Fragmentation in the marketing industry isn’t new—but the pressure to make faster, smarter decisions in today's increasingly complex landscape is. In this episode, Greg Dolan, CEO and co-founder of Keen Decision Systems, joins host Noor Naseer to discuss how marketing mix modeling (MMM) is evolving to meet these challenges.
Greg outlines how breaking down marketing silos with a top-down and bottom-up approach can drive better decisions, collaboration, and results across teams and organizations. He and Noor also explore why real-time insights and holistic measurement are critical in a world of shrinking budgets and exploding channels.
From AI advancements to regulatory crackdowns, the biggest changes in advertising often start with Big Tech.
While the industry remains as complex and fragmented as ever, the major players—Google, Meta, Amazon, and the like—have a significant influence on how advertisers work and influence the trajectory of the entire industry. For marketing leaders, keeping up with the latest Big Tech developments is essential to understanding where the industry is headed, crafting forward-looking strategies, and staying competitive.
To that end, we’ve compiled this running list of the most important Big Tech news that advertisers need to know, with key details and analysis to help marketers thrive in an ever-evolving environment. Bookmark this page and check back often for the latest.
In the latest chapter of AI’s transformation of search engine marketing, Google recently rolled out AI Mode to all US users. Like AI overviews (AIOs), AI Mode offers a more conversational search experience, delivering AI-generated responses that pull together information from multiple sources to provide greater breadth and depth. Unlike AIOs, however, users aren’t automatically opted in to AI Mode—rather, it’s presented as an option that searchers can choose to engage with.
Google’s immersive search experience is already raising concerns around visibility, while some publishers have gone so far as to characterize its impact as downright traffic theft. While the feature is still new and will doubtless evolve over the coming months, marketers would do well to track how it optimizes for citations and begin to adapt their content strategies accordingly. For example, SEO strategies should shift beyond traditional ranking goals to prioritize visibility within AI Mode’s responses.
On the paid side, AI Mode reflects a broader shift toward more automated, AI-driven ad platforms that require less manual setup from advertisers. “AI Mode represents a new era in advertising, where machine learning plays a central role in audience targeting, creative iteration, and performance optimization,” says Heather Crider, VP of Search Media Solutions at Basis. To succeed in this new era, Crider notes that advertisers should prioritize collecting clean first-party data to make sure Google’s AI tools have high-quality inputs to work with. This will help the systems drive more accurate targeting and improve overall campaign performance.
While Google works to transform search, Meta is embarking on an ambitious plan of its own: automating nearly the entire advertising workflow, from creative development to targeting and measurement.
In an interview with Stratechery, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described his vision for advertisers to simply state their advertising objective, connect their bank accounts, and let Meta automatically handle everything else. The tech giant says it aims to roll out the new AI-driven system on Facebook and Instagram as soon as next year.
Responses to the announcement have ranged from “Zuckerberg is declaring war on the entire advertising industry” to “AI has been headed in this direction for a while, and human oversight will remain critical to avoiding low-quality content and low-quality results.” Either way, it’s clear that advertisers must proactively prepare to position themselves competitively in a future where AI increasingly shapes nearly every aspect of advertising. To that end, leaders should prioritize ongoing AI education for their teams to ensure employees understand how to work effectively with these tools. Additionally, investing in data consolidation will be essential, as high-quality inputs directly impact the effectiveness of AI systems. At the same time, human creativity and strategic guidance will remain indispensable—ensuring campaigns not only leverage AI’s efficiencies but also connect meaningfully and authentically with their audiences.
As for engaging with these capabilities once they’re launched, it will be important to weigh both the advantages and challenges. “Meta’s vision presents opportunities to boost campaign efficiency and personalized ads in real time and at an impressive scale, especially as privacy restrictions reduce data signals,” says Lauren Kramer, Director of Social Media Solutions at Basis. However, Kramer cautions that overreliance on certain automated tools can limit insights and risk diluting a brand’s unique voice. For this reason, advertisers should exercise careful strategic control when leveraging new advertising functions from Meta to avoid potential pitfalls.
In other Meta news, the company recently announced the launch of an AI superintelligence lab, which will be personally overseen by Zuckerberg. The lab aims to build an AI system that surpasses human intelligence, reflecting the company’s commitment to overcoming Google, OpenAI, and others in the race to create increasingly-powerful AI tools. Meta is pursuing top AI talent from rivals with compensation packages reportedly reaching nine figures.
Whether AI can “surpass” human intelligence—and how such a thing would even be measured—remains unclear. However, Meta’s investment in the lab could result in exciting developments for advertisers. “The technologies that emerge from the lab could drive more efficient algorithmic performance and enable advanced features like predictive results to improve media planning accuracy and forecasting,” says Kramer.
For years, Amazon’s advertising strategy was focused on keeping brands within its own walled garden. However, like some others in the commerce media space, Amazon is now positioning itself as an entryway to the open web, encouraging advertisers to leverage its data beyond Amazon properties to reach audiences elsewhere online via its DSP. “With this move, Amazon is aiming to compete with other DSPs by offering customers expanded access to the open market,” says Soleil Schiller, Group VP of Media Investment at Basis.
The company’s latest pitch deck makes that ambition clear, claiming that its DSP can reach up to 90% of the US population and offering competitive pricing—for example, a 1% tech fee on programmatic guaranteed deals on premium open web inventory. While Amazon’s DSP already commands a strong presence in the market, this move signals an intent to compete more directly with enterprise DSPs, especially by leaning into its unique advantage: commerce data. This shift underscores a broader trend of advertisers evaluating DSPs not just by scale, but by differentiated value—whether that's retail inventory, transparency, integrated cross-channel capabilities, or advanced brand safety controls.
As advertisers adapt to rapid innovation from Big Tech, they must also stay alert to another force reshaping the industry: regulation. The following antitrust lawsuits are ones to keep an eye on, as they could spark significant structural shifts across the digital advertising ecosystem.
In April 2025, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled in favor of the DOJ, finding that Google engaged in a variety of anticompetitive practices to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for display advertising on the open web. However, she dismissed the DOJ’s claim that Google also holds a monopoly in ad networks. Google has said it plans to appeal Brinkema’s ruling.
One month later, the DOJ proposed a sweeping set of remedies—including a dramatic one: forcing Google to sell off AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Given that AdX and DFP are the dominant products in their respective markets, such a divestiture would cause major structural changes in the advertising industry, driving increased competition and fragmentation across the open web. The remedies trial will begin in September.
The adtech case isn’t Google’s only legal battle. In August 2024, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the company is a monopolist in the search advertising space, pointing to exclusive deals with companies like Apple and Samsung as evidence of anticompetitive behavior. Google has said it plans to appeal this decision.
In November 2024, the DOJ proposed a range of remedies for Google’s search monopoly, including one particularly industry-altering option: forcing the company to divest from Chrome. Like the proposal to force Google to sell off AdX and DFP, this would trigger major changes within the search advertising space. The remedies trial ended on May 30th, and Judge Mehta has said that he plans to rule by August of this year.
“The remedies in the Google antitrust cases could drive major shifts across the advertising industry, especially if they lead to divestitures of key Google products,” says Robert Kurtz, Business Outcomes Partner at Basis. “Advertisers should take this moment to diversify their media strategies, ensuring they’re prepared for potential fragmentation and a more competitive landscape.”
Meta is also facing regulatory scrutiny. In 2020, the FTC and a coalition of attorneys general filed two separate but collaborative antitrust lawsuits against Meta, both alleging that the company holds a monopoly in the US personal social networking market.
The trial between the FTC and Meta began in April and concluded in May. The FTC’s main argument was that Meta sought to monopolize the market through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. It’s unclear when Judge James Boasberg will rule on the case, but it could happen before the end of the year.
If the court sides with the FTC, Meta could be forced to divest from one or both platforms—a decision that would have far-reaching implications for advertisers. Fragmentation in the social media space would likely increase, potentially opening up new opportunities for both platforms and advertisers. As with Google’s antitrust cases, marketers should keep a close eye on the outcome and be ready to adapt their media strategies accordingly.
In 2024, Apple was hit with a lawsuit from the DOJ and 16 state and district attorneys general, alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in the smartphone market. In August 2024, Apple filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which Judge Julien X. Neals has yet to grant or deny. While this case doesn’t directly involve advertising, any forced changes to Apple’s ecosystem could impact data access, app behavior, and user tracking—all of which have major downstream effects for marketers.
Amazon, too, is under the microscope. In 2023, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the retail giant, accusing it of holding monopoly power in two key areas: the online retail market for consumers and the marketplace services market used by third-party sellers.
While the FTC asked for a delay in the trial in early 2025, citing “extremely severe resource shortfalls in terms of both money and personnel,” it has since withdrawn that request and the trial is set to begin in September.
The FTC has also filed a lawsuit against Amazon for using dark patterns to encourage users to enroll in auto-renewing Prime subscriptions and to discourage them from canceling those subscriptions.
Marketers should closely monitor these legal challenges, as outcomes could reshape e-commerce competition and consumer experiences—impacting how brands engage with shoppers both through Amazon and across the broader retail landscape.
It’s clear that regulators are pushing back on how much control Big Tech is allowed to have over the digital ecosystem—and while these cases will likely take a while to play out, it’s critical for advertisers to prepare for all possible outcomes. “If any of these platforms are forced to change how they operate, or even break up parts of their business, that could shake things up in a big way,” says Kurtz.
Kurtz recommends that advertisers stay nimble, diversify their media strategies, and scenario plan for how access to data, inventory, and targeting capabilities might evolve if these antitrust suits introduce more fragmentation and competition into the industry.
“More competition and transparency could ultimately benefit advertisers—unlocking new audiences, lowering CPMs, and offering clients a clearer view into what works best for their target audience,” says Kurtz. “But those benefits will only be realized if we’re prepared for them.”
Looking for an easier way to stay current on Big Tech news, while gaining access to exclusive industry research and insights from advertising experts? Sign up for the Basis Scout newsletter to get all of the above automatically delivered to your inbox each month.
Is too much tech undermining your marketing strategy? In an era where there seems to be a tech point solution for everything, hear why it’s critical to build a strong strategic foundation first before layering on technology and automation.
Tash Walker, founder of global research agency The Mix, joins host Noor Naseer to explore how marketers are mistaking data for insight, and why chasing short-term media metrics can derail long-term brand growth. Together, they break down what it takes to craft strong, human-centered strategies in a fragmented media landscape—and why it’s time to rethink how much thinking we’re outsourcing to our tools.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year—for revelers, shoppers, and brands alike.
The holiday shopping season is more than just a time for great deals. It’s when advertisers do some of their most important work, with marketing efforts that can help fuel key sales and end the
year on the right foot.
Looking for an edge with your Q4 campaigns? This in-depth research report, based on a survey of 2,000 US consumers and conducted in partnership with GWI, details 15 trends that are set to shape holiday shopping and advertising in 2025—providing valuable insights into the evolving landscape of holiday shopping and giving you a strategic advantage when planning and fine-tuning your advertising efforts for the 2025 holiday season.
Key findings include:
Want more trends and insights for the 2025 holiday shopping and advertising season? Download the report today.
In 2025, advertisers face mounting challenges. From economic volatility, to increasing job complexity, to a rapidly evolving tech environment, teams are under pressure to adapt in a variety of ways. At the same time, consumers’ digital habits are shifting as quickly as the digital media space is evolving, making it difficult to keep campaigns aligned with where, when, and how people engage online. And though new tools like AI promise automation and efficiency, they can also add layers of complexity when not implemented thoughtfully.
All of these challenges share one thing in common: They’re intensified by fragmented data. Without a holistic view of what’s working, where audiences are engaging, or how budgets are performing, it becomes much harder to make real-time optimizations and build a clear, unified picture of campaign performance. At the same time, without unified data, it can be difficult for teams to incorporate new tools like AI in a way that reduces complexity rather than adds to it.
Data consolidation can provide advertisers with clarity and control, helping them to address many of their most pressing challenges. When teams have clear and actionable data, they can better adapt to external forces like economic uncertainty and shifts in consumer behaviors. And by unifying fragmented data sources into a single view, advertisers gain faster access to insights, reduce manual and redundant tasks, and minimize errors. Perhaps most importantly, they can craft smarter, more agile campaigns—and prove the value of every ad dollar spent.
Fragmented systems and siloed data remain persistent challenges for brands and agencies today.
Agencies, in particular, operate in an increasingly complex tech environment, with more than half of industry professionals saying they use eight or more tools to manage campaigns and 40% juggling 10 or more. This tech sprawl means data often ends up scattered across multiple platforms and dashboards, making it difficult to get a clear, unified view of performance. It also leads to costly inefficiencies, such as fragmented workflows, time wasted on manual tasks, and the inability to adapt in real-time. It’s no wonder, then, that agency leaders rank disconnected systems as one of their top organizational challenges.
Many brands also grapple with data silos and fragmentation. For instance, a brand might use one platform to manage its programmatic buys, another for social media ads, a third for paid search, and a separate analytics tool to track website engagement. Add in data from CRM systems and third-party measurement partners, and it’s easy to see how performance insights can end up scattered across multiple teams and dashboards.
Without a consolidated data strategy, even the most advanced tech stack can work against brands and agencies. Fragmentation breeds confusion and forces teams to spend more time organizing data than acting on it. It also contributes to data accuracy and quality issues, exacerbates challenges with managing large volumes of data, and increases integration complexity—factors that marketers consistently cite as top barriers to effectively leveraging their data and infrastructure.
The costs of disconnected data extend beyond technical headaches—they can also directly impact business outcomes.
Advertising teams managing campaigns across multiple platforms can face slow reporting cycles and inconsistent metrics, making it difficult to see what’s truly driving performance. And with economic volatility prompting more than 60% of advertisers to anticipate reduced budgets in 2025, disconnected data only magnifies the risk of wasted spend and makes it more challenging for leaders to prove out the worth of advertising investments.
For agencies, disconnected data systems can also make it harder to provide the level of transparency clients desire. With over half of agencies saying their client relationships are more strained today than they were two years ago, delayed reporting and unclear performance insights can further erode trust. In this context, the inability to access unified, real-time data doesn’t just impact campaign results—it also threatens long-term partnerships.
When data lives in one place, advertisers can run smarter, more effective campaigns. Instead of toggling between disconnected systems, teams can rely on a single, consolidated view to guide strategy and improve outcomes. And, with a platform that offers access to real-time insights across all digital channels in a single interface—from search, to programmatic, to social, and beyond—advertisers can identify what’s working and what’s not and quickly pivot strategies accordingly.
For instance, consider a team trying to troubleshoot an underperforming video campaign. Without data consolidation, they might spend hours pulling reports from multiple platforms and manually piecing together performance trends. Alternatively, a team that uses a unified, automated platform can surface those insights in real-time, allowing them to compare channel results and shift budget to better-performing formats on the fly.
The benefits of data consolidation extend beyond optimization as well. When a client or stakeholder requests a performance update, disconnected systems can slow the response and heighten the risk of error. With real-time, consolidated reporting, teams can access the right data immediately and respond with confidence.
When data is scattered across disconnected platforms, valuable time and resources are spent simply trying to locate and organize it. Instead of diving into analysis and optimization, teams are stuck performing manual tasks: hunting down metrics from multiple point solutions, stitching them together in spreadsheets, and trying to make sense of it all. This fragmented approach not only slows down workflows but also increases the likelihood of errors that can negatively impact decision-making.
With technology that unifies DSP, direct, search, and social data in one place, advertisers can reduce the time spent wrangling data and instead spend that time analyzing and leveraging it. By freeing up teams to focus on high-impact work, like optimizing performance, refining creative, and developing long-term strategy, data consolidation helps advertising leaders gain both time savings and greater confidence in their decision-making.
AI is swiftly transforming how digital advertisers work. In fact, more than 87% of marketing and advertising professionals believe the technology will radically transform the industry in the next three to five years. But to realize the benefits of AI, advertisers need a strong, consolidated data foundation. Today, 58% of industry professionals identify data quality and accessibility issues as key barriers to adopting AI.
Take generative AI-driven solutions, for example. These tools offer benefits like boosting efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, freeing up teams to focus on higher-impact work, and enhancing creative output. Yet despite their potential, many organizations are struggling to tap into these advantages, with poor data quality acting as a key barrier.
Data consolidation is key to unlocking AI’s full potential. When data is unified and unhindered by human error, AI tools can analyze complete, accurate datasets—thus enabling smarter decision making. Conversely, when disconnected, low-quality data is fed into AI systems, their outputs are unreliable, leading to flawed recommendations. With data consolidation, advertisers create a strong foundation that allows AI to work effectively, enabling teams to operate efficiently and adapt to new innovations and opportunities.
In today’s complex and ever-evolving advertising landscape, data is power. As advertisers contend with tighter budgets, shifting consumer behaviors, and an explosion of new tools, a unified, consolidated data foundation offers a clear path forward, empowering teams to adapt meaningfully and unlock more value from every channel and tool.
Whether it’s optimizing media spend, integrating AI tools, proving campaign value, or tapping into new levels of efficiency, consolidated data leads to better outcomes across the board. By investing in data consolidation now, brand and agency leaders can set their teams up to work smarter and more efficiently, ultimately driving stronger ROI, reducing wasted spend, and laying the groundwork for long-term financial health in a rapidly changing industry.
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Looking for more insights on how advertisers are harnessing AI tools in their workflows? Our report, AI and the Future of Marketing, shares insights on how top agencies, brands, and publishers are using and feeling about the technology today, and how they anticipate it shaping the industry moving forward.
Amidst mounting trade disputes, shifting tariff policies, and a consumer base that’s worried about the future and pulling back on spending, marketing budgets are projected to remain flat this year. And as those budgets come under increased scrutiny, marketing leaders will once again come face to face with that age old conundrum: How to allocate spending between brand awareness and performance.
As marketers rethink their media budgets (and consider how to justify them to stakeholders), the ideal balance between brand and performance often gives way to performance-centric spending that favors short-term gains. But when brand building is sidelined for too long, it can weaken overall performance—in both the short and long-term. By adopting a more integrated “brandformance” approach, marketers can significantly amplify their impact and maximize their ROAS.
Here are six considerations marketing leaders should keep in mind as they strategize around their brand and performance media investments amidst economic volatility:
Marketing leaders have indicated that, ideally, they’d split their budgets equally between long-term brand building and short-term brand performance. Of course, this is a general rule rather than a universal one. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to brand versus performance investment that fits every single type of business,” notes Dan Wilson, Group VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis.
But despite widespread agreement on the value of balance, budgets continue to lean heavily toward performance: In 2024, 69% of marketing budgets were allocated to short-term brand performance, while just 31% went to long-term brand building (compared to a 60/40 split in 2023).
With marketing budgets disproportionately favoring performance even before economic volatility took hold, increased pressure to prove out ROI amidst economic concerns threatens to further disrupt the balance.
Advertisers tend to focus more on performance marketing during times of economic volatility because it offers fast, measurable results. “When revenue is down, performance marketing can help brands to quickly dial it back up,” says Wilson.
Performance marketing also often provides marketers with stronger footing for justifying budgets to stakeholders. “When consumers pull back on spending, budgets are questioned more,” says Kelly Boyle, Group VP of Strategic Business Outcomes at Basis. “In this context, the measurability and short-term wins offered by performance marketing channels make it easier for marketers to justify their spend.”
But just because performance spend is easier to justify doesn’t make it more impactful than brand building. In fact, attribution-based measurement has been shown to overestimate the impact of lower-funnel channels, giving marketers a skewed view of the impact of their spend.
At the same time, effective branding and revenue are “intrinsically linked”—when brand awareness efforts are decreased, revenue inevitably takes a hit.
It’s understandable for brands to focus more on performance when consumers pull back on spending for extended periods of time. However, marketers will likely see that performance suffer when they move away from brand building for more than a few months. “If a brand is only focusing on capitalizing on existing demand without generating demand via brand awareness,” says Boyle, “existing demand is eventually going to run out.”
Beyond balancing media spending between brand and performance, economic volatility can provide key opportunities for brands to capture new levels of visibility and brand affinity amidst broader slowdowns.
“If all your competitors are pulling back spend, maintaining your brand awareness efforts can be an easy way to build up your share of voice without having to spend incrementally,” says Boyle.
Underlying all of these considerations is the fact that treating brand awareness and performance as disparate approaches to marketing is an industry-wide problem that negatively impacts marketers’ ability to drive impact. Balancing the two with an integrated approach has been shown to increase revenue returns by a median of 90%. Conversely, overinvesting in performance can actually decrease revenue returns by 20% to 50%.
To drive revenue effectively and sustainably, advertisers must approach brand -building and performance as interdependent, integrated aspects of their core strategy—even during times when budgets are tight.
As marketing budgets are scrutinized by stakeholders during economic upheaval, reporting becomes an even more critical tool for guiding strategic spend and proving value.
“Measurement across channels and across objectives is a complex task,” says Wilson. “It’s important for advertisers to find the tools that allow them to successfully measure the impact of their investments.”
Robust, comprehensive data and reporting frameworks can help marketing teams clearly demonstrate the impact of their media investments—and craft the compelling, unified stories that are key to earning stakeholder buy-in.
While economic uncertainty and tighter consumer spending may prompt a shift towards performance marketing as stakeholders demand clear ROI, overlooking brand-building for too long is likely to undermine performance. At the same time, advertising leaders aiming for long-term, sustainable growth must treat brand and performance as complementary forces working toward the same goal—regardless of economic conditions.
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Looking for more strategic insights around adapting to economic uncertainty? Check out Tariffs, Cutbacks, and Economic Volatility: 5 Ways Advertising Leaders Can Stay Ahead in 2025 for five essential moves leaders should be making now.
Consumer trends don’t take a summer vacation, and the 2025 holiday season is already coming into focus. This year, shoppers are balancing caution with celebration, and forward-thinking brands and advertisers are planning now to craft intentional campaigns that resonate.
In this webinar, Basis’ VP of Research & Insights, Maggie Nemoy, and Group VP of Strategic Business Outcomes, Kelly Boyle, join host Noor Naseer to deliver and discuss a 2025 holiday forecast—breaking down key trends, strategies, and best practices to help advertisers meaningfully connect with consumers during the upcoming holiday season.
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Looking for more insights to fuel your Q4 planning? Check out our 2025 Holiday Shopping & Advertising Trends Report.
Since ChatGPT’s public debut just a few years ago, generative AI has quickly gained traction as a transformative force both within advertising and beyond.
Brands and agencies have embraced the technology with enthusiasm, using it to drive efficiency, reduce redundant and manual tasks, and unlock creativity. In fact, more than 90% of industry professionals say they use gen AI in their work monthly and more than 70% say they use it every week. But while the industry buzzes with excitement, consumer sentiment is more mixed—particularly when it comes to AI-generated ads.
In this context, marketing teams must prioritize privacy and ethics, offer transparency, and lead with human creativity to balance capitalizing on the technology with building trust with consumers.
There’s a notable disconnect between advertiser perceptions and consumer perceptions of AI. While 77% of advertisers have a positive view of the technology, only 38% of consumers share that perspective. Consumer skepticism is even greater when it comes to using gen AI to create ads, with 65% of US adults saying they’re either somewhat or very uncomfortable with the practice.
For those skeptical or hesitant about AI, ethical use and data privacy are top concerns, according to research from GWI x Basis. A notable 81% of consumers familiar with AI feel that companies will use the technology to collect and analyze their personal data in ways they aren’t comfortable with.
For example, when brands upload customer data to AI-powered tools to optimize targeting or create lookalike audiences, how can consumers be sure their data is protected? Without clear regulation of the technology or transparency into AI tools, these concerns continue to grow. To address them, brands and agencies should vet partners that use AI and data in ways that could raise privacy concerns to ensure they prioritize ethics and data privacy. Businesses can also consider gaining voluntary certifications like SOC 2 to demonstrate responsible data practices.
Being upfront and transparent about AI use in advertising is critical to building trust. In fact, one study found that AI-generated ads that included clear disclosures resulted in a 73% lift in ad trustworthiness and a 96% lift in trust for the company. By clearly communicating how AI is used, advertisers can avoid misleading consumers and instead foster confidence.
Consumers can often tell when an ad is AI-generated. They also tend to find those ads less engaging and more “boring,” “annoying,” and “confusing” than other ads. What's more, AI-generated ads trigger weaker memory activation in the brain compared to traditional ads.
Visual authenticity matters too: 52% of consumers say they’re uncomfortable with brands using AI to edit product images and nearly half report they’re uneasy with fully AI-generated product visuals.
To ensure their marketing content resonates with consumers, advertisers should apply the same creative vigor and quality standards to AI-assisted work as they do to fully human-created ads. Rather than treating generative AI as a plug-and-play substitute for human creativity, it should be used to support the creative process—assisting with the brainstorming process and handling repetitive tasks so people can focus on strategy, storytelling, and big ideas. At the same time, anything that is AI-generated should always be reviewed by humans to ensure authenticity, brand safety, and alignment with brand standards.
AI presents a huge opportunity for innovation in advertising, but also comes with risks. Though many brands and agencies have been quick to embrace the technology, consumers remain wary—especially of AI-generated ads. To close the gap between industry enthusiasm and consumer skepticism, advertisers must use the technology with care. By prioritizing ethics and privacy, leaning into transparency, and leading with human creativity, teams can both leverage AI and build trust with consumers.
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Want to learn more about how AI is transforming advertising? We surveyed marketing and advertising professionals from leading agencies, brands, and publishers to understand how they’re using AI today—and how they expect it to influence the industry going forward. Explore all the findings in our report, AI and the Future of Marketing.
Commerce media has all the characteristics of a digital advertising channel that brands of all kinds can’t afford to ignore.
What began with retailers has expanded into travel, payments, and other sectors rich in transactional data—empowering advertisers to connect with targeted audiences in relevant moments with personalized messages. Because commerce media is powered by first-party data, those audiences, moments, and messages are as targeted, relevant, and personalized as possible. A growing number of commerce media platforms also empower a sophisticated omnichannel approach, allowing advertisers to effectively capture audience attention in saturated digital environments.
While non-retail commerce media is still in its nascency, its swift evolution is opening up new, less-saturated channels for marketers to reach high-intent audiences. In fact, non-retail commerce media is growing even faster than retail media, and will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34.1% between 2025 and 2028. It's a space where innovation is driving rapid expansion, from new opportunities in offsite commerce media to the rise of social commerce.
Considering all this, now is the time for advertising leaders in every sector to get ahead of the curve by understanding the forces driving commerce media’s growth, as well as how to leverage it strategically.
Marketing teams today are struggling with signal loss, poor data quality (one study found that almost half of the data marketers use for audience targeting is inaccurate), and media fragmentation—all of which make it harder to deliver personalized, timely messages and craft the coordinated omnichannel media strategies that are key to connecting with consumers in today’s crowded digital environment. At the same time, economic volatility is constraining marketing budgets and putting marketing leaders under increased pressure to prove out the value of their investments.
In this environment, commerce media is well-positioned to take on a larger role in marketing budgets. “Commerce media is growing more accessible and attractive to brands outside of CPG and retail as the supply side continues to grow through the collection, organization, and availability of first-party data,” says Jane Frye, VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis. And the reliability, accuracy, and abundance of this data makes it possible for advertisers to use commerce media for personalization at scale.
While Google’s flirtation with cookie deprecation was a significant driver of commerce media’s rise, its decision to keep third-party cookies likely won’t impact advertisers’ interest in the channel. “Even in light of Google’s latest pivot, advertisers are still focused on first-party data,” says Frye. “This is not only to stay aligned with increasingly strict privacy laws as well as consumers’ desire for data privacy, but also because first-party data tends to drive stronger performance through more accurate targeting.”
There are also increasing opportunities for advertisers to use that high quality data for audience targeting beyond a commerce media entity’s site or app to create highly personalized omnichannel advertising experiences. Offsite retail media ad spend, which enables advertisers to activate commerce media audiences beyond a retailer’s site or app, is forecast to grow at double the rate of onsite media spend through 2026, and off-platform placements will account for over 63% of display ad spend by 2029.
Even more, commerce media is well-suited for times of economic uncertainty. As a highly measurable channel, it allows marketers to clearly demonstrate ROI. And while commerce media’s early growth was largely driven by performance marketing, it has since evolved into a full-funnel solution that supports brand-building efforts as well.
Ultimately, these strengths make commerce media not just a timely solution for today’s challenges, but one that’s aligned with the trajectory of digital advertising.
To capitalize on the commerce media opportunity—whether a team is testing and learning on the channel or executing a large-scale strategy—marketing teams must strategize around fragmentation and a lack of measurement standardization, while also prioritizing data readiness.
The commerce media marketplace is growing increasingly crowded. One way to simplify the landscape is to limit the number of networks in play, and as such, advertisers should carefully evaluate which networks can deliver the most value.
Many new entrants offer access to first-party data but lack the infrastructure to support meaningful advertising outcomes. Marketers should strike a balance between testing emerging platforms with low barriers to entry and investing in more established players with comprehensive ad solutions.
At the same time, there are some meaningful advantages to diversifying spend across a variety of platforms. A diversified strategy is the most effective approach for brand building, says Frye, as channels thrive on the cumulative effect of many small exposures. It also ensures advertisers are not over-relying on a single platform or data source, which mitigates risk and gives teams the flexibility to optimize based on performance.
To help their teams succeed in an increasingly fragmented landscape—both within commerce media and across the broader digital ecosystem—advertising leaders must take steps to reduce the complexity it creates. Tools that reduce manual labor, streamline parts of the campaign process, and unify often-disjointed systems like reporting and billing can help teams operate more efficiently and adapt to new opportunities.
High-quality data is one of commerce media’s most compelling advantages. As the space evolves, marketing teams are finding smart ways to maximize and extend that data. Tools like data clean rooms are opening up new opportunities for data collaboration, with advertisers combining data from commerce media networks, advertising platforms, and publishers with their own first-party data to drive more sophisticated strategies.
To fully capitalize on these opportunities, teams must refine how they collect, organize, store, and activate their data. This is closely tied to the broader challenge of digital advertising fragmentation and resulting tech stack sprawl: When data is siloed across a variety of tools, it becomes difficult to extract meaningful value. With over 50% of agency marketers using eight or more tools to manage client campaigns and 40% using 10 or more tools, unifying data across platforms should be a top priority for marketing teams aiming to succeed not only in commerce media, but across their broader marketing efforts.
Commerce media addresses many of the challenges advertisers are grappling with today, offering precision, scale, and omnichannel activation. At the same time, its measurability provides a significant benefit at a time when marketers are under increasing pressure to prove performance.
To fully realize the channel’s potential, marketing leaders must take care to invest in the right partners, unify fragmented systems, and nurture robust and streamlined data ecosystems. By taking these steps, teams can unlock the full value of commerce media—not only to meet current challenges, but to set the stage for sustainable growth in the years to come.
