with new media mix modeling-badged TikTok Marketing Partners, as well as expanding its TopView premium ad format, which places ads at users’ first view when they open the application.
Conducting the Symphony
TikTok added new generative AI tools to its TikTok Symphony suite.
Symphony Image to Video lets creators turn static images such as brand assets, mood boards, or product photos into video clips.
With Symphony Text to Video, brands can enter a simple text prompt and generate, iterate, and test concepts, bringing their ideas to life without requiring them to supply visuals.
And marketers can tap Symphony Digital Avatars to help showcase their products with the new Symphony Showcase Products tool, which provides three options:
- An avatar can hold the product the advertiser is featuring.
- Videos can be created with avatars trying on and modeling items of clothing.
- And videos can be created with avatars holding a phone and showcasing an app that is being promoted.
Symphony content is automatically labeled as AI-generated, and it undergoes multiple rounds of safety review.
Finally, TikTok announced that Symphony Image to Video was integrated into Adobe Express, and TikTok Symphony features were integrated into WPP Open, WPP’s AI-enabled marketing platform.
TikTok for Artists
TikTok announced the global launch of all-in-one music insights platform TikTok for Artists, giving artists and their teams access to data and insights that can help them better connect with the TikTok community and promote their music.
The TikTok for Artists analytics dashboards are updated daily, with features including:
- Song performance: Views, posts, and creator engagements per track.
- Post performance: Views, likes, comments, shares, and post completion rates.
- Follower insights: Self-declared gender, age, and language.
- Step-by-step guides to TikTok’s tools and features.
The Pre-Release Tool was also released worldwide, letting artists promote upcoming releases on TikTok, and enabling their fans to pre-save those albums directly to Apple Music Library or Spotify for instant availability upon release.
Other TikTok News
- TikTok marked album releases by Miley Cyrus, Karol G, and Addison Rae with exclusive in-app experiences.
- Connie Francis joined TikTok at the ripe young age of 87.
@connie_francis_officialMy thanks to you all for the huge reception you have given to “Pretty Little Baby”. I am delighted to join the TikTok Community and share this moment with you.
Instagram
Emphasis on Creativity
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri detailed new features aimed at enabling “Instagram to be a place where people come together over creativity.”
Instagram is exploring a way to enable users to quietly post content to their profiles without broadcasting it to other users’ feeds.
People can also reorder the posts on their profile grid.
Trial Reels, which enable creators to initially share a Reel with non-followers, are now available to all users.
New features are being added to the stand-alone Edits app, including a restyle editing tool that lets creators change the look and feel of their videos with AI.
Instagram and Rosalía teamed up on a new font in Reels and Stories, inspired by the Spanish pop star’s handwriting.
Finally, Instagram announced the launch of Drafts, an initiative to “invest in emerging talent and support creators and artists at critical moments in their journey” through financial support, connections, co-ideation, and collaboration opportunities.
Recaps and Celebrations
The platform introduced two new features geared toward creators, Recaps and Celebrations.
Instagram described Recaps as “recurring, personalized digests” that let creators shape their activity on the platform based on insights, education, and inspiration.
And Celebrations are a way for creators to mark special milestones, such as reaching a certain follower count.
YouTube
Open Call
The Google-owned video platform unveiled Open Call, a YouTube BrandConnect-powered feature enabling brands to discover and team up with creators at a large scale.
Brands can access the creator partnerships hub and place an Open Call to work with multiple creators in the YouTube Partner Program simultaneously.
Once the brand publishes a creative brief, creators can proactively respond with video content, at which point brands can review and approve those submissions and use them in partnership ads.
Product Stickers for Shorts
Brands that tag products in their YouTube Shorts videos will see the platform automatically generate shopping product stickers based on the first tagged product.
The list of tagged products can be reordered if a brand wants to change the product being highlighted.
Viewers can tap on the downward arrow to see a full list of products, and then tap one of those products to be redirected to the brand’s website.
Sizing and placement of the sticker can be adjusted, but only within the YouTube mobile app.
AI Advancements
YouTube introduced two new AI-powered updates to its platform.
A new AI-powered search results carousel suggests videos and topic descriptions from creators across the platform, and YouTube Premium members in the U.S. can now try it out on searches related to shopping, travel, or things to do in a specific place.
And YouTube will extend its conversational AI tool to select non-Premium users in the U.S.
Other YouTube News
- The platform released its 20th Anniversary Culture & Trends Report.
- The company teamed up with Oxford Economics on the 2024 U.S. Impact Report, highlighting YouTube’s contributions to the creator economy and the impact of the creators themselves.
Collages, AI-Style
Pinterest introduced AI-powered auto-collages that enable brands to quickly transform their product catalogs into shoppable collages.
The feature curates, cuts out, and groups together product images into new, shoppable visual content based on outfit ideas, user engagement, similar products, or products saved to boards by users.
The platform also debuted a new AI-powered Trends tool to let brands:
- Incorporate shopping trends by seeing what users are pinning to their boards and clicking to buy.
- Group trends into high-level themes based on what Pinterest users are saving.
- Tap into Editors’ Picks, which are data-backed, cultural trends hand-picked by the platform’s editors.
Pinterest Brand Studio
The company unveiled Pinterest Brand Studio, a suite of solutions from creative experts aimed at helping brands craft inspiring, creative ads.
Brands can work with trusted partners on ad creation, digital experiences, and sponsorship opportunities.
Other Pinterest News
- Pinterest shared data from a study with Adobe, which found that 73% of respondents said Pinterest’s visual search results outperform traditional search, while 36% said they now start searches on Pinterest instead of traditional search engines.
- The 2025 Pinterest Summer Trend Report is now live.
- Pinterest teamed up with Chamberlain Coffee, founded by Generation Z creator Emma Chamberlain, on a limited-edition coffee blend.
Snapchat
New Ways to Create
Snapchat introduced several new tools, features, and insights to help people on its platform create, share, and watch content.
A new Create a Video template lets users choose a few Memories, add a song from the platform’s Sounds library, pick a template, and generate a custom compilation video.
New insights were rolled out across Stories and Spotlight:
- Returning Viewers: The number of viewers who watched a creator’s public content for at least 12 days over the past month.
- Top Content: A creator’s most watched Spotlight posts and Public Stories by total views over the past 28 days.
- Total View Time: A creator’s total view time across Spotlight posts, public Stories, and profile Stories.
- Views by Traffic Sources: Content and profile views based on the source of the view, including Discover, For You, Following, Spotlight, Search, Chat, and Profile.
- Spotlight Average View Time: The average amount of time users spend watching a creator’s Spotlight posts.
- Spotlight Average View Rate: The average percent of a creator’s Spotlight posts that Snapchatters completed watching.
Users can now automatically save their public Stories directly to their profile.
Finally, Snapchat will soon roll out Timeline Editor, which lets creators see their videos in a chronological format, making it easy to cut-and-paste segments.
Lens Studio iOS App and Web Tool
Snapchat is extending its Lens Studio suite of tools for building augmented reality experiences, rolling out a new iOS app and web tool.
The company said the Lens Studio desktop app remains the primary tool for professional developers and teams across Snapchat, partner mobile apps and websites, and Spectacles, and the new iOS app and web tool are aimed at enabling people of all skill levels to create lenses on the platform.
In other Lens Studio news, Snapchat added a new Bitmoji suite and Games assets to enable AR developers to more easily build games.
Lens+
Subscribers to Snapchat+ now have access to Lens+ and its hundreds of lenses and AR experiences that let them play, create, and share Snaps in new ways.
Lens+ launched with lenses built by Snapchat and select creators—including exclusive new AI video lenses and a brand new Bitmoji game lens—with more to be added every week.
More Snapchat News
Snapchat released an app for the Apple Watch.
The company plans to release Specs—an ultra-powerful wearable computer integrated into a lightweight pair of glasses with see-through lenses—next year.
Finally, Snapchat released a trove of research, including: the Snapchat Generation Report, a look at what is driving Gen Z and millennials on the platform; a report with Magna Media Trials on diversifying the ad format mix with skippable ads; Snap Summer Guide 2025 for marketers; research with Publicis Media and NRG on trends reshaping consumer electronics purchases; and summaries of 12 papers it shared at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2025.
All Videos Are Now Reels
All videos created on Facebook will soon be shared as Reels as part of a new streamlined creation process.
The simplified flow will give creators access to more tools and audience controls, and there will be no length or format restrictions on Reels.
And the Videos tab will be renamed the Reels tab.
Meta
Gen AI Brings Personalization to Advertising
Meta detailed several updates to its Advantage+ suite of AI-powered advertising tools.
New text- and image-generation capabilities let agencies and brands incorporate assets including logos, colors, fonts, tones, visual styles, and advanced personalization features to ensure a unified creative voice.
New video generation capabilities currently being tested let brands transform multiple images into dynamic, multi-scene videos with text overlays and music via gen AI models.
Meta is also testing Video Highlights, which lets viewers skip to key moments in a video.
The company continues to test Business AIs (chatbots for businesses) on Messenger and WhatsApp, as well as in feed ads on Facebook and Instagram, and it is experimenting with adding voice capabilities.
Customized stickers for call-to-action buttons on ads are also being tested, and testing of virtual try-on capabilities is being expanded.
Other Meta News
- The company is teaming up with Oakley on Oakley Meta HSTN (pronounced HOW-stuhn) performance AI glasses.
- Virtual assistant Meta AI now has a gen AI video editing feature.
Video Push
The professional network announced several updates aimed at making it easier for marketers to thrive via videos on its platform.
First Impression Ads are a new, full-screen, vertical video format for single-day campaigns that enable marketers to target professional audiences, such as small business owners or tech decision makers, and reserve the first impression they see on the platform on a given day.
Reserved Ads enable brands to place Sponsored Content such as Thought Leader Ads, Single Image Ads, and Document Ads as the first ad slot in feed.
Connected TV ads are now generally available to target potential buyers in the U.S. and Canada.
A new integration with Adobe Express enables marketers to use its professionally designed video ad templates and export directly to LinkedIn Ads.
Finally, LinkedIn Editor in Chief Tequia Burt shared 13 tips for compelling business-to-business video content on the platform.
Other LinkedIn News
- LinkedIn detailed several new features that help marketers measure, optimize, and scale full-funnel campaigns simpler, smarter, and more effective than ever before.
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Hashtags are no longer permitted in ads on the platform.
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