State of Social Listening 2025
The most comprehensive report of the state of the social intelligence industry is back!
This year we surveyed more than 300 professionals from around the globe to explore industry trends in social listening. We wanted to learn how their work has evolved over the last 12 months, what challenges they face and the future opportunities they’re excited about. We also delved into how genAI is shaping the industry, and gave our persepctive on what needs to change.
Curious to see the results?
Key takeaways from the State of Social listening 2025
As in previous years, we wanted a complete view of the way people are working with social data. We wanted to understand the practice of social intelligence, not just the technology that’s enabling it. That means, we didn’t just ask questions about the tools people are using, we also asked about challenges around the data itself, how people are working with it to generate the insights they need, and the culture around social intelligence in their organisations.
Here are some of the key statistics from the survey:
- Instagram is the most used data source in 2025, but 19% are planning to change this
- The interest in non-mainstream data sources, such as Bluesky, Threads and Rednote is increasing
- Over 30% of people in 2025 are using two social listening tools and investment has gone up. The highest proportion are spending US $100-199K
- The primary objective for analysing social data is cultural & trend analysis but the most common use case is competitive benchmarking.
- 30% of professionals at agencies believe social listening is considered in every decision, whilst only 10% of those in brands think the same.
- Almost everyone (91%) is using genAI in their work in some way, but only 3% fully trust it
- Social listening is a priority for 63% of social listening leaders
What’s the state of social listening in 2025?
To give you the full picture of how the field is developing, we split the report into five key areas.
Working with social and internet data
Social data access and quality has always been a challenge for social intelligence professionals. This year’s no exception. As always, many are struggling to access the data sources they want to through the tools they’re using. Trust in social data also continues to be a problem. In the past, practitioners worried about the quality of the data they were collecting. Now there’s a fundamental lack of trust in the platforms themselves which is changing how analysts approach the data. We also cover:
- The most used - and most important - social media platforms
- What’s stopping people using their preferred platforms
- How they’re blending social data with other sources
- The most important type of data for social intelligence practitioners
Choosing the right tools and technology
The benefits of social listening tools are known across the industry. They’re essential for collecting and organising the vast amounts of social data that are available. In 2025, we’ve seen people are spending more on social listening technology than in previous years, and the average number of tools used is higher than in 2024. This year’s survey also revealed a reliance on technology by many analysts and showed that, for some people, social listening technology IS social listening. We also looked at:
- What tools specifically people are using
- How much exactly people are spending on social listening technology
- How often they review their social listening tech stacks
- Whether people are considering changing their tools in the next 12 months
Exploring processes and methodologies
This year’s survey showed a conflict between what analysts want to be doing with social data, and what they’re actually doing. Whilst their objectives show they want to be more strategic - to extract deeper consumer insights from social listening - the main use cases are more tactical, supporting data-driven marketing decisions such as competitive benchmarking and sentiment analysis. The 2025 survey also highlighted that social intelligence professionals are largely self taught. This is having an impact on how social data analytics is done and explains the reliance on technology. We also explored:
- The main objectives and use cases for social data analysis
- The methods and methodologies people are using to analyse social data
- The main challenges people face when analysing it
- How often they’re manually analysing the data outside of their social listening tool
Understanding organisational culture around social intelligence
We saw two different stories in this year’s report. Social intelligence professionals working in agencies feel they have greater buy-in from leadership than those working within brands. Social intelligence also seems to be viewed more strategically in agencies, shown by the location of the function (usually within the research & insights vs marketing or social media in brands) and the projects they’re working on. Brands are increasingly outsourcing deep consumer insights work to agencies to focus on projects with more immediate impact such as crisis management and brand health tracking. What’s harder to gauge is how happy in-house analysts are about this. We also looked at:
- The role social listening plays in the organisation
- How well-established social listening programmes are
- Which departments social intelligence teams most closely work with
- The types of work being outsourced to agencies and the reasons for it
Gauging the impact of genAI on social listening
For the first time we asked specific questions about how social intelligence practitioners are using genAI. The majority are using it for time-consuming tasks such as data summarisation, query writing support and first-pass analysis. Despite this, there is only a moderate level of trust around its outputs. There was also concern from some around the impact it’s having on data quality in general. Overall though, respondents were positive about genAI and don’t see it as a threat to their work. We also asked:
- How people use genAI
- How frequently people use AI-powered tools for social listening and data analysis
- In what ways they believe genAI will impact social listening in the short term
- What genAI tools they use
From measurement to meaning making
One of the most interesting insights to come from this year’s survey, beyond social listening trends in 2025, was that the lack of a formalised discipline of social intelligence underpins many of the challenges the industry faces.
Most social intelligence professionals are self-taught. They’ve learnt by trial and error not structured training which means they’re relying on instinct rather than theory. It also involves a lot of invisible work that’s hard to quantify. This explains the reliance on technology which provides more tangible, and visible, outputs. However, it can only take us so far.
Technology is great for measuring: for competitive benchmarking, crisis detection, brand health tracking. Where it struggles is finding meaning in the data. That requires critical thinking by humans. And the richer insights that result from this are where the strategic impact lies.
This year’s State of Social Listening report includes the updated version of the Insights Continuum which helps practitioners understand what’s needed to extract richer insights with more impact from social data.
What does this report mean for you?
The work of social intelligence practitioners has changed dramatically over the last few years. As technology has improved and the use of genAI has increased, it’s affecting how we do our jobs. Often for the better, but sometimes not. As professionals in a fairly new field, who are largely self-taught, it can be a lonely business. There aren’t many resources to guide you, instead we have to learn by doing and rely on our peers for support.
The State of Social Listening provides a perfect opportunity to learn from each other. Throughout the report we highlight how agencies and brands use social listening, the tools they’re working with, the methods they use, the objectives and use cases they’re focused on, and how they’re using genAI to support their work. In 2025, we also asked leaders in the industry their perspective on social listening’s current strategic importance, and what area’s they’re investing in. This should give you an idea of where to hone your skills to deliver the most impact.
Download the full State of Social Listening 2025 for more
This is just a brief glimpse at some of the stats and insights you’ll get from this year’s survey. Make sure you download the full report to:
- Understand the key trends shaping social intelligence in 2025
- Learn how your peers in the industry are working with social data, and the methods and tools they’re using to extract insights
- Explore the impact of genAI on social data analytics, now and in the future
- Benchmark your work against others in the industry
- Work out what you need to do to go from measurement to meaning
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