The feed stopped being
a media channel.
Original research on social - the discovery habits regulators are trying to intervene in, the conversion spreads between platforms that look identical from the outside, the affiliate economics that quietly closed the loop, and the channel that now holds attention, transaction and the sales force in one place. Eleven features in this edition. How we did it, the data behind it and what it does not prove.
The platform that holds the audience and the platform that closes the sale stopped being the same thing.
Australia removed 4.7 million under-16 accounts in five weeks. Parents report roughly 70% of under-16s still accessing social. Both figures are official. Both are true. The gap between them is what social policy actually looks like now.
TikTok Shop converts at 4.7% while Instagram Shopping converts at 2.1% and Facebook Marketplace at 1.8%. Numbers that look small until you notice 42% of TikTok Shop GMV runs through affiliates and creators, and livestream sessions grew +340% year on year. The mechanism that produces the conversion is the mechanism most brand plans are still not built around.
We publish what we find, including where sources disagree and where units do not match. Every feature states its method, its evidence base and what it cannot establish.
Social Legendary
We separate the platform that holds the audience from the platform that closes the sale, because on this desk they stopped being the same thing. Social Legendary works alongside brand and commerce teams on creator programming, streaming and shoppable formats, affiliate operations and the measurement that reads all three as one funnel.
Features
Edition Q1 2026 · 11 features in this deskAustralia closed 4.7m teen accounts. Most teens still got in.
Australia removed 4.7 million under-16 accounts in five weeks. Parents report ~70% of under-16s still accessing social. Both figures are official and both are true - they measure different things.
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TikTok Shop converts more than twice as well
TikTok Shop converts at 4.7%. Instagram Shopping at 2.1%. Facebook Marketplace at 1.8%. The spread separates a channel that closes from ones that do not.
Social is where Gen Z finds products now
73% of Gen Z now begin product discovery on social rather than search. What the share means for the top of the demand funnel.
Affiliates drive two-fifths of TikTok Shop sales
42% of TikTok Shop GMV is transacted through affiliates and creators, not brand storefronts. Distribution moved into a layer most brand teams do not staff.
Cheap reach, expensive trust
Meta's CPM fell 3%. Reddit's rose 71%. Every shift in social sits between those two numbers.
Live shopping sessions exploded. Live shopping value did not.
+340% livestream sessions, +42% market value, 14% share of GMV. Three different quantities, labelled as such, not one trend.
Social stopped being a media channel.
Five features on this desk describe the same change from different angles. A channel that existed to hold attention now holds discovery, transaction, payment and the sales force.
Digital video became television
The format converged on TV economics while still being bought as digital.
China never had an attribution problem
A market that built commerce and media in one system never needed to solve attribution.
Cannes winners tested badly with the public
Cannes Lions Film winners, tested with consumers. The top scored 5.9. The average was 2.2.
The session was never the point.
Five features on this desk describe one failure: the metric that governed content for twenty years stopped tracking anything. Sessions were always a proxy for something else.
One issue a quarter.
Nothing in between.
Every edition collects the quarter's features and reports across all seven desks into a single issue. No weekly send, no roundups.