From a top-level view, marketing could be bigger than ever in 2025. Global ad spending is projected by GroupM to surpass $1 trillion for the first time, with channels like streaming TV, gaming and retail media continuing to broaden their canvasses for brands.
Even as the macro picture seems robust, the people making the industry gears turn aren’t seeing a corresponding resource windfall. CMOs entered their “era of less” in 2024 while agencies felt worn down by mounting client demands and thin margins. Consolidation is on the horizon in a friendlier environment for M&A, with Omnicom’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group set to shake up the sector.
As marketers try to navigate myriad challenges, including managing data in the face of proliferating regulations, the name of the game is efficiency. Demand for tools that can help work get done with greater efficiency, including generative artificial intelligence (AI), remains high, but execution will require a degree of finesse.
“The indicators are that it’s not going to get easier in 2025,” said Ewan McIntyre, vice president analyst and chief of research at Gartner for Marketers. “The era of less is starting to move into an era of productivity.”
Many other pieces on the board could change in the next 12 months and again alter marketing’s trajectory: Will the tech antitrust crackdown, including the push to get Google to sell Chrome, continue apace? Could TikTok be banned? How will the incoming Trump administration affect consumer sentiment? Below, Marketing Dive breaks down 10 key predictions:
Brands must own their values as consumers feel unseen
Marketers have more information than ever about consumers, but are they actually listening to them? Nearly half (44%) of consumers across geographic, racial and ethnic lines feel ignored by the media and most advertisers, according to research from iHeartMedia and Pushkin Industries. Three-quarters are willing to pay more for brands that share their values, while 72% don’t want to buy products from the advertisers they feel are ignoring them.
“Consumers are clearly telling us they want brands to see them and reach them where they are,” said iHeartMedia Executive Advisor Gayle Troberman. “Consumers are telling us, ‘Don't pander to me when you’re just talking to me. I want to know what you stand for, who you are.’”
To break through in 2025, marketers must build their brands consistently and boldly. Instead of trying to reflect back their consumers' identities, an approach called "mirror advertising" by Paul Prato, executive creative director at agency PPK, who insists marketers should "fearlessly state brand truths."
“When you try to force it to where [brands are] depicting who they think their audience is, or who they want their audience to be … the one thing that suffers is they don’t get to talk about themselves,” Prato said.
For example, Nike’s “Winning Isn’t for Everyone” campaign returned the brand to its core tenet: the spirit of the athlete embodied by its namesake Greek god. While that effort proved divisive, it may paradoxically be the approach needed for a contentious cultural moment.
“This is a moment where folks are really going to be leaning into their values, almost like a renewal of vows,” said Victoria Jordan, general manager of branded content and creative at My Code. “There are brands that have always leaned into embracing what their products solve and universal themes to keep from polarizing consumers.”
Generative AI gets down to brass tacks
Despite the growing generative AI backlash, marketers see the technology as a fixture of the industry that will become more important in 2025, albeit not always in consumer-facing ways. Productivity boosts around campaign briefing, versioning and production and tapping into synthetic audience data were some of the use cases identified by experts.
“The back-of-house examples are the ones that brands can quickly engage with and begin to extract value from,” said Josh Campo, CEO of Razorfish.
Coke’s holiday ad fumble underscored that many consumers still see an uncanny valley effect in AI-generated content, but the campaign also represented an all-in approach many brands will eschew. Instead, AI could be leveraged in a piecemeal, subtle fashion to add in special effects or cut down on shooting time.
“It can’t be about, ‘Hey, we used generative AI.’ In fact, it’s like we’re hiding the generative AI to a degree,” said Chris Neff, global head of emerging experience and technology at Anomaly.
As marketers attempt to refine their AI strategies, they have an overwhelming number of tools to choose from, with major digital platforms, startups and agencies all racing to scale products. The coming year could see some winnowing down of options as hype is traded for a focus on the brass tacks, with larger, more mature AI players likely to win out.
“You will start to see some shake out,” said Campo. “I also think we’re hopefully coming to a close of the period of time when every single product out there got slapped with, ‘Now with AI.’”
CMOs prioritize productivity to manage ballooning remit
Chief marketers are expected to lean further into productivity levers as the role’s mandate of doing more with less intensifies. Hopes of returning to the old ways of operating within a narrow brand-building purview will be set aside if CMOs want to deliver on their ballooning agendas.
“It used to be marketing with a capital ‘M.’ I feel like now it’s marketing, all-caps,” said Biljana Cvetanovski, a partner at McKinsey. “The remit has just exploded.”
Among the most valuable qualities for CMOs will be a collaborative and commercially oriented mindset, said Gartner’s McIntyre. A bigger focus on growth comes as 55% of marketing decision-makers report their campaigns sometimes or always fail to justify their investments, per Gartner.
“With many CMOs, they are afflicted with the same condition, and it’s called FOFO, which stands for fear of finding out,” said Ross Martin, co-founder and president of Known. “It’s not good when you wake up and you find out that you’ve wasted $30 million or $40 million in upper- or lower-funnel spend.”
“[CMOs] are afflicted with the same condition, and it’s called FOFO, which stands for fear of finding out.”
Ross Martin
Co-founder and president, Known
The degree of CMO churn in 2024 was typical, per Spencer Stuart, but many in the role aren’t realizing one of their biggest opportunities with AI. The amount of marketers currently scaling up use cases for generative AI still hovers in the low single digits, according to separate McKinsey findings.
“Everyone is talking about it, but few are doing it well yet,” said Richard Sanderson, a consultant who leads Spencer Stuart’s marketing, sales and communications officer practice in North America, over email.
Social media’s flash-in-the-pan trends cement as marketing moments
The social media landscape faces a wave of uncertainty as a potential TikTok ban looms, the X (formerly Twitter) exodus endures and a focus on AI reaches a fever pitch. However, that hasn’t curbed advertisers’ bets on the channel. Social media advertising spending in the U.S. is expected to top $82 billion in 2025, up from $75 billion the year prior.
As brands search for ways to win on social, deepened relationships with niche creators and bigger bets on social commerce via TikTok Shop are two expected trends, said Christopher Douglas, senior manager of strategy at Billion Dollar Boy. The exec also anticipates that flash-in-the-pan social media moments — “brat summer,” for instance — will be co-opted by more brands to realize earned media potential.
In hopes of reaching coveted audiences like Gen Alpha, brands are also pushing the boundaries of their typical social presence, as reflected in the current focus on “unhinged” content, in ways that could inform long-term strategies.
“Prioritizing long-form content in 2025 will help brands connect with a highly engaged audience...”
Sophie Crowther
Talent partnerships director, Billion Dollar Boy
“I think we’ll start to see more recognition in value placed on showing up for Gen Alpha as very authentically, very raw, very ‘we’re not a brand, we’re a bro,’” Douglas said.
A focus on long-form content is also expected as 70% of marketers plan to increase their production in this area over the next year, according to research from Billion Dollar Boy.
“Prioritizing long-form content in 2025 will help brands connect with a highly engaged audience who actively choose to subscribe to newsletters, watch lengthy videos and opt-in to listen to extended podcast episodes,” said Sophie Crowther, talent partnerships director for Billion Dollar Boy, in emailed comments.
Collaboration is key as first-party data still reigns supreme
Predictions of a cookieless future were dealt a major blow when Google last July announced that it would explore a “new path” around online privacy instead of deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome. For advertisers, agencies and ad-tech providers that had been working for years to determine the future of targeting and tracking, the news was a shock.
“Part of my soul literally did die [that day] because it’s just so unfortunate,” said Mari Docter, senior vice president of data strategy and innovation at indie media buying and planning agency Novus. “But even though cookie deprecation isn't [happening], we still have to future-proof the business to be able to be as effective as we were.”
Regardless of Google’s next steps, privacy regulation is poised to continue to evolve, with or without overriding federal legislation. That reinforces the need to prioritize the safe, ethical collection of first-party data that not only deepens understanding of existing customers, but also the behavior of wider audiences.
"You need to start investing in ‘what am I trying to solve for’ instead of ‘let’s just invest in the clean room.'"
Mari Docter
Senior vice president of data strategy and innovation, Novus
“It makes the job of a marketer a little bit more complicated, but also more fun, because you’re kind of going back to the old school way of marketing, where you would use geography, ZIP code, DMA. We were on one-to-one [targeting] for so long, and now we have to start unraveling that a bit,” Docter said.
The continued rise of data privacy concerns and need for first-party data could put data clean rooms back in the spotlight, but marketers must understand that they are not a panacea: data clean rooms that are just tech for tech’s sake can lead to “analysis paralysis,” Docter explained.
“You need to start investing in ‘what am I trying to solve for’ instead of ‘let’s just invest in the clean room,’” Docter said.
Loyalty and marketing get further in sync
The rush to wrest greater control over first-party data has led brands to rethink marketing technology related to customer relationship management (CRM), customer data platforms and the partnership ecosystem that supports those functions. Marketing teams will need to get more creative in their approach to previously unsexy retention channels like email to stand out from the competition in 2025.
“There’s an increased focus on CRM and loyalty interacting and trying to get your past customers to purchase from you again,” said Marco Bustamante Nadeau, associate director of marketing at the online grocery marketplace Hive Brands. Nadeau added that more marketers are starting to take a brand-centric view of CRM and loyalty to deliver on value for customers who are willing to fork over their information.
That said, eight in 10 business-to-consumer CMOs in the U.S. still rely on separate data sources for loyalty and marketing technology, according to Forrester Research. Eliminating channel redundancies could be a relatively easy way to drive more efficiency in the months ahead, among other paths to unification.
“The real play is to synchronize the data that underpins the loyalty and marketing efforts: sharing the customer insights and the engagement history and having a consistent, robust profile of the customer,” said Joe Stanhope, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.
The convergence between marketing and loyalty is also reformulating marketers’ approach to data and activation partnerships, according to Stanhope. Agencies have been stepping up their services in areas like CRM to meet the needs of CMOs who are seeing more data-related duties land in their wheelhouse.
“It signals, in some ways, a broader shift in marketing strategy, thinking about customer journeys as opposed to, say, just a campaign mentality,” said Stanhope.
Measurement market remains competitive but Nielsen holds on
The move to a multi-currency landscape in the TV ad market is happening. Two in three advertisers agree that multi-currency is the future, and three in five have used alternative currencies for TV transactions in the past 12 months, per Advertiser Perceptions. But despite the increased adoption of alternative currencies, the length of time it’s taken to get there may have given erstwhile monopoly player Nielsen time to adapt.
“There hasn’t been this inflection point, where [advertisers say], ‘light bulb, I get it now,’” said Erin Firneno, senior vice president of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions. “The future isn’t going to be Nielsen-or, it’s going to be Nielsen-and.”
That “and” will be settled by a handful of currencies that advertisers are likely to select depending on the goals of each campaign, whether they’re looking to measure advanced audiences, outcomes or other KPIs. The larger opportunity will come through the integration of first-party data into third-party trading currency, explained Video Advertising Bureau CEO Sean Cunningham.
"The future isn’t going to be Nielsen-or, it’s going to be Nielsen-and."
Erin Firneno
Senior vice president of business intelligence, Advertiser Perceptions
“That gets you closer to where you want to get to as a marketer: that the measurement can tie directly to a lot of your top KPIs and isn’t a surrogate or a proxy,” Cunningham said. “It’s got more of a bold line feeling towards your KPIs, and not so much a dotted line feeling.”
The challenge to Nielsen’s monopoly power should not be understated. Census-based players now have productive relationships with agencies and advertisers and hold real competitive power. The lack of an agreement between Paramount and Nielsen is a strong indicator of the state of the marketplace, Cunningham said.
“We’ve got a really good, competitive marketplace going forward for the future, and we couldn’t really say that in 2018 or 2019,” the executive said.
Branded mobile apps get a welcomed jolt from generative AI
Mobile marketing is primed for growth as U.S. ad spending on the channel is forecast to top $228 billion in 2025, with the majority of spend (82.3%) coming from in-app advertising. An emphasis on branded apps themselves has simultaneously come into sharper focus for companies like Nordstrom, Burger King and Chick-fil-A.
Branded apps offer brands a range of opportunities for engaging with consumers, though they’ve hit the market less often in recent years than they did in their 2010s heyday, likely due to the difficulty and costs tied to their development and subsequent updates. However, generative AI is poised to deliver a welcomed boost to the channel to streamline app creation and make for smoother, more robust updates, explained Nicole Greene, vice president and analyst at Gartner.
“Marketing is being enabled through a lot of these advances in generative AI for code creation, but also low code and no-code capabilities, so they can actually do more faster,” said Greene.
Generative AI offers brands the chance to enhance app capabilities through more immersive experiences, like chatbots and voice assistants. It also could help reduce development costs and has already led to an increase for in-housing, Greene said.
Greene also expects app partnerships — which marketers are no stranger to — will remain relevant as marketers look to engage consumers where they spend their time.
“That partnership ecosystem makes a lot of sense when it comes to monetization and new revenue streams too, because you’ve got to be where your customers are — don’t try to pull them out into something they’re not already using,” Greene said.
Sports marketing fragmentation continues
Sports continue to be a way for marketers to reach large live audiences, a goal that has become increasingly difficult as consumers spread their time across a growing number of platforms and professional sports leagues. While the NFL, NBA and other major leagues continue to draw interest, fandom is growing for women’s and emerging sports, opening new opportunities for advertisers. In 2025, marketers are likely to pay close attention to where they spend their sports marketing dollars as they chase fans.
“Viewer fragmentation is a fact of life for the foreseeable future as sports leagues have carved up their TV rights across broadcast and streaming platforms, and across multiple media entities,” said Sarah Bolton, executive vice president of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions.
Agency network Dentsu’s partnership with Sports Innovation Lab, which unites audiences across leagues, is one example of how the marketing industry is trying to minimize the effects of fragmentation. Similarly, GroupM launched a dedicated marketplace for women’s sports, with notable advertisers including Mars Wrigley and Adidas helping it to quickly ramp up the volume of spend.
“The popularity of women’s sports isn’t going anywhere, and will continue to be robust,” said Bolton. “Last summer’s Paris Olympics was yet another proof point that female athletes are marquee headliners fans want to follow across multiple sports, and smart programmers are responding in kind. We've also seen top ad agencies stand up women's sports practices in the last year, along with specialized sports agencies which will help ensure ad dollars continue to flow toward women's sports and star athletes.”
Trump’s second term causes uncertainty
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office could have a resounding effect on the marketing industry. There is significant anxiety that the economic policies Trump has proposed could negatively impact the economy and worsen inflation. His proposal for hefty tariff increases on imported goods could lead to increased prices for consumers, tightening wallets even further. In such a scenario, marketers could be forced to tighten budgets and focus on channels promising a high return on investment, at the expense of experimenting with less mature marketing options.
Regulatory changes are also likely to pose difficulties for marketers. During his first term, Trump signed a bill overturning a significant number of internet privacy protections. What he will do in his next term has yet to be seen. However, marketers should be prepared to adjust to even more changes in privacy regulations.
Brand safety is another area marketers will likely need to focus on. Some may feel hesitant to advertise through certain news channels out of fear of appearing next to controversial topics. Alternatively, a second Trump presidency could drive a ratings boost for news media, similar to 2016. Meanwhile, social media presents its own set of problems. Trump’s “free speech” approach combined with Elon Musk’s control of X could lead to platforms loosening their monitoring policies, heightening brand safety risks for marketers.
