As we move into the new year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the past year in the digital world and to see what 2025 could hold. Over the course of 2024, it’s clear to see that the landscape experienced significant changes and evolution.
3 key paid media insights from 2024
- Programmatic saw Connected TV (CTV) become a dominant player in the video advertising space, with global CTV programmatic ad spending expected to reach $6 billion by the end of 2024.
- PPC saw a shift towards broad-based bidding with Performance Max (PMAX) taking centre stage & broad-match keywords with new and salient changes coming in late 2024 in which PMAX allowed priority ordering vs other campaigns.
- In Paid Social we’ve seen a continued increase in video with 66% of users engaging favourably with short-form video content and the rise of content-creator-led content with 50% of Millennials putting trust in influencer-led content, I suppose we could say 2024 was the year of authenticity across paid social platforms.
The world of digital marketing is always changing, and keeping up with the latest trends while deciding where to invest your marketing budget can feel like chasing a moving target. But don’t worry — that’s where Impression can help! We’ve got you covered with our bold predictions for 2025, helping you stay ahead of the curve and make the most of your budget. Talk with our team.
The (continued) rise of AI
Artificial intelligence has made huge advancements in advertising throughout 2024, driving significant improvements in real-time bidding and audience optimisation, and helping advertisers reduce ad spend wastage by up to 30%.
Looking ahead to 2025, we anticipate a broader array of AI-driven tools becoming accessible to marketers – and increased uptake of existing ones. Advantage+ has enhanced and changed the way we optimise Meta with new tools coming out each quarter to enhance, targeting, image assets to copy. The use of AI in Meta isn’t a new concept, with Advantage+ first launching in 2022, but we’ve seen a considerable push from Meta to use its enhancement tools in the last couple of years.
Personalisation will benefit from advancements in AI, including automated dynamic creative messaging tailored to audience signals, dynamic audience adjustments for optimal campaign performance, and the advanced use of AI to detect and prevent ad fraud.
AI integration in Paid Social will continue to grow in 2025, especially as personalisation in a post-cookie world becomes the norm. Advertisers are adapting to new product features on Meta and other platforms, finding the best ways to engage their audiences effectively.
If we lean to Search, in particular, Google we’ve seen the incorporation of Generative Search, and it’s now taking up a large proportion of search space, especially on mobile. We’re seeing a shift in how Google is surfacing information and this is changing how we’ll need to optimise ads accounts. Data and feeds have forever been at the core of more recent Google products but with this shift to a generative way of serving information, data is going to become an even larger cornerstone of paid search in 2025 too.
Video everywhere
In 2025, 55% of marketers surveyed by Kantar plan to increase investment in TV streaming, fueled in part by the growing uptake in ad-supported streaming subscriptions. In 2024, 56% of new subscribers to platforms like Netflix and Disney+ chose lower-cost, ad-supported options, a trend expected to continue into 2025. This shift is opening up more Connected TV (CTV) inventory availability, offering a cost-effective way to reach engaged audiences on premium platforms.
CTV ads are also becoming more interactive, with features like shoppable ads, integrated QR codes, and gamification enabling brands to drive action within a typically brand-led format. In 2025, brands are likely to leverage these capabilities to deliver unified messaging across display, video, and CTV activations.
Video growth isn’t just driven by TV. Google is pushing advertisers toward YouTube and video placements, with new products like PMAX taking up a larger share of ad budgets. The shift toward visual formats in 2024 signals a move away from traditional search ads to more engaging placements.
In line with increased ad spend, video content production has surged too. brands are increasingly using influencers and content creators to engage customers. Influencer marketing spend, projected at $35B in 2024, is expected to grow to $56B by 2029, with micro-influencers gaining traction as authenticity becomes a key driver of consumer behavior. In fact, 88% of users report buying from brands that present authentic content.
As 2025 approaches, brands will need to continue prioritising creativity and authenticity to stand out. Video placements will take an even larger share of marketing budgets, and those already investing in creative, authentic content will reap the greatest rewards.
Sustainability spotlight
Sustainability in advertising gained significant traction in 2024, with over 80% of companies identifying it as a strategic priority. This mirrors buyer sentiment, with 93% of global consumers wanting to live a more sustainable lifestyle, presenting brands with an opportunity to make an authentic and meaningful connection with their audience. In 2025, we expect a surge in eco-conscious campaigns, driven by broader legislative changes that will affect brands’ ESG priorities. This shift will likely prompt brands to make more deliberate choices about their marketing strategies and ad spend allocation.
We predict a heightened focus on efficient targeting and frequency management to ensure impressions are delivered where they have the most impact, reducing unnecessary ad waste. This will likely result in a broader adoption of carbon measurement tools, such as Scope3, enabling brands to measure and offset the carbon emissions generated by their campaigns. These efforts will mark a significant step toward aligning advertising practices with global sustainability goals.
Consumers are driving this sustainability trend too, with 47% of online shoppers choosing brands showing sustainable efforts over other similar brands, we expect this to continue. This has changed how we advertise using paid media, particularly on social with a recent GWI report demonstrating 52% of social media purchasing a product after seeing it promoted as sustainable. In 2025 we expect this to continue and brands having to show and demonstrate their sustainability to compete in a landscape where it’s increasingly becoming expected over being an extra.
Measurement will become more important
With predicted media spend increasing comes the need for more precise performance measurement. At the end of 2023 we conducted a survey which found that 39% of marketers found it difficult to measure the impact of their marketing channels and we believe this has continued to rise.
Despite the news that Google has extended the life of the third-party cookie, we are not out of the woods in terms of new privacy regulations that impact the data available for measurement.
And we’re not the only ones that are saying this is going to be an ongoing challenge, with Havard Business School suggesting different measurement models such as marketing mix models will become the ‘new gold standard’ for ad measurement in data-constrained online settings.
We predict a rise in alternative measurement methods, such as Marketing Mix Models (MMMs), incrementality tests, or new Multi-touch Attribution (MTA) models, as brands seek more accurate ways to measure holistic success beyond native platform metrics. We know that MMMs are not new but we strongly believe moving from measuring success with attribution to contribution of media channels is going to be key to planning and delivering media efficiently.
Increase in creative-led advertising
Creativity in all forms of paid media will be paramount in 2025 with platforms growing closer than ever with platforms offering similar solutions to advertisers. TikTok has announced it’s breaking into the search world launching TikTok Search Ads, changing the narrative of social ads, and giving brands the option to incorporate search tactics in their social advertising.
On the other hand, Google is shifting its efforts towards creativity, in a juxtaposition and to somewhat challenge the meteoric rise of paid social, Google is putting efforts into YouTube. YouTube is a core platform for Google with it holding 2.49 billion monthly active users, allowing it to compete against other social channels.
We expect the shift to creative-focussed advertising to continue as consumers change how they engage with brands shifting their efforts towards UGC and influencer-led creative. Authenticity is becoming paramount with 88% of users buying from brands showing it’s a key factor to purchasing a product. We know that authenticity and brand investment are key to growing brands and this will become center stage in 2025
With the increase in automation across platforms, there’s less differentiation to how you can activate which we believe means advertisers need to shift focus to what helps them stand out in data and creativity.
In 2025 we’ll see brands and advertisers needing to shift their focus and refocus on creative and storytelling within their ads to help them get a leg up against competition in busy and automated ad auctions.
