As 2024 draws to a close, executives from across media, marketing, advertising, and ecommerce provide their predictions for the year ahead.
Justin Reid, Senior Director of Global Partnerships Solutions, Tripadvisor
“In 2025, brands need to be innovative, focusing on understanding their audiences and tailoring campaigns to niche interests such as sports, pets, or fashion to create authentic, engaging experiences for all.
“Doing this successfully will allow for strategies that go beyond targeting one-off moments. As consumer spending becomes more fluid and strategic, brands must consider the impact of long-term behaviours, such as planning for significant large purchases or travel experiences. Campaigns that align with these broader priorities will remain relevant and impactful over time, extending a brand’s reach and resonance.
“To achieve this, brands will turn to a mix of endemic and non-endemic platforms, using these diverse channels to connect with consumers in new and innovative ways. Successful brands will integrate data-driven insights with creative storytelling, ensuring their campaigns are strategic and memorable.”
Louise Kloster, SVP Marketing, Adform
“If 2024 has been about the decline, if not quite the death of the third-party cookie, then next year will see its value for advertisers disappear completely. With Google likely to install a consent-based model, research has projected that almost 90% of US browsers will become cookieless.
“There is no single, silver bullet solution waiting in the wings to replace it, and, considering the trouble the Privacy Sandbox has experienced, holding out hopes for one to materialise is unrealistic. Instead, we currently observe hundreds of rich and diverse identity alternatives in play, and we already experience advertisers’ appetite to leverage the full benefits of this new multi-ID world. DSPs who employ a rich combination of first-party IDs and alternative solutions will succeed while those that are ID-limited will fail media buyers. Advertisers meanwhile will reap the game-changing benefits of streamlined omnichannel performance and measurement, securing optimised reach with reduced ad waste.”
Aoife Dowling, Head of Global Agency Group Partnerships, Shopify
“The lines between commerce and marketing are blurring, which is fundamentally transforming how businesses tell their story to consumers. While it may at first seem to complicate how retailers can advertise their products, this collaboration has seen strong growth in shoppable ads that deliver both brand awareness and revenue through one simple interaction. We’re only seeing this trend go one way, as it delivers more valuable connections with shoppers across platforms, reducing e friction in the buying process so they can get the products they’re looking for quicker.”
Anna Forbes, RVP Northern Europe, DoubleVerify
“In 2024, attention metrics gained significant traction in the ad industry. The IAB released its Attention Toolkit and Guidelines, while the IAB and MRC began developing accreditation standards. This marked a shift from questioning attention’s longevity to systematic testing, as clients increasingly recognised its value and sought to maximise its potential.
“We can expect these trends to continue gaining momentum through increased adoption in 2025. More companies will pursue and achieve MRC accreditation, a critical step for measurement tools used in high-stakes decision-making. Additionally, we’ll see the first wave of clients fully integrating attention metrics into their buying strategies. Advertisers will begin incorporating attention data streams into media mix models and planning tools while leveraging emerging pre-bid and curation solutions. The most advanced clients will go even further, embedding attention signals into custom bidding algorithms to drive superior and more efficient outcomes.”
Mike Shaw, Director, International Ad Sales, Roku
“Advertising on the TV is arguably still the most powerful platform to drive brand awareness and short-term goals, but traditional linear models are still far too cost-prohibitive for most brands. However, as connected TV (CTV) advertising continues to gain momentum, particularly on streaming platforms that is changing. This year there have already been signs of a shift-change in where brands are investing, but 2025 will likely be a moment when CTV becomes a cornerstone of media planning that will democratise TV advertising. With a more engaged audience than online video, and better data and insights than linear TV, CTV combines the best of both worlds. And, as shoppable ads gain momentum – where the remote control becomes a mechanism to buy in that moment – we’re going to see smaller brands enter the world of TV advertising to boost their brand and reach target audiences more effectively. Streaming platforms will play an important role here, as they can become their own ad spaces too, such as via home screens and other peripheral ad units to engage consumers with relevant marketing content.”
Charlie Celino, Strategic Development Director, News UK
“The potential for news brands in 2025 will hinge on their ability to reaffirm their role as the trusted source of news, with clear distinctions between reporting, analysis and opinion. In a world where social platforms are increasingly open to bad actors disseminating mis- and disinformation – and with simmering tensions in international politics – trusted, fact-based and verified journalism is more important than ever. This underscores the urgency for publishers to champion journalism that can cut through the noise.
“The other focus for news brands in 2025 is going to be data. Our in-house data platform, Nucleus, reaffirms the premise that brands need access to first-party data, contextual targeting and demographic insight to reach valuable customers. The broader changes in the advertising technology space mean that publishers can now take control of their own data and deliver uniquely powerful targeting capabilities to advertising clients.
“Ultimately, we can all try to predict the unpredictable. However, we as an industry must be ready to adapt and deliver for our customers and advertisers whilst navigating these macro challenges.”
Phil Duffield, VP UK, The Trade Desk
“Google’s antitrust trial could create change in the infrastructure of the internet in 2025, regardless of the outcome. Major publishers and brands such as Reach PLC and Kimberly Clark have already taken steps to embrace new identity solutions that empower advertisers to serve fewer, more relevant ads, representing a shift in momentum towards the open internet.
“The enhanced targeting and measurement capabilities of channels such as CTV and digital audio are drawing an increasing share of the ad spend pie. The data and insight they offer allows advertisers to better understand the ROI of their campaigns. Brands continuing to reap the benefits of a data-driven approach will fuel a positive cycle, where advertisers proactively seek out partners and channels that allow them to be more efficient and effective.
“As momentum in the industry swings towards the open internet, advertisers are reassessing the value and efficiency of the advertising supply chain. As a result, the industry’s commitment to supply-side optimisation (SPO) is growing. Take the TV market as an example, major players including Disney Advertising and Paramount Advertising are supporting The Trade Desk to implement a cleaner, more transparent supply chain with our new TV operating system, Ventura.
“Brands need more transparency within the ecosystem to know that the inventory they are buying is delivering real value. It is our collective responsibility to ensure we are delivering more value than we are extracting. And it is our hope that the industry follows suit, so that 2025 can be a year where the industry commits to cleaning up the supply chain and cuts waste wherever possible.”
James Hill, Chief Commercial Officer, EXTE
“In 2025, AI will continue to transform content marketing, enabling hyper-personalisation while protecting consumer privacy. Moreover, creativity will remain a key differentiator in a crowded market, with AI helping to drive innovation and allow brands to offer unique and personalised experiences that stand out.
“By leveraging AI-driven insights, brands can craft tailored campaigns that resonate deeply with their audiences. To enhance this, contextual tools will be crucial for aligning content with evolving consumer behaviours, creating more meaningful interactions and relevancy. Furthermore, leveraging innovative ad formats with Connected TV (CTV), shoppable ads, and interactive video experiences will emerge as powerful tools for engaging consumers. These formats cater to the growing demand for immersive content, allowing brands to deliver captivating storytelling and facilitate seamless interactions within the consumer journey.”
“Focusing on these advancements will allow brands to build stronger connections and engage consumers more effectively in 2025 and beyond.”
Cory Munchbach, CEO, BlueConic
“The media industry isn’t going to die but many big publications urgently need to focus on serving their audiences first. For some, it may already be too late.
“The criticality of delivering a product the audience wants will lead to further fragmentation in media. Yet with this will come the opportunity for better premium products to enter the market that blend programmatic elements for publishers who have the scale to offer it.
“Those without the scale will turn to clean rooms, which offer an opportunity for cross-publisher data cooperatives that can be monetised with brands. We’ll see a similar trend play out as retail media networks (RMN) jockey for position and an entirely new generation of marketers shift budgets based on insights from first- and second-party data.
“The hyperbolic and hypothetical of AI has become a ubiquitous part of business operations, though still experimental and incremental. And for good reason. Privacy. Compliance. Governance. Things that have always been challenging and critical are exponentially more so when AI is involved.
“In 2025, marketing workflows will be transformed by AI. In turn, the way CDPs deliver value will evolve to balance the human element and the automation, the privacy and possibility, and creativity and control. These tensions aren’t new in marketing but have been magnified exponentially by AI. CDPs have a critical role to play in managing these potentially competing priorities so that marketers can harness AI in a way that supports their core jobs to be done in new and improved ways.”
Jaysen Gillespie, Head of Analytics & Data Science, RTB House
“The demise of third-party cookies in Chrome has been on the horizon for years, so it should be no surprise that Google has provided users with more choice. Predictions suggest that 60-80% of users will turn off third-party cookies, influenced by their interest levels in privacy and Google’s cookie dialogue.
“This era of ineffective and unreliable third-party data means that in its place, next-generation AI technologies will drive a resurgence of contextual, page-based targeting. With its ability to make high-quality decisions at scale, AI will redefine precision in digital marketing, ensuring brands thrive despite the industry’s unknowns.
“Once the cookie tidal wave crashes, the “audience buying” model as we know it will be swept away. The focus will shift to building something stronger with first-party data, where audiences will become increasingly valuable. By identifying customers and retargeting ads, particularly through Deep Learning technology, brands can drive conversions, acquire new customers and enhance cross-selling opportunities from related sites.”
Brett Caine, CEO, Airship
“Consumers face increasing advertising, messaging and choices. The challenge for brands is to deliver compelling, immersive experiences wherever customers engage, while inviting them to share what they care most (and least) about. The key, of course, is putting customers in control and demonstrating how data they share benefits their experiences. Customers’ expectations for quality digital experiences often go unmet as marketers struggle to react with real-time, personalised context wherever they interact. The way brands should engage customers is by orchestrating both messages and experiences from a common, real-time data set — seamlessly serving customers and advancing them through the lifecycle in apps, on websites, within physical locations and everywhere in between.”
Tom Butta, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Airship
“While walled gardens are nothing new, the walls keep getting higher — fortified by data deprecation and growing privacy regulations. In 2025, industry giants like Meta and Google will continue to tighten their grip on audiences, keeping more traffic on their pages while scraping content for large language models without an equitable value exchange. The result: plummeting referral traffic and soaring acquisition costs. Now more than ever, brands must prioritise direct customer relationships or risk being disintermediated. Data willingly and simply provided, and purposefully solicited, will be key to unifying experiences everywhere customers choose to interact – on the web, in apps and everywhere in between.”
Jochem van der Veer, CEO, TheyDo
“As more brands start to leverage AI in 2025, CX decisions are going to be more driven by the emotional pulse of customer interactions than quantitative data points. AI processing enables CX teams to finally process and take action from the mounds of unstructured data they have, like customer complaints and feedback. With AI, brands can now tap into real-time emotional insights at scale, helping to uncover the ‘why’ behind customer behaviours.
“Larger enterprises, especially in banking and financial services, are best poised to seize this AI opportunity. While challenger brands may be nimble and previously differentiated by experience, they lack the data reserves of these legacy companies. If brands are smart, they’ll use their proprietary data to competitive advantage, using AI to process their customer’s thoughts and feelings and drive more nuanced, emotion-led CX strategies.
“2025 will be the year brands finally face up to ‘fake’ personalisation. It was recently reported that 81 percent of customers prefer companies that offer a personalised experience, but to date, many personalisation efforts have been shallow. Adding names to emails or retargeting based on clicks barely scratches the surface of true engagement or personalisation.
“’Real’ personalisation goes beyond these tactics. We’re going to see brands shift to situational personalisation, anticipating what people like ‘you’ want in the moment. Instead of relying on basic algorithms or whatever data they can mine from individuals, they’ll adapt based on genuine engagement and context.
“This means reevaluating what it truly means to know customers. Brands will focus less on surface-level interactions and more on meaningful, data-driven connections that reflect real customer intent.
Rob Shaw, MD EMEA, Fluent Commerce
“Businesses will continue to focus on AI in 2025. In retail, AI is being used to deliver personalised and engaging customer experiences: helping retailers understand customer preferences and deliver the right content at the right time. However, while the AI buzz remains, many brands are still in the early stages – with small-scale pilots or proof of concept projects rather than large-scale revenue-generating solutions. The enthusiasm is there, but it’s clear that AI hasn’t fully scaled up to drive major revenue just yet.
“The concern with AI is the potential impact on the workforce: on day-to-day work and changing business processes. AI will evolve jobs, driving us into a period of adaptation. However, while the workforce will adapt with it, it’s important that businesses don’t lean too heavily on automation. There is a certain creativity and human touch that’s crucial for quality and nuance, whether it’s in content creation or customer service, that can’t be easily replicated.
“While AI’s potential is exciting, it’s clear that there’s a need for stronger governance. Whether that governance is applied industry-wide or internally within organisations, it’s important to define clear policies around what’s acceptable in terms of AI usage. This will help address concerns around its impact on departments and job roles.”
Mario Ciabarra, CEO, Quantum Metric
“If we are going to see AI become a foundational technology, then two things have to happen in 2025. First, we need to see more products that change the way business is done, rather than one-off, small increases in productivity. Changing the way consumers interact with your brand has lasting effects and helps exemplify the impact GenAI can have on the rest of the organisation. For example, we’ve already seen the way tools like Gemini and ChatGPT have rapidly evolved their use cases and impact. To keep up with user expectations, other organisations will quickly have to follow suit.
“Second, investments in staff training will need to grow. Unlike other technologies, GenAI is unique in that you can give it the same input multiple times and receive different outputs. The way GenAI processes data requires skilled human assistance to navigate the nuances of its response, along with specific training in prompt engineering. Every member of an organisation will need AI training, and many can expect to see that in 2025. Organisations that exclude training to only specific roles or teams will struggle when it comes to AI adoption, scalability and ROI.”
André Baden Semper, CEO and Co-founder, Nexx360
“Video was the good news story of the latest IPA Bellwether report, with advertisers increasing their budgets for big-ticket video campaigns.
“However, programmatic trading for video ads differs from that of traditional display and requires publishers to adapt from both a technical and organisational perspective.
“Until now they have had two options.
“The first is to adopt the waterfall method: bids for inventory are offered sequentially until the impression finds a buyer. While this model is easy to implement, limited competition reduces opportunities to sell at the best price.
“The second is to use header bidding, which enables publishers to put several buyers in competition simultaneously, thereby optimising their yield. However, competitive bidding via a site’s header, and therefore the user’s device, leads to latency, and sometimes technical difficulties. Publishers are therefore forced to limit the number of buyers bidding.
“However, an alternative has recently emerged in which the competition is organised directly via a mediation layer in the cloud. This approach enables publishers to overcome the disadvantages of both the waterfall and header bidding techniques, and in so doing better optimise their revenues and reduce latency and technical difficulties.
“Our prediction for 2025 therefore is that more and more publishers will adopt video advertising marketing solutions that guarantee a good user experience while also maximising revenues.”
Kyle Hauptfleisch, Chief Consulting Officer, Daemon
“AI is at a crossroads. After dominating the media narrative throughout 2024, the hype is starting to settle, despite ongoing rapid innovations. Businesses have showcased their intent with investments, but many lack the practical use cases or skills to bring these ambitions to life. The result? AI strategies that can stall at implementation, stuck in endless proofs of concept. For the most part, this is rooted in a lack of measurable return, technical bottlenecks or organisational inertia.
“The reality is that AI is becoming smarter in its applications. However, while many businesses have a strategic view of AI, few have access to talent with the “doing” skills to bring these strategies to fruition. This gap is compounded by risk as boards see the value in proofs of concept, but when it comes to full-scale implementation, the comfort of deploying this in a “safe” environment disappears. There is still a lot we don’t know about AI at scale. AI’s value is accelerating in emerging sciences or complex environments like logistics over more traditional businesses. Over time this hesitancy will shift and AI will evolve into a utility: used everywhere yet seen nowhere, like cloud computing or electricity. But for now, there are barriers.
“To see real value from AI, businesses must focus on seamlessly integrating the technology into daily operations to solve real problems. The question isn’t whether AI will deliver on its promise, it’s about which businesses will be able to successfully harness and scale it at speed, as well as understand and govern from an ethical point of view.”
Regina Ye, CEO and Co-Founder, Topsort
“In 2025, retail media, especially applications in grocery, will be increasingly focused on in-store digital integration, combining physical retail environments with advanced targeting and personalisation. As grocers and other retailers incorporate in-store digital signage, interactive displays, and data-driven audience targeting, they’ll create an omnichannel experience that seamlessly connects digital strategies with in-aisle advertising. This evolution, known as ‘Retail Media 3.0,’ will enhance customer engagement, boost sales, and foster deeper loyalty as brands connect with consumers at key decision points in the shopping journey.
“Retailers will need to prioritise data collaboration frameworks that maintain customer privacy while optimising for results, especially as privacy regulations evolve. Solutions such as privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and clean rooms will become the norm, allowing brands and retailers to securely collaborate and build trust. By focusing on compliance and transparency, retailers can foster lasting partnerships with brands, helping retail media to thrive sustainably.
“With new retail media opportunities, smaller retailers will increasingly use loyalty programs as an entry point into this high-growth channel. Loyalty data provides them with a way to create personalised ad experiences, which can attract brand partnerships and drive ad revenue without heavy technology investment. This trend will level the playing field, giving smaller retailers an effective, scalable way to monetise their media presence.
“Super-apps will continue to capitalise on ad revenue, using it to fund additional services that keep users engaged within a single ecosystem. By offering everything from shopping to social features, super-apps will gain a foothold in the retail media space, presenting brands with highly integrated ad opportunities. This trend will drive innovative partnerships as super-apps transform retail media into a revenue engine that supports their expanding service offerings.”
*This article features a combination of Bluestripe Communications (owned by Bluestripe Group, publisher of NDA) clients and external contributors.
