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Episode 94

Marketing Predictions for 2025

Last year, marketers were hopeful that the U.S. would embrace marketing effectiveness. Instead, economic uncertainty drove a focus on short-term gains. What does 2025 have in store? And which 2024 predictions actually came true?

In this episode, Elena, Angela, and Rob review their 2024 marketing predictions before sharing the shifts they believe will shape marketing in 2025. From the growing importance of zero-click content to a complete reimagining of targeting strategy, hear how major changes in technology and consumer behavior will force marketers to adapt. Plus, learn why 2025 might be a particularly turbulent year for agencies. (But in a good way).

Topics Covered

• [01:00] Grading 2024's marketing effectiveness predictions

• [04:00] How TV and offline channels performed in 2024

• [07:00] The current state of AI in marketing

• [12:00] Why zero-click content will dominate 2025

• [16:00] Agencies face an identity crisis

• [19:00] The case for rethinking targeting strategy

• [24:00] Personal predictions for 2025

Resources:

Kantar’s Marketing Trends 2025

2024 Predictions: Cheers to 2024 Marketing Trends

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

VP Marketing

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Transcript

Elena: Hello, and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.

Angela: Hello.

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business. Today we're making some marketing predictions for 2025. We did this last year, too. So we'll start by reviewing those predictions that we had for 2024 and grading them based on how well they did or did not pan out.

So let's start with last year. I can go first. I predicted that marketing effectiveness would become a priority in the United States. And a clear thought leader would emerge, like Ritson for the UK, or Sharp for New Zealand.

Rob: They're from the same place?

Elena: No, don't say that. I don't think that's well received. Apparently, Canadians feel the same way about being called Americans from the United States.

Rob: I like to think of them as our 51st state, but they don't like that joke.

Elena: For my grade, for the first part of my prediction, which would be that marketing effectiveness becomes more of a priority, I gave that a B minus, and I have reasons for it. I think that it might have been a bigger conversation. I still think that. It came up a lot more, like we kind of talked about that in the last episode.

We've seen more articles about it or people posting about them or people talking about it. But I actually think one reason that maybe it didn't gain as much steam is just the economic reality in the United States this year. It seemed like there was a lot of focus on short-termism, people not really knowing what's happening. And that doesn't really help marketing effectiveness.

Elena: I think sometimes we just revert back to things we've always known. And I also thought that this year we interviewed a bunch of really smart marketers and it was clear that they all were familiar with marketing effectiveness, but there wasn't a real clear answer for the definition. People had a lot of varying definitions for it. So I think the awareness is still lower than we'd like it to be, but not quite enough.

And then for clear thought leader, I actually just failed that one. Because I don't think there is one. We have legendary marketers in the US like Philip Kotler, Mark Pritchard. Even like John Lombardo, Peter Weinberg, they're becoming more well known. I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think there's anyone who's currently advocating for effectiveness and really known for it like Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp, Peter Field.

Rob: There is Elena Jasper.

Elena: No, we're not going to put that out there. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not that guy, but I don't think there's anybody yet in the US. But any disgruntled professors out there listening to this podcast, consider becoming a marketing effectiveness influencer.

Angela: It feels to me a bit like we're getting a slow rumble in the US but no big bubbles yet surfacing. Gotta start somewhere.

Rob: Yeah. But in terms of marketing effectiveness, I think you're being a little hard on yourself. Some of the headlines that had percolated, like around P&G and Disney moving away from kind of the purpose-driven type practical marketing effectiveness approaches. And it does seem like I'm with you - the realities of the market make people get a little bit more deterministic in terms of their outcomes, but that also forces some good marketing effectiveness conversations at the same time.

Angela: It's also really hard to just get a blink on what the rest of the world sees, like, when you're in your own algorithm within LinkedIn. We see a ton of it, but we're content creators in this space and talk about it a lot. So it's a little hard to get a read on it.

Elena: All right, Ange. What about your prediction?

Angela: Yeah, mine falls similar to that vein, just in terms of, as I created this prediction last year, I don't know that I was really thinking through how easy or difficult it would be to declare victory on the prediction or not. So mine was the power of TV, and just the return to offline marketing. At the time, there was a lot of talk about third-party cookie deprecation, and being an election year, of course, there was a flood of investments into TV and I don't think I was considering that.

So we'll have a couple of months before we're able to pull those political dollars away from the totality of 2024 spend levels. And so, for this one, I'm just sort of leaning on what I saw in the marketplace. I think we continue to have more examples of how brands like Airbnb, Adidas this year, and Abercrombie and Fitch comes to mind as a brand that was evangelizing a rebalance of funnel investment with top funnel getting more than maybe they were prior.

Angela: Have either experienced significant business impacts due to shifts in top of funnel investments. I think we've continued to hear of the cautionary tales of brands that have over-invested in bottom of funnel as well. And I think that's just due to ongoing digital fatigue. Digital performance channels have become over-saturated. They're expensive and just less effective. And TV has offered brands a way to build trust.

Digital can be efficient from a reach perspective, but it really doesn't match TV's ability to really reach those mass audiences quickly. I do think that there's a lean more towards broad versus tight targeting. And so TV is helpful in that regard. And then I think brands are realizing that TV is essential or top of funnel, I guess, just for balancing short term and long term brand building efforts.

So I had a hard time rating that one, I guess, maybe I'd give it a C average, like it feels like there was, but we had a lot of political investment in television and top of funnel as well. So a little hard to get a good measuring stick on that one.

Rob: CTV though, definitely took a nice pop, right? I was reading something about 20 percent growth in 2024. So that's exciting.

Angela: Yep. Definitely. It's still second to linear, but it's growing. No question.

Elena: And that's allowing more brands to test TV. I agree. It's hard to know exactly how that did before we get more data. And with the election, it seems like TV was king. However, I will say from just like a new business marketing end of things this year, we had a lot more marketers just interested in TV that wanted to work with us.

And unfortunately, we can only work with a small kind of subset of brands. However, a lot of marketers wanted to talk about TV. A lot were interested in TV and a lot of people were even early for TV, but they're thinking about it and they're planning for it and they want to build their brand and they like the longer term effects of TV and they see the advantage there.

So I definitely noticed that just from a new business side of things. It seems like more marketers of all sizes are interested in television, which is nice. All right. Rob, what do you have?

Rob: All right, well, I just did a terrible job. I was focused on AI and in particular, artificial general AGI. I said everyone would be talking about AGI in 2024 and still nobody's talking about it. So everything's really been centered around narrow AI, really looking at the practical applications, which of course is important, but AI achieving this greater level of sophistication. A lot of what was talked about was talking about ChatGPT potentially being AGI, which now they're kind of backing down from. So now everybody's kind of kicking the can to 2025 and beyond. I was wrong. I don't even know if people still use it. Have you guys ever heard conversations where people are talking about AGI?

Elena: I've heard it on the Artificial Intelligence Show podcast, but I mean, he talks a lot about AGI, but I think when he's brought it up, it's been more in reference to the fact that they still talk about that as like a distant goal at OpenAI, but it's not there, right? That's how it comes up.

Rob: Right.

Angela: It feels like there's been more focused around agents.

Rob: The agentic future. All right, my second prediction, which was a two-inch putt, and I did make the putt, but it's not like it was some great level of Nostradamus going on here, which was Apple would enter the AI arena. They were completely lost from the conversation in 2023. And obviously they unleashed their Apple Intelligence to what has really become a ho-hum release. I think for most people going, where is this? But they did finally enter the space and they entered it using ChatGPT as their surrogate. So they're not even coming out with their own AI product, but they are in the conversation, but that most valuable technology company in the world having some perspective on AI is not a massive surprise.

Elena: But Rob, wasn't there something recently with the shipments that Apple was a part of something new?

Rob: Well, it was actually just the fact that they're using ChatGPT, which was already known. It's just now Siri is powered by ChatGPT. So she's not completely stupid.

Elena: Siri is so bad.

Rob: She now answers questions. But they're basically taking the same approach that they have done with the browser. People were wondering if they would get into the search engine business and they never did release a search engine. They just have Safari, which can tap into Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, whatever you want. And it looks like they're going to do the same approach.

As of right now with AI, there's still rumblings that they might be coming out with their own models, but right now they're going to buy the best and put it in the best hardware on the planet, which many argue is actually a really smart approach. Let everyone else fight it out. You can go wherever your heart desires.

Elena: I think improving Siri is no small thing either. I mean, personally, I find that very valuable because Siri is infuriating. So getting that done through a partnership is nice. All right. Well, let's get into the main topic, which is 2025. So what are our predictions for when this goes out, it will be 2025?

Back in 2023, I kicked off this section by sharing a third party's opinion and I thought maybe we should start there this time too. So this year I chose Kantar. They have their marketing trends for 2025, and I'm not going to go through all of them because that would take a while, but I chose a couple to highlight and the first is Generative AI Transparency.

So they talked about generative AI enthusiasm being very high. 68 percent of marketers are positive about it, but consumer trust in AI-generated ads remains low at 43 percent. However, as capabilities grow, marketers are going to prioritize trustworthy data and transparency in AI applications. Which makes some sense.

I do wonder with the consumer trust in AI-generated ad stat. That one I take with a grain of salt because really great generative AI ads, we won't know that they're AI. So if you ask the consumer, how would you feel if you saw and recognized an AI ad? Probably wouldn't love it. How much are they really going to know? Eventually you won't really be able to tell the difference.

But anyway, second and personal to us, TV advertising evolves. So balancing your broadcast and streaming investments will be crucial. Streaming is going to keep gaining traction. 55 percent of marketers plan to increase their investment there, but diversity in video formats will be important.

Creator-led communities was one of their predictions, that the creator community continues to grow. And this is a funny stat - offering brands a 4.85 times better distinction. Which I love a stat, but I have no idea how they got to a stat like that. And finally, I'm sure we've all heard a lot about retail media networks.

They're going to be critical next year, which I'd argue they already are this year. And they're going to account for nearly a quarter of US media spend by 2028, which is crazy just how big retail media networks are becoming. So that's what Kantar is focused on. Let's make some predictions of our own. Ange, do you want to kick us off?

Angela: Yeah, I'll start. So I think the year of 2025 is going to be very focused on zero-click content. We are seeing this already. So what does that just to ground everyone? It refers to the content designed to deliver value directly in the platform where your user encounters it without them having to click through to another site or destination.

This trend is growing very rapidly across platforms like Google, of course, but also Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, optimizing for user retention and prioritizing content that keeps audiences engaged within their ecosystems. And so, for example, when someone perhaps searches how to optimize CTV advertising, Google might use its AI systems to display a featured snippet that answers the query pretty concisely pulling data from authoritative sources.

So, when we think about zero-click content, it aligns with this evolving consumer behavior that really prioritizes convenience and immediacy. And when I think about what do brands need to be thinking about, with less emphasis on direct conversions and more folks just looking for that quick content, brand becomes really important. How do we ensure that you still have that long term brand equity to ultimately get you through to your consumer website?

If someone's searching, what's important when I think about purchasing new running shoes, I want to be on Hoka or On Cloud or whatever, versus that content being pulled through generatively into Google and that consumer getting that insight there. How do you still get that sale? So that brand and brand value, building trust, remaining relevant in the mind of your consumer is super important.

Rob: That's a really good one. You've heard the reimagining of the acronym of SEO to now search everywhere optimization, and that just makes so much sense with what you're saying.

Elena: The bottom of the funnel has never been a good place to be battling, but I agree with you. I think that it's going to become more and more important for brands to not just compete there. And I'd just like to say I'm so glad that I get to market and sell something that makes so much sense because TV makes so much sense.

Elena: It just keeps making more sense because it's such a great way. If we were talking about how hard it's going to be to get people's attention, you're going to want channels that are going to help you have people go more directly to you and TV does that.

Rob: Just glad you clarified that Elena, because I didn't realize you liked TV.

Elena: It's kind of my personality at this point, but it makes so much sense. It's just the best.

Rob: All right. Well, I am sorry to say that I'm going to use one of the most uncomfortable words in the English language to describe my prediction for 2025. 2025 is going to be the puberty era for agencies. That is my prediction.

Angela: Can we just pause and like, Elena and I even guess what that means at this point?

Elena: There's a lot of growth, but it's awkward.

Angela: Yep. And there's a lot of change happening. And so does this lean into AI? Rob has to be talking about AI, obviously, he always talks about AI and so the agency model is going to need to transform just with everything becoming more fast, easy, and efficient through that.

Rob: See, this is good branding, right? Good branding. You read into it. You know, yes, the puberty era of agencies, things are about to get really awkward. People are going to be having incredible identity crisis. You're going to see crazy moves like we just saw with Omnicom buying Interpublic Group, right?

Like going, we got to figure ourselves out, and we don't know what it is and we're not going to get an answer in 2025. That's why I'm saying it's the puberty era. It's not going to be till 2026 where things start to shake out. And I think the agency landscape is going to be going, what do we do about billable hours?

Rob: I mean, these are all things we've already been talking about, right? But nobody's figured it out. How do we add value in this age of AI to our clients? Like, how do we deliver real value, and there's going to be a lot of bold moves. There's going to be a lot of layoffs and I don't think it's because AI is stealing people's jobs.

It's because agencies are having to reimagine how they deliver value. And sometimes the people that are delivering the current value aren't going to be the people that are delivering that value in the future. So we're going to be seeing a lot of headlines, but I think the biggest part of it is I don't think we're going to figure it out, but I think it's going to be exciting.

I just think those formative years, we're going to learn a ton. We're going to try a lot of things. We're going to make a lot of mistakes. And that's actually going to be a good thing. Because we're going to learn how to serve our advertisers better by going through that process.

Elena: I like that prediction. And I think that there's going to be more agencies trying to copy our business model. Like, thank goodness we don't have a billable hour model. Because I think brands are more and more going to stop seeing the value in that. I do like the analogy, Rob, it's like AI is like the growth spurt that I went through in 7th grade when I became 6 feet tall. It just, it's coming, you can't stop it. It's a little painful. There's nothing you can do about it.

Rob: You got to figure it out. You can't shrink. You gotta figure it out. Absolutely.

Angela: It's going to be good growth. Everyone getting rooted more in value creation, I think is a great thing.

Elena: Agreed. All right. So I think my prediction last year was also a little hopeful and this one might be a little leaning on hope, but I'm going to stick to it. Yes. I believe that brands and marketers will rethink targeting in 2025. Let me make the case.

So this has definitely been becoming a greater topic. It gained some steam in 2024, and I think it's really going to become a giant conversation in 2025 for a number of reasons. First, I'll just give our own experience. We ran a brand study a couple weeks ago, and one of the questions we asked a big group of marketers was, when you invest in a new channel, what are you looking for?

Like, what causes you to choose to invest in one? And the number one thing was improved targeting, followed by better reach, which is so funny. It's like marketers are kind of hypocritical, but we love targeting. Like we're still looking for new types of targeting, but there is this misunderstanding of what really drives growth for marketers and its reach.

It just drives greater returns than targeting and this isn't revolutionary, but it's still contrary to how many marketers approach campaigns. And I think it's because more and more marketers came up in digital. We can target people that fall perfectly within our ICP. So now reach is sort of a dirty word, or at least it's ineffective.

So we see this firsthand with TV and TV isn't the only channel where reach is super helpful, but marketers, they max out digital. They turn to TV and they want to target it just like digital. And they're trying to avoid waste, but you're likely better off maximizing reach than paying extra to target.

You're going to build more mental availability. You're going to build your share of voice, your market share. You're going to make sure you don't miss your customers. You might not even know exactly who all your customers could be, and you're going to reach more potential customers. And that comes back to the 95-5 rule.

Most importantly, it reduces your cost and delivers a higher ROI. And listen, that point of view, yes, I'd say it's still contrarian, but it's becoming more popular. I'm seeing it on LinkedIn this year. I recycled the same post about reach multiple times. And by the end of the year, it was way more popular than the beginning of the year. I had a lot more support.

Yes, it's like each post got better and better. And I think it's because of a lot of reasons. It's because of the cookie deprecation. I think that the rise of offline marketing and TV and maxing out on digital and that reality has been a big thing. Just the knowledge of inaccurate third-party data. Bob Hoffman's done great work against ad fraud.

I think sometimes you talk about reach and people say, you can't advertise to everyone. And that's true. Like reach has to be sophisticated and targeting on TV is different than digital, but most of the time a brand would be better off expanding your target than contracting them.

And I think that marketers are going to start to talk about this more. We see it firsthand with the clients we work with, like contextual, like broader targeting, it works better. Then when stuff works better, you're going to spend more money on it. Because at the end of the day, that's what marketers want. We want to drive better results and more revenue for our brands. And it's becoming more popular. And I think that it's going to really become a hot topic in 2025.

Angela: I think that's a great one. I think there's a lot of data that suggests that we're at least going to get to the low rumble in 2025. Maybe it really takes off in 2026, but it's just becoming harder and harder to do hyper-targeting effectively anyway. Perhaps it's forced upon more marketers than it's ever been. But I think that more than not are going to find that it can be a really successful avenue to growth.

Elena: And it's tough because it is nuanced, right? There are certain types of targeting, like contextual or targeting by location, that make a lot of sense. The real thing for me is like the cost and inaccuracy is what a lot of marketers aren't aware of. And we target because it feels better. But that's what I'm so passionate about and I'm telling you if it doesn't become a big deal next year I'm gonna make it a big deal. It's like my personal mission is to talk about the value of reach because I just think that it's so important.

Rob: And coming full circle, Elena Jasper, the thought leader in effective marketing.

Elena: No.

Angela: I actually hope the world stays confused about this one. The longer they're confused, the more contrarian our position. When folks come over and realize the light, it opens up a whole new trajectory of growth. So it just makes us more competitive. So let's stay confused world about targeting, hyper-targeting.

Elena: And TV advertising just sucks a ton. You definitely shouldn't do it.

Angela: Right. I know it's the worst.

Elena: Leave TV for our clients. I think about that sometimes. Like I was talking to a marketer the other day and she's like, well, none of my competitors are on TV. I'm like, you got to get on TV before they figure it out. Like, that's such a good sign. All right. Final question. What is a personal prediction or maybe just like a hope that you have for 2025?

Rob: All right. Well, I love movies. I really like James Gunn who did the Guardians of the Galaxy. He just has a really great way of telling a story. And I believe that he is going to do something truly amazing. And that is save Superman because Superman has had a bad rap for a long time. His brand has been mismanaged. And now that James Gunn has taken over the DC universe, I think that by the end of 2025, we're going to be going, I can't wait for the next DC movie to come from James Gunn and what he did with Superman.

Angela: Okay.

Rob: That is my prediction as a nerd.

Angela: Yeah, I'm a nerd, but I can't thoughtfully respond to your DC prediction. I just am not in that world. It's a different type of nerdism.

Rob: Oh, it's going to be so good. It's going to be so good. They just released the trailer yesterday. Check it out. It's going to be some good stuff.

Elena: So mine, I had a hard time with this too. I was trying to think of something kind of fun. So I was looking up, okay, what's going to happen next year? Is there anything fun we have to look forward to in 2025? And I'm a big fan of space. I don't know if you two think space is cool, but I love space. I love watching the rocket launches, seeing what everybody's doing. And supposedly, we're going to have a record number of orbital launches next year, and we're going to be able to look at the moon more, Mars, like a low earth orbit, which I guess is significant.

Elena: So I'm going to predict that most people are going to become interested in space. It's going to become much more of a topic. Did you see that rocket launch? Did you see what they discovered on Mars? I guess it's just going to become more in the cultural zeitgeist, just the discussion of space. That's a good one.

Rob: Yeah!

Angela: Yeah, mine's a little weird too. It's related to Rob. I have more and more been using my ChatGPT app in voice mode, like when I'm driving around.

Rob: Yes.

Angela: Having conversations. So I was thinking about that synthetic approach. And my personal prediction is that Rob in 2025 goes full out Joaquin Phoenix in the movie "Her", not with an AI girlfriend, but I think he might replace us, Elena, with a synthetic friend.

Rob: You know what? I think it's already happened. Ever since they introduced Santa mode on ChatGPT, I can't stop talking to Santa. So I think it's happening.

Angela: Rob's synthetic friend is gonna be nicer than we are. He or she won't ridicule him for his love of White Castle cheeseburgers and the like.

Elena: AI is always trying to please you. I think Rob needs some constructive criticism.

Angela: Well he has that in both you and me.

Rob: I know exactly. I got enough of that.

Elena: I'm not gonna lie when the Notebook LLM thing came out we were sending it around. I'm like alright. Well the podcast was fun, but this is a lot better than anything I'm able to deliver to people.

Elena: Happy new year. I think that wraps us up.

Rob: This might be the first episode where you completely cut me out.

Angela: Shut up. Whatever.

Rob: I mean, you're going to go, okay, right, yep, line has been crossed.

Angela: Well, maybe by the end I'll have a different prediction, which is that by the end of 2025, we don't have Rob on the show.

Rob: You already used that one last year.

Angela: Did I? Okay. Probably did.