Social Commerce: Dead or Alive?

With all the debate over agentic AI and its impact on the traditional search ecosystem, we seem to have forgotten all about that other massive acquisition channel — social commerce.

TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and other popular commuity sites around the globe all continue to garner a significant share of top-of-funnel attention and mid-funnel intent. This is acutely true for the Gen Z and younger millennial cohorts when it comes to travel planning and even more so for Gen Alphas who may not be buying travel yet but who are heavily relying on social for their retail commerce purchases.

What we haven’t yet seen is a clear winner, a household name emerge when it comes to translating that attention to revenue. Does that mean there is no real winner here, or do we just lack a good attribution model that connects the dots from social to booking?

Social also seems to be leveling the playing feel between brands and individuals. The creator economy is massive in categories like fashion and beauty — but how does it play out for big ticket, highly considered purchases like travel?

And as agentic AI takes over from traditional search, will that help or hurt social commerce as a channel for discovery, planning and potentially booking? Are social and agentic AI parallel channels that will coexist to serve complementary use cases, or are they on a commercial collision course?

Follows

Gilad Berenstein – host

Cara Whitehill - host

Hannah Bennett — guest

Abby Dichter — guest

Go Deeper

• State of the Consumer 2025: When disruption becomes permanent - McKinsey & Company
• How Social Media Is Shaping Travel Planning and Booking - Skift
• Under the influence: Social media's role in trip planning - PhocusWright
• U.S. Traveler Trends 2025: More Social Media and AI, a Rebound for Online Travel Agencies - Skift
• Is your brand ready for the $3 trillion social commerce marketplace? - PWC