Five years ago, comment sections were an afterthought. Brands posted content, tracked likes, and moved on. Community engagement was a nice idea that rarely had real executive attention or investment behind it.
That era is over.
At Adweek’s Social Media Week in New York (April 14–16), the conversation had shifted decisively. Comments, community, and what happens after you hit publish dominated the agenda. And Respondology was right in the middle of it.
Comments Took Center Stage
Here’s what stood out: roughly half the sessions at Social Media Week touched on the comment section directly. Speakers urged attendees to mine their comments for content ideas, audience understanding, and real-time sentiment.
The message was clear: your audience is telling you what they want, and they’re doing it in the replies.
For our team, hearing that from the main stage validated what we’ve been building toward for six years. “The conversations I had made it feel extremely reassuring that Respondology’s targeted approach to comments is very relevant right now,” said Nick, one of our sales leads on the ground. “The narrative compared to four or five years ago has changed, and it’s pointed in our direction.”
That shift isn’t just philosophical. Social leaders are under real pressure to increase community engagement, but scaling it remains the unsolved problem. Everyone agrees that comments matter. Few have figured out how to manage them at volume without burning out their teams.
What Brands Came to Learn, and What They Left With
Respondology sponsored the event and showed up with substance. We hosted a panel session, How AI is Reshaping Social: Lessons from Entertainment and Beauty Leaders, and connected with hundreds of social marketers navigating the exact challenges our platform solves.
We also shared our 2026 Business of Comments Report, a data-driven look at what’s really happening in brand comment sections, from purchasing signals and sentiment trends to the scale problem most teams are struggling to solve. For marketers trying to make the case internally that comments deserve more attention and investment, the report puts hard numbers behind what they already feel on the ground.
Our panel brought together Respondology’s SVP of Revenue, Danica Calderhead, Cameron Curtis (VP of Multi-Platform Strategy and Digital Media at Warner Bros. Discovery), and Kate Kenner Archibald (Founder and Fractional CMO across beauty and CPG) to dig into how AI is reshaping social engagement, without replacing the human element.
The conversation covered real use cases. For example, Warner Bros. Discovery uses AI-powered moderation to keep comment sections productive for fans, beauty and entertainment brands use AI to discover which conversations are worth joining, and social teams lean on AI-drafted responses to maintain engagement at scale. The consensus? AI can help teams move faster, surface insights, and manage volume, but authenticity and brand voice are still what set you apart.
As Curtis put it, “Audiences are smarter than we give them credit for.”
We also hosted Comments After Dark, our signature after-hours dinner bringing together senior social and marketing leaders for candid, off-the-record conversation. No slides. No pitches. Just the people closest to the problem sharing what’s actually working.
The energy at our booth was different from what we’ve seen at past events. People walked up and said, “OK, pitch me.” They wanted solutions. As Dan from our sales team put it: “I’ve never seen such willingness to learn and be pitched. There was this energy, like everyone’s boss was going to want them to come back with new ideas and tools to drive efficiency.”
The Pain Is Real, and Universal
Our social media manager, Isabella, spent the week asking attendees a simple question: How much time do you spend in your comment sections each day?
The answers were telling. “Way too much time.” “Not enough time.” “Five-plus hours a day.” “We have three people whose entire job is to scroll through and reply to comments.”
Same pain, different teams.
Social marketers know comments matter, but the manual work of moderating, analyzing, and responding is crushing. When 97% of comments go unanswered—not because brands don’t care, but because manual processes can’t scale—something has to give.
AI is Not a Replacement
One theme ran through nearly every conversation at the event: AI can’t replace brand voice and authentic content creation. But it can create the efficiencies that let teams focus on the creative, strategic work that actually moves the needle.
That’s exactly where Respondology sits. Danica summed it up nicely: “Every senior leader I spoke with is now focused on the comment section, on building community, and on tying it to measurable outcomes. And the consensus is clear: AI can’t replace brand voice, but it can be leveraged to create efficiencies and scale processes. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Moderate removes the noise. Discover surfaces the signal. And Respond, which we hard-launched at the event, lets brands engage at scale without sacrificing authenticity.
What We’re Taking Away
Social Media Week confirmed what our data has been showing: the industry is moving away from vanity metrics toward meaningful engagement. Likes and impressions are table stakes. Comments, sentiment, and brand perception are what matter now.
The brands that figure out how to manage their comment sections—at scale, in real time, without burning out their teams—will be the ones that win. We left New York more confident than ever that we’re building the right thing, at the right time, for the right problem.
