Every quarter, we check in on our group of 50 publishers that make up our Social Publishing Index. We’re presenting the data a little differently this quarter, with separate blogs on each of the major platforms and the trends we’re seeing there.
You can dig into the platform-specific data here:
This particular piece, though, is dedicated to the topline stats that come from the report, which we’ll dig into now.
Engagement generally dropped in Q3 2025
The story of the quarter generally is that engagement was down across the board, with a few notable exceptions. Across all platforms, engagement was down about five percent, though this was led by bigger losses on the platforms that have typically seen more engagement—TikTok and Instagram.
TikTok engagement dropped around seven percent, led by the sports publishers ESPN and Bleacher Report, which together saw 400 million fewer engagements on the platform than they had in Q2.
Instagram saw the highest drop in engagement across any of the social platforms, with an almost 12% drop vs. Q2, again led by sports publishers.
Facebook was the exception to this rule, seeing a rise of 17 percent in content on the platform. This was primarily driven by Fox News’s continued dominance. Fox alone was responsible for more than a third of all engagement for the Social Publishing Index on Facebook, and itself had a 53% rise in engagement. That means that if you take Fox out of the equation, there was a much more modest rise of around 3 percent for the other 49 publishers, with the biggest increases in raw numbers coming for The New York Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, and E! News.
TikTok is still engaging audiences at a huge rate
Despite the drop in engagement, of the platforms we looked at, TikTok is still the one that is driving engagement at the highest rate by a considerable distance.
Some 56 percent of the engagements for this group of 50 publishers happened on TikTok, and its 2 billion engagements made it the only platform that had more than a billion engagements.
We are, however, seeing somewhat of a flattening of the engagement levels at the publisher level. At the beginning of the year, just five publishers were responsible for 58% of the total engagement for this group of 50 publishers. In Q2, that dropped to 51%, and in Q3 it dropped again to 46%, breaking the five-publisher plurality for the first time this year.
This is in part due to sports publishers seeing a significant drop in engagement, with both Bleacher Report and ESPN seeing drops of more than 30% across all platforms, meaning the top publishers had far fewer engagements while everyone else remained roughly flat, but it is also driven by more traditional cable and video news outlets seeing increased success on TikTok in particular.
The other notable takeaway is that the gap between Facebook and Instagram is closing, and fast. In Q1, Facebook had 55% of the engagement that Instagram had. In Q3, this had risen to 93%, meaning that engagement across the Social Publishing Index on these two platforms was almost identical.
Traditional news outlets are quietly getting huge engagement
Now back to those TikTok numbers. They’re causing a huge swell in attention for the news publishers that are managing to successfully repurpose video, and that’s lending a particular advantage to cable news and video-first outlets.
While The Daily Mail is the king of TikTok (with more than 400 million engagements), CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, and BBC News have collectively increased their engagement on TikTok this quarter by more than 200 million engagements, an average of 50 million per publisher. And that’s not driven by an increase in posting. On average, they’re posting 10% more than in Q2, but have seen a collective increase in engagement of 49%.
This shows that TikTok is currently very friendly to this kind of video content, and it really is a mix of all kinds of reporting. For example, ABC News has seen great success with viral videos, particularly featuring animals and humans helping each other.
@abcnews A dog helped assist in its own rescue after an Illinois family's home caught fire last week. Bodycam footage shows police entering a smoke-filled home to save the family pet — with the dog leading the officer to its leash before being led out the door. No one was inside the home at the time of the fire besides the dog, according to police. #dog #animal #police #news #abcnews ♬ original sound - ABC News
@abcnews Eyewitness video captured the moment a firefighting helicopter spun out of control and crashed into a pond in France. Local officials confirmed no one was injured and two crew members and an eyewitness have been discharged from hospital.#abcnews #news ♬ original sound - ABC News
But it wasn’t all light-hearted; TikTok was also home to very serious news updates, including examples from NBC News of the Governor of Utah sharing details about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and BBC News covering a moment of silence at Hiroshima at a ceremony that marked 80 years since the dropping of an atomic bomb on the city.
@bbcnews A silent prayer was held in Hiroshima, Japan, on Wednesday morning at a ceremony marking 80 years since the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city towards the end of World War Two. #Hiroshima #Japan #WW2 #WorldWar2 #US #News #BBCNews ♬ original sound - BBC News
@nbcnews Officials in Utah say messages were found inscribed on bullet casings found near the rifle they believe was used to shoot and killed Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.
♬ original sound - nbcnews
TikTok is bringing huge attention to traditional news publishers, who are seeing success on the platform with video content that’s repurposed for a vertical format, so if you don’t have a strategy for TikTok yet, it’s certainly a prudent time to develop one.
This analysis just scratches the surface of our Social Publishing Index, head over to our blog to see the latest updates for every platform.
