Therefore, we ask a pertinent question, what is the future of social media in marketing?Īddressing this question is the goal of this article. Despite what academics and practitioners have studied and learned over the last 15–20 years on this topic, due to the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of social media-and how consumers use it-the future of social media in marketing might not be merely a continuation of what we have already seen.

Academically, social media has also been embraced, and an extensive body of research on social media marketing and related topics, such as online word of mouth (WOM) and online networks, has been developed.

Given the massive potential audience available who are spending many hours a day using social media across the various platforms, it is not surprising that marketers have embraced social media as a marketing channel. Globally, the total number of social media users is estimated to grow to 3.29 billion users in 2022, which will be 42.3% of the world’s population (eMarketer 2018). Facebook, for example, reported having 2.38 billion monthly active users and 1.56 billion daily active users as of Ma(Facebook 2019). Social media is used by billions of people around the world and has fast become one of the defining technologies of our time.

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