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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and all non-straight, non-cisgender people across the globe have a long history of resistance against dehumanization, disenfranchisement, and injustice. In fact, it was the Stonewall Uprisings in New York City in 1969 that birthed Pride Month, the annual celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights. 

Despite the progress LGBTQ+ communities have fought for and won, their human rights and safety are continuously at great risk. In the United States, for example, many state legislatures are rolling back sexual orientation and gender identity protections as hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are on the rise. As of June 9, 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union was tracking the progress of 491 anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.

Marketing and advertising are not immune, as shown by recent conservative backlash against major brands that market Pride collections or partner with LGBTQ+ content creators and organizations. We asked two Meltwater customers what companies and brands need to do better.

What are some of the mistakes brands make when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation?

Michael Kaye, Director of Brand Marketing and Communications at Archer, Match Group’s social-first dating app for gay men: Cisgender, gay men cannot be the default. The LGBTQ+ community includes all body types, ethnicities, identities, and races. When brands only show one silo of the community, it comes off as clearly performative and shows they were just trying to check off a box. There especially needs to be more transgender inclusion in advertising and marketing to ensure that all members of the LGBTQ+ community are represented in these conversations.

What responsibilities do companies that feature LGBTQ communities in their marketing and advertising have?

Bobby MacPherson, Director of Operations at Pride Toronto, the not-for-profit organization behind the largest Pride festival in Canada: To not make superficial, one-off campaigns. Pinkwashing happens every year. To me, it's about creating more than just that one-time campaign that is aired just in June. How do you build that campaign that's reoccurring, year-long, meaningful, and always growing? How do you continue that campaign year after year, and adapt it to whatever that community needs are?

It's just not a checkbox, you're doing it because you're trying to push a boundary a bit. For example, I understand there's always a fine line with businesses and what they can dabble in relation to politics and political things, but what frustrates me a lot of the time is, sure, 2SLGBTQ+ rights may be political, but this is also, for some, the fight to live. Why are we politicizing that? 

Just recently, we tried to feature art that was highlighting 2SLGBTQ+ folks in Ukraine and sharing their story, but we were rejected by so many places because it was too political and people want to just focus on the fun of Pride. I have goosebumps sharing that with you.

So to me, I understand we have business agendas. Sure, I would love to focus on the positive all the time too. Who wouldn't? But that's not the reality. So tying that back to the original question, it's really about authenticity. If people aren't willing to be there in the good and the bad, then don't bother doing a pride campaign.

What questions should companies and brands ask themselves as they work to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ communities in their marketing?

MK: Before acting, focus on education and representation. Educate yourself on the queer community by bringing in partner organizations — GLAAD, Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the Human Rights Campaign, and The Trevor Project. Ensure LGBTQ+ people are represented in your leadership teams, throughout your company, and in the room when decisions are being made. By choosing not to include the LGBTQ+ community in your marketing campaigns, brands give in to anti-LGBTQ+ activists who taint the progress of the movement thus far.

BM: A big one is, Are we avoiding stereotypes and cliches? As campaigns are being developed, the question is, How are we approaching 2SLGBTQ+ representation with authenticity and respect? That's one of the first questions I ask sponsors as they tried to get involved with Pride Toronto. The other one is, How are they consulting with the 2SLGBTQ+ community? Often, what I find is people just hire a marketing firm to work with Pride Toronto, and it doesn't really represent the community or the brand they're representing. But, we want to be working with a campaign with their senior leadership to make sure that these are the values of the organization, not just some kind of checkbox. 

And, How are they supporting 2SLGBTQ+ causes and initiatives year long? Not only in a campaign, but also in how that going back to the community. Most importantly, one of the questions I would suggest is, Are we being open to learning, evolving, and growing whatever that campaign is to something larger?

Why is LGBTQ+ representation in marketing and advertising important?

MK: At a time when homophobia is on the rise and anti-transgender legislation is sweeping the nation, the LGBTQ+ community needs support. And there are benefits to rallying behind the community, too. 

It’s better for business. Companies that commit to LGBTQ+ inclusion attract and retain top talent, and have stronger relationships with customers and key stakeholders. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, a global survey conducted by public relations firm Edelman, more than 51% of Americans said they were more likely to work for a pro-LGBTQ company and 34% of consumers said they were more likely to buy from a brand that expressed support for LGBTQ rights, per CNBC.

The community is growing more proud and less avoidable as this demographic grows. In 2023, the percentage of adults in the United States that identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual doubled from a decade ago according to Gallup. Businesses who do not clearly support the LGBTQ+ community will lose out on them as consumers as well as see decreased sales from their allies.

BM: 2SLGBTQ+ representation in marketing and advertising is crucial for promoting diversity, fostering inclusivity, advocating for equal rights, and creating positive social change. It benefits society at large and embraces the richness of human diversity, promoting acceptance and understanding. Even that question, when I think about it, really helps us reflect on what diversity and inclusivity means. 

Marketing and advertising has really a significant impact on shaping societal norms and attitudes. By including 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in themes, in campaigns, highlighting them, companies can promote a more inclusive and diverse representation of society. It feeds into helping to combat stereotypes, break down different barriers, foster that acceptance, and really embrace the difference of sexual orientations and gender identities.

Learn more about best practices for LGBTQ+ representation in marketing and advertising in GLAAD’s LGBTQ Inclusion in Advertising and Media study and Inclusive Marketing resource page developed with Google.

Why LGBTQ+ Representation in Marketing is Important

We’ve all heard the hype around ChatGPT, it’s been impossible to avoid over recent months, but is that all it really is, just hype? Definitely not. 

ChatGPT, along with similar generative AI tools, appears to be that most rare of creatures, a much talked about new technology that is genuinely transformative, with an immediate and significant impact on a wide range of industries. 

In this blog, we’ll explore how ChatGPT can be used in the PR and marketing communications world, with practical examples that you can start using today to work smarter and faster. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on using ChatGPT, and we recommend you subscribe to ChatGPT+ to gain access to some of the more advanced features, although it’s not essential and the free version will work too.

Keep reading to discover some powerful ChatGPT marketing tips. 

The Potential of ChatGPT for Marketing and PR

Using ChatGPT for PR and Marketing Campaign Planning

In short, ChatGPT is an AI that can understand questions written in natural language, and provide detailed answers also in natural language.

Developed by the US artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot based on the company’s GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) Large Language Model (LLM). There’s a lot of deeply technical background to this which doesn’t need to be covered in this article, but the Chat-GPT Wikipedia page has plenty of detail if you really want to know.

In broad, simple terms, ChatGPT is a kind of AI known as a neural network that is inspired by the way the neurons and synapses in our brains work. Like our brains, neural networks are capable of learning to perform tasks through being trained by example, as opposed to the conventional way of building an application by painstakingly coding it to carry out each step of a task in excruciatingly fine detail.

This means they can do highly complex things that would be practically impossible to achieve through conventional software development methods.

In the case of ChatGPT, the AI was trained on a huge volume of human-created information from the internet, including Wikipedia and other websites, books, discussion forms, and more. It’s important to note that the model didn’t build an understanding of the world based on that data, rather it got uncannily good at putting together sequences of words which make sense to the reader.

Think of it as a much more sophisticated and powerful version of your phone’s autocomplete feature. It predicts the correct order of words based on statistical probability, and it does that incredibly well, but it doesn’t really understand the concepts it's talking about. So it can make factual mistakes, but its mistakes often seem highly plausible at first glance, because that’s what it’s learned how to do.

With that caveat out of the way, anybody who spends time playing around with ChatGPT cannot fail to be impressed by its apparent intelligence. Even when you know how the trick is done, it still seems much smarter than it should be. It’s shown the ability to explain and deconstruct abstract jokes about niche topics, and some researchers have claimed that it displays some traits of Artificial General Intelligence - an AI that’s capable of understanding things and solving problems.

ChatGPT also understands most programming languages, and you can ask it to create code for you simply by explaining what you want the code to do. More recently the platform introduced “plugins” which adapt it to be able to perform specific tasks by connecting it to third-party apps, and giving it access to data it doesn’t already have. For example, the Expedia plugin allows you to plan and book a trip using natural language queries.

As you can see, ChatGPT is a powerful tool, so long as you understand its capabilities and limitations. There’s been a lot of talk about AI replacing human workers, leading to job-losses, but that’s the wrong way to look at this technology. It’s not like you could fire your marketing team and expect ChatGPT to replace them.

This is a tool which can help PR and marketing professionals work faster and more effectively, but it’s nowhere close to replacing them. Whether you work in-house or agency side, at any level, you can use ChatGPT to make your life easier.

The simplest ChatGPT marketing use case is using it for copywriting. Whether you’re trying to create social media posts, email marketing campaigns, blogs, or even entire eBooks, this tool can really help you to speed up that process. 

Let’s be clear though, ChatGPT is no replacement for a professional copywriter. Its output is often dry and formulaic, it can contain factual inaccuracies, so we wouldn’t advise using it to produce your marketing copy without significant human oversight. More importantly, an AI doesn’t have all of the insight into your company, products, and tone of voice that is needed to do a good job.

You still need a talented writer to write engaging, action-provoking copy that achieves your objectives. So where does ChatGPT come in?

For short-form copy like social media posts and email subject lines, the tool is great for providing a lot of alternative options.

Let’s say you’ve written a tweet to encourage people to visit a new product page on your website, and you want to keep pushing it for a month or so but without sounding repetitive. You can simply prompt ChatGPT to write 10 alternative versions of the tweet, and while they may still need a little rewriting to make them sparkle, this will still be a lot faster than writing them all from scratch. 

In fact, Meltwater recently integrated ChatGPT into our Engage social media management platform, providing exactly this functionality, making it easier for social media managers to produce the content they need to fuel their channels. We have also launched Meltwater's AI-Powered PR Assistant.

For longer items of copy, which could include anything from emails and blog posts all the way up to weighty eBooks, ChatGPT can help you to overcome what writers call The Tyranny of the Blank Page. For many writers, even with a good, detailed brief, getting started is the hardest part.

So if you find yourself staring at a blank page for way too long, waiting for the right words to come, simply explain the brief to ChatGPT and it will give you some copy to get started with. More often than not you will probably find that the whole thing needs to be completely rewritten and the end result will bear little resemblance to the AI’s output, but it can at least get you started more quickly. 

Getting ChatGPT to write a very long piece of copy like an eBook takes just a little more work than writing a single prompt, because even if you tell it to write 5,000 words, it will still only produce a kind of condensed draft of less than 1,000 words as its first response.

To make it write a more in-depth copy, use the following method:

First prompt it to provide an outline. For example, you could enter something like: “Write the 8 most important points that people should consider when booking a wedding venue. The style should be fun and informal. Include some interesting facts about weddings.”

Once it’s produced a response, you can then ask it to expand on each point, giving it a little guidance to cover the most relevant areas: “Provide more detail for point 1, and specifically focus on X. Also explain an alternative option for somebody on a lower budget.”

Repeat this for each section, and don’t be afraid to ask it to rewrite or give it more direction as required.

Then you can ask it to write an intro: “Write a 300 word introduction that briefly explains why it’s so important to book the right wedding venue.”

Finally, do the same with a conclusion: “Write a 300 word conclusion that summarizes everything covered in these 8 sections.”

This works because in each discussion thread you use with ChatGPT it retains memory of everything that’s already been talked about earlier in the thread, so it understands the context of what you’re asking for. It also saves your separate discussion threads, so you can go back to them at a later time and continue working on the same project. 

When you think about the potential uses of ChatGPT for marketing and PR, it’s easy to focus only on content generation, but the tool can be used for a lot more. For example, let’s imagine you’re doing Public Relations for a new app which protects user’s data privacy on the internet, an important issue but not terribly exciting. How could you come up with some angles that would convince a national newspaper to write about the app?

Simply frame the question to ChatGPT and it will provide you with a list of ideas:

Again, the output from ChatGPT might not give you exactly what you need, but just like a real brainstorming session, the first round of ideas can provide a helpful springboard into something better. If you’re struggling to get started, it’s a great way to get the ball rolling.

Everybody who works in a PR or marketing agency knows the pain of throwing your heart and soul into a new business pitch, only to lose out to a competitor. But if you don’t win that client, there’s no reason all your hard work should be wasted, with a little tweaking those same ideas could be repurposed for other, similar businesses. 

In this example of a ChatGPT marketing prompt, we asked it to give us some ideas for alternative types of business we could take our ideas to:

The sky really is the limit when using ChatGPT for marketing brainstorms, as it can help with almost any creative challenge you face. This is particularly useful if you work with a small team or have limited time, and just need to get some ideas flowing as quickly as possible.

If you’re a marketing professional you probably already know how to build a marketing campaign plan, but in a world where we all need to be multitaskers, taking on tasks that lie outside of our areas of expertise, it doesn’t hurt to have a little extra help. 

And even if you are completely comfortable with planning a broad, multichannel marketing and PR campaign, why do everything from scratch when ChatGPT can at least give you a framework to build upon?

Again, all you need to do is write a clear prompt explaining the background (i.e. what exactly the campaign is for), and any additional detail that is important, then ChatGPT will build the outline of a marketing plan tailored to your specific needs. You can then flesh it out with your own ideas, or even ask it to expand upon any particular sections that you need help with. 

In this example, we’ve asked ChatGPT to create a marketing plan for a new kind of inflatable kayak: 

Next, we asked it to provide more detail for the PR component of this plan: 

The possibilities for how you can use ChatGPT for marketing and PR are endless, but to use a well-worn technology maxim: garbage in, garbage out. The tool’s usefulness is closely related to the quality of the prompts you write for it. 

Since ChatGPT launched we’ve seen a boom in “prompt engineers” who claim to offer specialist skills in getting the AI to provide the best quality output. But the truth is that ChatGPT was always intended to respond to natural language requests, not to be some complex tool that requires special know-how, so the real trick is just to understand that you need to give it clear, well thought out instructions. You don’t need to be an engineer! 

Here are our tips for writing ChatGPT prompts that get great results: 

Be Specific: The more precise and specific your prompt, the more accurate the response you'll receive. If your question is too broad, you may not receive the information you're looking for. For example, instead of asking "Can you tell me about digital marketing?" you could ask "What are the key differences between SEO and SEM in digital marketing?"

Specify the Format: If you're looking for a response in a particular format, include this in your prompt. If you want a step-by-step guide, ask for it. If you want a case study, request a case study. For example, "Can you provide a case study of a successful social media marketing campaign?" will produce a very different result than "Tell me about social media marketing."

Watch Your Tone: Whether you're looking for a serious business-oriented answer or a more creative, brainstorming-style response, make sure to ask for that. For example "Provide a formal analysis of the importance of influencer marketing in today's business landscape" versus "Can you give me a creative brainstorm on influencer marketing strategies for a startup fashion brand?"

Manage the Length: If you need a concise answer for a presentation, mention that in your prompt. For longer, more detailed strategies or analyses, make sure you say so. For example, you might say "Give me a brief summary of the benefits of PR in crisis management" for a shorter response or "Could you provide a detailed strategy for PR during a brand crisis?" for a longer one. You can always ask it to expand upon any point in an earlier response. 

Use Open-ended Questions: To encourage more comprehensive and insightful answers, formulate open-ended questions rather than yes/no queries. Instead of "Does social media marketing boost brand visibility?" you could ask "How does social media marketing enhance brand visibility?"

Think of ChatGPT as a helpful coworker. If you give it clear instructions with as much detail as possible, it will be able to help you far more effectively than if you write vague prompts.

Tip: Learn how to use ChatGPT for social media marketing.

Beyond the Buzz: A Practical Guide to ChatGPT for Marketing and PR

Part of what makes agencies special is their ability to keep one eye on the horizon and artfully guide clients through the shifting sands of technological change.

In-house marketers are usually focused heavily on the day-to-day job of keeping the wheels turning for their business; there’s always a new campaign to work on, or an unexpected problem to solve. Often there’s little time for them to take stock and reflect on what new trends and technologies they should be paying attention to. Today’s deadlines always take precedence over tomorrow’s possibilities.

That’s where agencies can add value. Sure, your creativity and ability to execute campaigns flawlessly is the main reason clients hire you, but at the same time they frequently look to agencies to be their finger-on-the-pulse, keeping them informed and inspired by new ideas.

The challenge lies in making sense of the perpetual hype-cycle; being able to identify which new ideas are genuinely innovative and useful, and which are dead ends. That’s not easy.

Those of us who are old enough (sorry, I mean those of us with enough gravitas) will remember the social media gold-rush of the late-noughties, when it felt like every agency was hurriedly trying to reposition itself as a social-specialist, even though the area was still only dimly understood. At the time, there were plenty of naysayers who wanted us to believe that social media was an overhyped flash-in-the-pan that would soon be forgotten about. We all know how that played out!

What people might not remember so clearly is that, around the same time, many agencies were jumping on the Second Life bandwagon, trying to convince their clients that building a presence in this new virtual world would be essential for any forward-thinking business that wanted to stay relevant. That fad lasted about a week before everybody quietly moved on and pretended it never happened.

Since then the new ideas have been coming at us constantly, many being proclaimed as the Next Big Thing on Monday, and relegated to obscurity by Friday. It only feels like a couple of months ago that NFTs were supposed to be the future, and now suddenly nobody’s talking about them any more.

The Metaverse (2022’s answer to Second Life) had a little more staying power, thanks to a lot of large tech companies throwing their weight behind it, but even that big idea finally seems to have fallen from favor before it came close to delivering on any of the hype.

And that brings us to today’s trendy new tech, Generative AI. Admittedly, this feels a little different to all the others. Large Language Models like ChatGPT and text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion and MidJourney feel like they could be transformational and are already creating noticeable disruption across various industries. All the same, there are plenty of voices speaking out against the technology, highlighting its shortcomings, and questioning its risks and long-term usefulness.

Walking the tightrope between misplaced hype and genuine innovation, the challenge agencies face is not only to discern which technologies will have a significant lasting impact, but also to build an understanding of how to harness their potential for the benefit of clients. Generative AI has potential to disrupt the PR and marketing industry, but only if we can understand and acknowledge its limitations as well as its power. 

Staying at the forefront of innovation while avoiding wasting resources dead ends is a challenge for all agencies. How do you strike the right balance?

Perhaps the way to ensure we offer our clients the best counsel, and continue to be their trusted consultants, is to maintain a healthy skepticism and cast a forensic eye over the potential flaws of new technologies rather than simply riding the hype train until its wheels fall off. 

Navigating the Hype: Agencies in the Age of Tech Whiplash

The first three months of 2023 have seen some particularly interesting developments in the world’s connected behaviours.

As ever, our new Digital 2023 April Global Statshot Report – published in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social – brings you all the latest data and analysis you need to make sense of these changes, and understand how they might affect you and your work.

And in addition to all of our usual datasets, we’ve also included a special study on the use of connected tech in the workplace, which will be of particular interest to B2B marketers, HR teams, and internal comms managers.

⚠️ Important advisory: significant changes

The complete Digital 2023 April Global Statshot Report

Tip: Take a look at The Global State of Digital in July 2023, at the Digital 2023 October Global Statshot Report, and at The Changing World of Digital in 2023.

Some of the trends to watch out for in this latest Statshot report include:

A new milestone for internet adoption in India;

Further declines in the time that the world spends online;

Insights into how businesses are using social media for marketing;

Intriguing trends in social media ad spend;

Accelerating internet connection speeds; and

The social media platforms driving the greatest share of web traffic referrals

That’s just a brief taster of the insights you’ll find in the full report though, which is packed with 300+ slides exploring what people are really doing on the internet, social media, mobile devices, and online shopping platforms.

In addition to thanking We Are Social and Meltwater for making these reports possible, I’d also like to offer my heartfelt thanks our wonderful data partners, without whom the Global Digital Reports series would be a lot less informative:

Before we begin this quarter’s analysis, please note that there have been widespread and significant changes to the source data that we include in the Global Digital Reports series over recent weeks:

We’ve changed the way that we label our headline metric for global social media use to “social media user identities”, to make it clearer that this figure may not represent unique individuals.

GWI has modified its survey methodology to facilitate more consistent comparison across cultures. These changes ensure that GWI’s data is even more robust than ever, but the updates have also resulted in meaningful adjustments to the figures in many of our regular datasets. As a result, please beware of comparing figures included in this quarter’s report with data published in previous reports in this series.

We’ve also seen incongruous trends in the data published in the ad tools of various social media platforms over recent weeks. We’ll explore some of these changes in detail below, but please note that these changes also affect our overall figures for social media user identities, which use these ad reach figures as a key input.

Due to increasing incongruities in source data, we’ve changed the sources that we use to inform and calculate key metrics for Indonesia. As a result, the figures that appear in our latest update may appear lower than those that appear in our previously published reports. However, these changes reflect revisions in data, and do not represent a drop in actual use of connected tech in the country.

For further details, please refer to our comprehensive guide to changes in data sources, research methodologies, and reporting approaches.

If you need quick insights, I’d recommend starting with the video below, which will help you understand all of this quarter’s top headlines and trends in just 10 minutes.

But once you’ve finished watching that, read on below for the full report.

You’ll find this quarter’s complete report in the embed below (click here if that’s not working for you), but continue reading past that to find our in-depth analysis of what all these numbers might mean for you and your work.

As always, let’s begin with the latest essential headlines for the adoption and use of digital around the world.

For context, the world’s population had reached 8.03 billion at the start of April 2023. That figure was just under 1 percent higher than the figure for the same time last year, with the world’s population growing by 69 million over the past 12 months.

GSMA Intelligence reports that there are now 5.48 billion unique mobile subscribers around the world, equating to 68.3 percent of the world’s total population. That total grew by almost 3 percent over the past year, thanks to the addition of 152 million new subscribers. For added perspective, Ericsson reports that there are now roughly 6.9 billion smartphones in use around the world, and these devices account for more than 5 in every 6 mobile handsets in use today.

The latest data indicate that there are now more than 5.18 billion individuals using the internet, equating to 64.6 percent of the world’s population. Kepios analysis reveals that 147 million people started to use the internet in the 12 months to April 2023, but delays in the reporting of internet research mean that growth may be meaningfully higher than this figure suggests.

The worldwide number of active social media “user identities” reached 4.80 billion in April 2023. This figure may not represent unique individuals, because the data we use to inform this total inevitably includes a certain degree of duplication and “false” accounts. However, for ease of comparison, that total is now tantalisingly close to 60 percent of the world’s population. Social media use continues to grow too, with 150 million new user identities over the past year delivering annual growth of 3.2 percent.

That’s a great overview of the current “state of digital”, but the real insights come when we start to  explore the underlying trends.

The latest data reveal that more than half of India’s population now uses the internet.

A recent report from Nielsen indicates that the number of internet users in the country reached 720 million at the end of 2022, equating to 50.5 percent of the country’s total inhabitants.

Interestingly, Nielsen’s report highlights that India’s rural areas are now home to 44 percent more internet users than its urban areas, and that rural areas are also responsible for most of the country’s internet user growth.

The latest figures point to 425 million internet users in rural areas, with that figure increasing at an annual rate of roughly 30 percent.

Meanwhile, India’s urban areas are home to 295 million users, with that figure currently growing by roughly 10 percent per year.

For added clarity, India’s government defines rural areas as locations with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants and fewer than 400 people per square kilometre, where more than 25 percent of the male population is engaged in agricultural pursuits.

Encouragingly, the report also reveals that India’s female internet user population is growing at a rate of 27 percent per year.

However, data from the ITU and GSMA Intelligence indicates that India’s male internet users continue to outnumber their female peers by a significant margin, and there’s still a long way to go before India closes its digital divide.

For added context, our analysis of the latest data suggests that women may account for as little as 30 percent of India’s social media users, even in April 2023.

Moreover, despite encouraging growth in internet users, India is still home to the world’s largest “unconnected” population, and more than 700 million people in the country are still waiting to come online at the time of writing.

Similarly, while India will soon become home to the world’s largest overall population, the country still has a long way to go before it can claim the world’s largest connected population.

China still has a firm grip on that title, with data in CNNIC’s latest report putting internet user numbers in the country at 1.07 billion.

More than 350 million people in China remain “unconnected” too, so the country still has plenty of potential for continued digital growth.

GWI’s latest wave of research indicates that the amount of time the world spends online continues to decline.

It’s worth highlighting that the latest figures have been impacted by the changes to GWI’s methodology that we highlighted above.

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