By Mario Lamaa, Managing Director, Data & Revenue Operations at Immediate
Every year I take a break from social media. A month or so reset before inevitably getting drawn back in. But earlier this year I noticed my two-year-old daughter mimicking me scrolling, and that was a signal for a longer break. I haven’t been back. I felt I was missing out on some of the excitement of real life, reading less, not being as present with family & friends, feeling less calm.
The experience felt less like ‘social media’, but rather the opposite. The discovery feeds hook you in with content that that’s often less about choice and more about compulsion. Yet we’re primevally wired to want those dopamine hits, even when they leave us feeling worse.
Immediate recently commissioned the University of Sussex to study how leisure activities and brands affect our sense of joy – with nearly 10,000 participants. One of the most interesting findings was that scrolling on social media came out as our least enjoyed activity from a list of 21, despite being our most frequent one.
It’s a remarkable stat, but not really a surprise. After all, these platforms are engineered to keep us hooked, not necessarily to make us happy.
This isn’t an argument against algorithms or data-driven experiences, rather what they’re optimised for. These tools can just as easily connect people with content that genuinely enriches their lives.
Concern about how social media algorithms shape online experiences is a hotly debated topic at the moment. The UK Government is consulting on banning social media for under-16s, driven partly by high-profile cases and growing concern about the content young people are being served. Certainly one of the most talked about sessions at Advertising Week Europe this year was ‘Are you with Molly or the Machines?’, a discussion that made a powerful case for change.
From sectors to sentiment
So rather than optimising for attention or clickbait, what if experiences could be more tailored to how they make you feel?
The media industry has always organised itself by category: food, lifestyle, sport, entertainment. That still makes sense. But what could also be powerful is categorising experiences by emotional resonance, supported by technology that deepens their connection to what they care about, rather than diverting them from it.
At Immediate, we’ve started exploring this through research into what actually drives viewing decisions. What we found is that audiences don’t organise themselves by demographic or platform preference. They shift between motivations: curiosity, comfort, connection, the need for reassurance. This insight has important implications for how we can shape experiences, across editorial, product and advertising.
The opportunity for trusted brands
But doing this well requires something algorithms alone can’t manufacture: trust. In a world of AI-generated content and infinite supply, trust is a scarce resource. And it’s where passion-led editorial brands have a real point of differentiation.
The research we commissioned from the University of Sussex found something with real implications here. The more audiences positively engaged with editorial brands – across print, digital, social, podcast, events – the more joy, flow, intrinsic motivation, and perceived competence they experienced in the leisure activities those brands are built around. The brand deepens the interest in their passions and boosts their mood and enjoyment of their hobbies. This has been the catalyst for us kicking off another wave of research (watch this space…) to build on how Joy can support commercial priorities.
What this means for advertisers
The conversation in the ad community has already been moving from planning around demographics to understanding motivations, cultural context and behaviour.
After all a brand appearing next to content that triggers anxiety or compulsion is in a completely different emotional space from one appearing in an environment of aspiration, creativity, and fulfilment.
What happens to audiences who are genuinely engaged, joyful, and in a state of trust? In these contexts, people are more receptive to commercial messages and more likely to take tangible action, from brand consideration through to purchase.
There’s a reason the term ‘brand safety’ has always felt slightly backwards to me. We spend considerable time thinking about the environments that could damage brands. We should spend at least as much building the environments that strengthen them.
Having a break from social media algorithms, I’m definitely being more deliberate about how I spend my time and more conscious of how these choices influence my mood, my attention, and my sense of connection to the things and people that matter.
I think this is where a lot of people are wanting to head to. Not away from digital media, but towards digital media that’s actually worth their time. Content and experiences that leave people feeling better and more informed, not worse.
For media companies that genuinely understand their audiences’ passions, and build their data strategies around that understanding, that is a huge opportunity.
