Achieving measurable results was the animating force behind advertising and marketing efforts in 2024, as the continued rise of first-party data tied to retail media networks heightened the pressure on ad buyers and sellers.
Meanwhile, Connected TV, the influencer-grounded creator economy within social media, and gaming gained more centrality in the increasingly fragmented media landscape. And of course, the use of artificial intelligence became even more mainstream in both business and personal environments.
In that sense, 2024 was about consolidating past years’ trends. It’s easy to say that 2025 means more of the same. But as with any new calendar, so many wild cards await marketers, publishers, platforms, and consumers.
The biggest guesses revolve around the gradually recovering economy. Global events and inflation-related anxiety may still take some time to dissipate.
For instance, just as we were reporting this story, the Federal Reserve sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling over 1,000 points after signaling fewer rate cuts in the new year. That leads to another easy prediction: turbulence is not over for retailers and shoppers in 2025.
Still, there are cushions the ad industry can count on, sources tell us.
For the most part, the larger changes in commerce and marketing mean that no matter what, we’ll continue to see the bridging of performance-based advertising and brand marketing shape how advertisers and consumers find each other.
Marketing will still be shaped largely by what happens in mobile, particularly with the rise of gaming and social, along with CTV and the pervasive role of artificial intelligence underlying all of it, according to sources we spoke with about their expectations for 2025.
“By 2025, we'll see e-commerce fully embrace advertising in mobile apps as a central performance channel,” says Paul Kennedy, VP of eCommerce at AppLovin. “Retail brands will begin to expand their reach beyond traditional display and social media channels to find high-intent shoppers at enormous scale.”
This transformation is being driven by several factors. For one, the democratization of consumer purchase pathways and the integration of AI into marketing strategies to both create efficiencies in creative production as well as in targeting, personalization, and data analysis.
Up to now, most of the discussion of AI’s impact has been about cost savings and efficiencies. But in 2025, AI will have to prove that it also drives specific results tied to growing leads, engagement, and sales.
As Rafael Vivas, VP Sales, eCommerce at AppLovin, tells it, “AI will transform how direct-to-consumer brands connect with their audiences in 2025. It's not just about understanding customers — it's about anticipating their needs.”
Still, not everyone is convinced about AI’s value with respect to retail media.
Retail media networks are bullish on AI to increase their revenue through improved targeting, hyper-personalized creative, and dynamic pricing – but Dan Mayer, VP of Analytics at independent advertising agency Curiosity, says he sees more hype than advancements. He cites three reasons:
“That’s not to say that AI won’t impact retail media in 2025, but I think it’s much more likely that it will be on the cost-saving side,” Mayer adds. “Retail media campaigns are notoriously labor-intensive to set up and execute. AI can automate most of these tasks from campaign creation to in-flight optimization to post-campaign measurement and even user support along the way. Who knows, maybe there could even be enough cost savings to bring down those CPMs, am I right?”
Barry Frey, DPAA, President and CEO of the digital out of home trade group, the DPAA, naturally sees a mix of digital and physical coming together as the next frontier for retail media.
The shift toward performance-based advertising is particularly evident in the CTV space, which has long eclipsed linear broadcast for all consumers’ viewing habits, and where new technologies are enabling more precise measurement and attribution.
According to Ria Madrid, VP of Advertising Partnerships at CTV distribution platform Wurl, “CTV will further prove its value as a performance vehicle for full-funnel marketing. We'll see ‘t-commerce' adoption grow and become more interactive, with shoppable units continuing to come to market – further showcasing that deterministic attribution on TV is no longer out of reach.”
Mike Caprio, SVP and GM Global Advertising at publisher-focused video platform JWP Connatix, points to a significant transformation in how commerce and video advertising intersect. "2025 sees the fusion of commerce and video as payment processors like PayPal and eCommerce platforms like Shopify enter the fray. Shoppable video—with seamless purchase integrations—emerges as a critical tool for performance-driven campaigns."
The influence of video is being felt on demand-side platforms, which will also play a crucial role in the ad and media industry’s transformation.
Mike Hauptman, co-founder and CEO of AdLib DSP, predicts that 2025 will witness a significant movement in how marketers make their platform selections. “Operational bottlenecks will be eliminated, allowing marketers to become truly DSP-agnostic. This will enable budgets to flow to the best-performing combinations of DSPs and SSPs.”
Naturally, this push toward performance-based advertising comes with challenges.
Alex Li, senior director of Global Non-Gaming AppDiscovery at mobile app marketing platform AppLovin, warns about the continued concerns surrounding the management of brand safety in mobile and social. “As more platforms and channels emerge, keeping ads in brand-safe environments will be a bigger challenge, especially with shifts to more automated campaign optimization.”
One cure for these headaches may lie in the development of more sophisticated AI-driven tools and analytics. Daniel Tchernahovsky, VP of Global Business Development at AppLovin, points to “advancement in technology — on the UA/ad monetization side, as well as on the game development side – that allows for more sophisticated segmentation of users.”
For retail brands, the implications are clear: success in 2025 will require a delicate balance between leveraging new performance-based technologies while maintaining brand safety and consumer trust.
The ability to demonstrate clear ROI through real-time sales measurement, along with higher levels of trust required by brand safety standards, will become non-negotiable, as will the capacity to adapt to an increasingly fragmented but interconnected digital advertising ecosystem.
In a sense, the emphasis on performance and branding provide an impetus to make sure that ads achieve actual results by not abusing consumers’ attention, which can now be easily turned off more and more easily.
“Publishers will face increasing pressure to diversify their revenue streams to balance user experience with profitability,” says Jenn Chen, CRO of JWP Connatix. “With the rise of live shopping and more sophisticated subscription enablement, a mix of ad-supported and direct-to-consumer models will offer greater financial resilience.”
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