The beginning of the New Year is a time for taking stock and setting new intentions: What worked last year, what didn’t? What are the emerging trends to watch? What is the plan moving forward – and how do we get there?

At Smartly.io, we help social advertisers peek at the future through the crystal ball that is our annual survey with industry leaders. The 2022 trends report consults top CMOs on their plans for social advertising for the upcoming year.

Read the report to see which platforms are on the up and up, which industry changes are already afoot, and what new ways of working will soon become indispensable.

The future of social is already here. These three steps will help you get a head start.

1. Go multiplatform or go bust.

There used to be far fewer social media platforms for advertisers to focus on. But just as users have gone multiplatform, so now must advertisers.

The clearest trend from our data is that everyone is investing more heavily in social media advertising (some brands now dedicate up to 90% of their marketing budget to social ads alone!) and that growing investment is being spent across a wider range of platforms.

The biggest gainer is TikTok: nearly half of all respondents said they were already advertising on the rapidly growing platform. Yet more established social media networks are seeing rising advertising investment too. 87% of respondents said they plan to increase spend on Facebook in 2022, and 73% said they will invest more on Instagram ads.

As consumer journeys become ever more complex, brands need to meet shoppers whenever and wherever they are. That means creating an omnipresent multiplatform social strategy that speaks to consumers at all touchpoints and mindsets along the way to purchase.

2. Focus on talent.

As the budgets and greater focus of the advertising industry shift to social media – and more and more platforms emerge for social marketers to manage – there is now a growing need (and lack of) social advertising talent.

This reshuffling calls for a rethink not only of recruitment practices but ways of working as well. 73% of respondents say that their social media advertising creation and delivery still involve manual processes that are often time-consuming. This type of tedious work is likely to grow ever more cumbersome as brands adopt their new multiplatform (and multiformat) strategies. 

The manual work will be off-putting to talent, too, taking time away from the more fulfilling creative and strategic functions of the job. 

Indeed, 36% of respondents name lack of talent and 33% count difficulty running campaigns in multiple social channels as the biggest internal challenges to their social media advertising processes.

Brands need to prioritize people and take a closer look at the actual work being done.

3. Automate, automate, automate.

In 2022, automation will blend into a broader range of processes in both the creation and delivery of social media ads. 

The vast majority (73%) of respondents say they already automate at least some aspect of their social media campaigns. A third now also use automation to create social media ads.

New tools allow advertisers to effortlessly generate, launch, and scale social ads, with just a few clicks. Platforms like ours at Smartly.io also make it possible for brands to manage their sprawling campaigns, all in one place, easily coordinating and optimizing creatives across platforms and formats. 

Importantly, automation makes the work of social advertising not just more efficient but more fun and interesting too. Streamlining processes helps in managing multi-platform campaigns just as much as it does with attracting and retaining top talent.

The advertisers that will win in 2022 are the ones who embrace automation and use it to drive campaigns across platforms. Their teams will source the best talent and ultimately generate the greatest results.