Economic pressures are mounting across the advertising industry.
The sector saw its fifth straight month of job losses in April, while growth predictions for the year have been downgraded. This decline is partly driven by a steep dive in consumer sentiment, which is now 26.5% lower than at the start of the year and at the second-lowest level ever recorded. Amidst this turbulence, more than 60% of advertisers expect their budgets to shrink between 6% and 10%.
Agencies, in particular, are feeling the effects of this volatility. As marketing budgets stagnate or shrink, clients want faster results, greater transparency, and clear performance outcomes to justify their investment. It’s no surprise that these challenges are intensifying the strain on client-agency relationships.
At the same time, internal teams at agencies are stretched thin. Many are navigating siloed and disconnected systems that hinder efficiency, making it difficult to meet brands’ heightened expectations.
In the face of these challenges, prioritizing an efficient, unified tech stack is one of the most effective ways agency leaders can set their teams up for success. Tools that automate mundane and routine tasks, consolidate reporting, and provide clear performance data can improve efficiency, strengthen client relationships, and empower teams to prioritize high value work over busy work. Agency leaders who invest in the right tools in 2025 can not only stabilize operations amidst today’s economic uncertainty but also build the foundation for long-term resilience and success.
Even before the current wave of economic volatility, client-agency relationships were under significant strain. A recent study found that 51% of agencies feel their client relationships are more strained today than they were just two years ago.
This tension has only intensified with today’s uncertainty, as brands face their own internal scrutiny around marketing investments and thus expect their agency partners to be faster, leaner, and more transparent.
“Brands have long challenged how agencies operate—from pricing models and delivery timelines to showing real results and business impact,” says Michael Thill, Basis’ VP of Agency Development.
Today, agencies are operating in a high-stakes environment where trust is fragile and expectations are incredibly high. This strain is further amplified by the fact that agency professionals feel their work is getting more difficult: Annual planning cycles are giving way to quarterly pivots—in part as a result of economic uncertainty—and there’s growing demand for real-time performance updates that tie media investments directly to business results.
“When everything’s in flux, clients want answers,” says Thill. “If agencies can’t move quickly and adapt, brands will get frustrated. And since brands need to prove ROI, they won’t hesitate to switch to an agency that can help them do that.”
Agencies, then, sit at a crossroads: They can either continue to overload teams and hope for different results, or they can make meaningful changes that improve how work gets done. The smarter path forward is for agency leaders to innovate: streamlining workflows, boosting efficiency, and empowering teams to focus on the high-value, strategic work that clients expect.
One of the most effective ways to unlock that transformation? Investing in the right tech.
Today’s agencies operate in an increasingly complex tech environment. More than half of agency professionals report using eight or more tools to manage campaigns, with 40% juggling 10 or more. While each tool is intended to serve a distinct and meaningful purpose, the resulting point-solution tech stack sprawl creates costly inefficiency: fragmented workflows, redundant tasks, inconsistent data, and operational bottlenecks that slow down decision-making.
These inefficiencies come at a steep cost—especially in times of economic pressure. “When budgets are tight and every dollar matters, mistakes and delays become even more costly,” says Thill. “You simply can’t afford to waste time reconciling data across multiple platforms or managing manual processes.”
Agency decision-makers echo that sentiment, citing inefficient processes and disconnected systems as their top operational challenges. Beyond lost time, these fragmented tools cut into margins and make it more difficult to deliver the performance and transparency clients expect.
Alternatively, an integrated tech stack can help consolidate functions, eliminate redundancies, and serve as a single source of truth. Automated advertising platforms, for example, are one powerful way to unify campaign planning, execution, reporting, and optimization. By streamlining these processes, they can empower agency teams to work smarter and focus on the strategic tasks that make their jobs fulfilling.
Take, for instance, the benefits of consolidated reporting. Without a unified platform, agencies often find themselves scrambling to gather data from multiple sources when a client makes a last-minute or time-sensitive request. This process is not only time-consuming, but also prone to errors—leaving agencies vulnerable to mistakes under pressure. Alternatively, an automated platform streamlines this process by providing all necessary reports in one place, eliminating the scramble and reducing the likelihood of mistakes. This efficiency gives agencies a competitive edge, enabling them to respond to client needs quickly, accurately, and with confidence.
As the digital advertising landscape evolves, agency leaders appear to recognize the importance of investing in technology to stay ahead. More than 75% of agency leaders say they plan to invest in AI over the next 12 months, with automation being the second biggest investment priority. In this context, the right technology is no longer just a tool to improve efficiency—it’s a competitive differentiator that enables agencies to deliver better results with greater precision, allowing them to scale efficiently, differentiate their services, and remain agile amidst uncertainty.
“Tech is a stabilizer,” says Thill. “Whether you’re winning new business or navigating losses, it keeps the team moving.”
Of course, there can be understandable hesitation around making new tech investments during economic uncertainty. Why would an agency leader want to spend more at a time when they’re trying to cut costs? “There’s no denying the time and cost of investing in tech,” says Thill. “But it can address many of the challenges agencies face right now.”
While it may seem counterintuitive to invest in new technology during times of economic uncertainty, such investments can allow teams to not only survive today’s demands, but also prepare for success in the long term.
By investing in tech today, agencies can leverage these tools to become more efficient, reduce waste, and deliver higher value to clients in ways that can be a significant differentiator.
Agencies are already spending resources, whether on human capital, training, tech, or operational costs. The key is to invest wisely. With a streamlined, efficient tech stack, agencies can strengthen client relationships, demonstrate their value, ease the workload for their teams, and stay ahead of the curve.
“The technology that enhances stability today can serve as a springboard for agency growth once the economic turbulence settles,” says Thill.
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Want more insights into the state of agency work in 2025? We conducted a comprehensive survey of hundreds of professionals at leading advertising agencies to dig into current challenges, strategic priorities, and future outlooks
As economic turbulence adds to the financial pressures weighing on agencies, marketing leaders are facing difficult decisions around staffing. In just the past five months, the ad market has lost an average of 1,400 jobs each month. Yet even amidst these cutbacks, talent retention must remain a critical priority.
To begin with, as teams get leaner, holding onto experienced, high-performing employees is more important than ever. At the same time, voluntary turnover remains a concern: Over half of agency professionals say they are open to finding a new job within the next 12 months, a number that jumps to 79.5% among entry- to mid-level employees. While higher rates of job seeking are predictable for junior level talent, they also reflect agencies’ struggle to engage and retain Gen Z workers. And though economic volatility is likely encouraging many agency employees to prioritize professional stability and stay put in their current roles, it also puts all the more pressure on agency leaders to avoid the steep time and financial costs associated with turnover.
Talent retention starts with improving job satisfaction and fulfillment. With a growing majority of agency professionals (60.8%) saying digital advertising has gotten harder in just the past two years and 76.6% feeling their individual jobs have grown more challenging, agency leaders must first understand the root causes—and then find ways to help their employees feel supported and fulfilled amidst these mounting difficulties.
The increasingly difficult nature of agency work stems largely from the many challenges facing advertising agencies today.
To start, there’s the growing complexity of the media landscape. “We’ve seen a resurgence of fragmentation in the industry—take streaming services and retail media networks, for example,” says Michael Olson, EVP of Client Development at Basis. “At the same time, agencies are scrambling to figure out how they can bring unique partnerships and inventory sources to the forefront to show that they’re still power players in the industry.”
On top of media fragmentation, agencies are grappling with increased rates from media partners, decreased client budgets, and the rising cost of talent, all of which have resulted in shrinking margins. To cope, agencies are increasingly offshoring and outsourcing work to drive down costs, and can even end up overselling and underbidding to keep their businesses afloat. Unfortunately, these financial pressures and the strategies agencies are using to protect their margins are also adding to the rising difficulty of work for agency workers.
The many challenges agencies have grappled with in recent years have trickled down to their employees, making their daily tasks more difficult and less fulfilling, and reducing the quality of workplace culture at agencies.
A fragmented media landscape has led to inefficiency throughout the campaign process. Over half of agency professionals’ tech stacks consist of eight or more tools, with 40% of agency marketers relying on 10+ tools to manage campaigns. In this context, 45.1% of agency leaders name siloed and disconnected systems as one of the biggest challenges facing their organizations.
Many teams wind up doing repetitive tasks to connect these disparate systems—for example, manually standardizing and unifying data sets from multiple sources. “They’re stuck working off of antiquated software, juggling spreadsheets, and doing data entry work that’s completely unfulfilling,” says Olson.
And even as outsourcing certain types of work can free up agency employees to focus on more strategic and fulfilling tasks, it can add additional complexity as well. “It's not as simple as reassigning tasks to external teams and completely removing them from the internal team’s plate,” says Kelly Boyle, Group VP of Strategic Business Outcomes at Basis. “The internal agency team still needs to oversee and QA the outsourced work. And when you have teams working in silos, and possibly vastly different time zones, there can be breakdowns in communication and context that create complexity.”
In an effort to land clients in a highly competitive landscape, some agencies can also end up overselling and underbidding. While it may lead to new business, the practice can leave employees overextended and stretched thin. One VP-level agency veteran shared that “High workloads have a huge impact on workers’ mental health—I’ve worked at agencies where I’d see at least one of my coworkers crying on a weekly basis.”
The rise of remote work—and subsequent return-to-office (RTO) orders—has exacerbated many of these challenges, with agencies often struggling to establish strong workplace cultures in hybrid/remote-first environments. Indeed, a desire to revitalize workplace culture lies behind many agencies’ decisions to call their employees back into the office in the first place.
At the same time, those RTO mandates have been met with significant resistance. After WPP implemented a policy mandating that team members must work in-office four days per week, employees started a petition to reverse the decision, which has subsequently garnered over 20,000 signatures. And a 2024 study examining the impact of RTO mandates at Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple found that they led to an increase in attrition, especially among senior-level employees—an outcome that, in turn, likely had significant impact on productivity, innovation, and competitiveness at those companies. More broadly, the desire for flexibility is strong: 63% of workers across industries are willing to take a pay cut to work remotely, and 43% are more afraid of returning to the office than getting a divorce.
Luckily for agency leaders, there are strategies that can mitigate these challenges by fostering more fulfillment for employees. In meeting their teams’ desire for appreciation, efficiency, flexibility, and opportunities for growth, leaders can create workplace environments where employees want to stay for the long haul.
According to Gallup, appreciation and recognition “might be one of the greatest missed opportunities” for driving performance, engagement, and company loyalty amongst employees. Despite the impact of appreciation, Gallup’s survey found that it’s common for workers to feel that their best efforts are regularly ignored. Even more, workers who don’t get the appreciation and recognition they feel they deserve are twice as likely to say they’ll quit their jobs within the next year. Agencies that take the time to acknowledge their employees’ work and demonstrate their appreciation can have an easier time holding on to their top performers and keep morale high.
“People are willing to go above and beyond in their work, especially when they feel like that work is appreciated,” says Boyle. “It can be as simple as saying, ‘I know you’ve been putting in a lot of hours lately, and I really appreciate it.’”
Research indicates that the most effective way to recognize employees’ contributions is to provide positive honest, authentic, and individualized feedback, and for managers to show appreciation for their workers at least every seven days. Better still is when praise comes from “every direction”—i.e., from their manager, from their manager’s manager, from their peers, and from high-level leaders as well.
If showing appreciation via monetary compensation is in the budget, that can be impactful as well—particularly in situations where promotions aren’t available. “If you come to an employee you don’t want to lose and say, ‘You're doing a phenomenal job. We can’t offer you a new title right now, but we’re going to give you a raise,’ that can have a huge impact,” says Olson.
Ultimately, by creating team cultures rich with appreciation and praise, agency leaders can ensure their teams feel seen and celebrated for the difficult work they’re doing.
Agencies must also ensure they’re providing work environments that are both efficient and conducive to their employees’ best efforts. For example, to bolster efficiency, leaders can set regular check-ins with clients to get clear on what deliverables are necessary.
“Agency leaders should take a step back and ensure employees are focusing their effort on things that deliver value for their clients,” says Boyle. “It’s easy to get caught in the cycle of providing the same reports and deliverables without truly understanding if they’re being utilized to their full extent.”
Leaders can also foster efficiency for their teams by building their tech stacks with employees in mind. “People didn’t get into advertising to sit behind Excel spreadsheets and fix invoices all day,” says Olson “They got into advertising to be creative, smart, strategic, and impactful.” To allow their teams’ workloads to favor those kinds of tasks, agencies can consider investing in CDPs that facilitate the collection, standardization, and usage of first-party data, or in automation technologies that streamline processes and reduce manual labor.
To retain top talent, agency leaders must thoughtfully weigh the chemistry and creative benefits of in-person collaboration with existing research and employee sentiment around return-to-office mandates. Gauging their own workforce’s preferences can not only signal that leadership values employee input, but also help mitigate the costly risks of attrition among those who are unwilling or unable to RTO.
For agencies that do ask their teams to come back into the office, leaders should consider how to make that transition as smooth and conducive as possible. “Employees will be most effective in the office if they have the proper space and technology to work and collaborate, both with others in the office and remote employees.” says Boyle. Given many employees’ reluctance to return, agencies implementing RTO mandates should thoughtfully consider how to ensure their workplaces support productivity and wellbeing.
Lastly, agencies must find creative ways to offer their employees opportunities for professional growth. Mentorship is particularly valued by Gen Z, so setting up programs to match junior-level employees with senior colleagues is one way agency leaders can foster growth. This can also give senior-level employees the opportunity to feel they’re having an impact in their work—which goes a long way, given that burnout isn’t always a result of employees having too much work, but can also occur when employees feel they aren’t having enough impact.
Offering people opportunities to become subject matter experts is another powerful way to provide both professional growth and professional impact, according to Molly Marshall, Business Outcomes Partner at Basis. “Team members can become experts on specific types of clients, or specific types of audiences,” says Marshall. “Becoming a subject matter expert gives employees another way in which they can feel special and needed—it’s something they can take pride in and even talk about with their families and friends.”
Giving employees opportunities to lead by proposing new solutions is another effective way to support their professional growth. “Just because an agency has done something the same way for years doesn’t mean it can’t be improved,” says Olson. “Agencies should welcome employee input and encourage creativity. Your top talent wants to help shape the agency’s future, and their ideas can be a major asset to the business.”
Allowing employees opportunities to own specific projects can also be impactful. "Junior employees are often so focused on meeting the expectations of their manager or clients that they rarely get to put their own spin on a project,” says Boyle. “Ownership allows them to push boundaries and show their unique way of thinking—and it’s also a great way to assess their skills and encourage innovation.”
Of course, agencies must offer career advancement through more traditional routes like promotions as well, but finding other unique ways to make team members feel that there are many opportunities for growth and advancement at their jobs can further counteract some of the difficulties agency workers face today.
A definitive 87.9% of industry professionals believe that AI will radically transform digital advertising in the next 3-5 years. However, 67% of marketing and business professionals have identified insufficient education and training as the primary obstacle to adopting AI. By offering robust training during AI tool rollouts and providing continuing AI education to their teams, agencies can better harness the technology while equipping employees with new skills that serve their professional growth.
In the face of economic volatility and other financial pressures, adopting strategies that improve talent retention must be a top priority for agency leaders. By setting up systems that provide agency workers with regular praise and appreciation, adjusting their workplaces in service of efficiency and employee preferences, and developing a variety of ways for employees to grow, agency leaders can create the kinds of businesses where people want to stay for the long term.
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Want to learn more about how agency professionals feel about their jobs, their industry, and the trends shaping digital advertising today? Check out our 2025 Advertising Agency Report for all the top takeaways from our survey of agency professionals across the US.
Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) are quickly reshaping search marketing and advertising. As AIO prevalence grows, early data reveal effects on both organic and paid media performance. And while AIOs are still fairly new and studies on their impact are preliminary, these findings provide meaningful insights for search advertisers looking to adapt their strategies.
Since Google introduced AIOs, their prevalence has varied.
When AIOs came out in May 2024, they appeared in about 10% of all Google search queries. Since then, their appearance rate has fluctuated, dropping to a low of 7% in August 2024, but has generally increased. By late February 2025, AIOs appeared in 17% of all Google search queries.
While the prevalence of AIOs is generally increasing, it varies based on the search vertical. The industries most likely to surface AIOs have fluctuated over time, but searches related to healthcare, B2B technology, and education have had some of the highest likelihoods to date. AIO prevalence also depends on the type of query, with research finding that informational queries—specifically, searches starting with the words “what,” why,” and “how”—trigger the vast majority of AIOs, as opposed to navigational, commercial, or transactional queries. Search queries made up of four or more words were also 31.6% more likely to trigger AIO results. This is likely why queries related to healthcare, B2B, and education are more likely to surface AIOs, as many of these searches are informational.
Since the rollout of AIOs, studies have observed a general decrease in organic traffic for publishers.
A 2023 study on the effects of AIOs (then known as Search Generative Experience) across 23 websites found that organic traffic declined by 18% to 64%. A September 2024 study found that organic traffic declined by about 70% when AIOs were present in search results. Interestingly, that same 2024 study also found that links included as AIO sources saw incremental increases in organic click-through rate (CTR) compared to links not cited in AIOs (1.08% vs. 0.6%, respectively). More recently, an April 2025 study found that search results featuring an AI Overview were associated with a 34.5% lower average click-through rate.
Representatives at Google and Bing have claimed that advertisers are getting higher-quality clicks on searches that surface AIOs, since those users get a sneak peek at the page content before clicking. However, as only a few websites are linked in an AIO, only that small number are receiving those higher quality clicks.
Knowing that Google’s AIOs are driving a drop in CTR—as well as allowing more relevant (but often lesser ranked) listings to drive answers—marketing teams may want to develop a separate SEO strategy for appearing in AIOs. The strategy should focus on optimizing content, not just so that it appears as a direct answer to searchers’ inquiries, but in a way that addresses potential follow-up questions while offering context, rationale, and detailed information about the products or services being promoted.
AIOs are affecting paid click-through rates (CTRs) and cost per click (CPC) in much the same way they’re impacting organic traffic: adversely. Ads within AIOs are currently limited to mobile, and placements running on Google Search or Shopping are automatically included—although there’s currently no way to tell how often a brand’s ads are showing in AIOs without a third-party tool such as ZipTie.dev.
A September 2024 study found that AI Overviews in search results led to a sharp decrease in paid ad click-through rates: When an AIO was present, the average paid CTR was 9.87% CTR, compared to 21.27% CTR when an AIO wasn’t present. And as advertisers try to maintain their impression and click volumes in reaction to this shift, CPCs on the queries and keywords that trigger AIOs will increase in turn.
In light of this, advertisers seeking lower CTRs should prioritize conversions over preserving impression share on keywords and queries likely to trigger AIOs. Some of the recent CPC increases tied to AIOs are being driven by efforts to maintain impression volume by raising bids. Focusing on conversions ensures that ad spend is tied to tangible outcomes, rather than being inflated by efforts to maintain visibility.
From a CPC perspective, advertisers can mitigate this impact by focusing bidding strategies on conversion-based goals, like ROAS and CPA, to control the potential costs. If an AIO is present, it will often make sense for advertisers not to try to bid up on that search. While the brand may lose that click, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been a high-value click—for example, if the user was solely looking for a definition or doing homework.
The impact of AIOs is still developing in real-time, but early indicators suggest a clear need for strategic adaptation. By developing a strategy for appearing in AIOs—if, of course, it makes sense for the specific keyword/query and brand—as well as focusing on conversion-based goals, advertisers can better navigate shifting user behavior and manage rising CPCs in an evolving search landscape.
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Looking for more insights around how AI is transforming the search landscape? Check out AI and the Future of Search Engine Marketing for a deep dive into how AI is changing search behavior, fragmenting the search market, and impacting paid advertising opportunities.
When it comes to media plans, one of the most engaged digital ecosystems is often overlooked.
With billions of players across the globe, and particularly strong traction with younger audiences, the in-game advertising opportunity is a massive one—yet it’s still flying under the radar for many media buyers. By incorporating gaming within a holistic media mix and treating it as more than just an entertainment channel, advertising teams can both connect with audiences today and build momentum with up-and-coming generations.
Gaming offers broad reach with engaged audiences across generations. In 2025, approximately 57% of the US population is a digital gamer—with penetration being highest among Gen Zers—and average time spent with digital gaming by gamers will reach one hour and 48 minutes per day. Unlike more passive media formats, gaming usually requires players to be actively engaged, offering advertisers a chance to connect in high-attention moments that drive higher brand recall.
However, ad spend on the channel accounts for just 5% of digital advertising budgets, and ad investment still trails significantly behind other digital channels. This disconnect presents a clear opportunity for advertisers: less competition, more share of voice, and greater impact for those willing to invest.
Though gaming spans all age groups, it’s especially embedded in the lives of younger generations. Gen Z holds the highest rate of adoption, with nearly three-quarters forecasted to be digital gamers by 2027. Early indications show that Gen Alpha is also deeply invested in gaming, with 70% gaming four to five times per week. For these younger audiences, gaming is more than a pastime—it’s a social hub and a space to build community.
Reaching younger generations when and where they spend their time is critical, especially as their influence grows. Gen Z is projected to hold $12 trillion in spending power by 2030, while Gen Alpha already drives $300 billion in spending power through parental influence. For brands, building connections and fostering trust now will unlock long-term value.
Gamers aren’t just deeply engaged in gameplay—they’re highly active across the broader media landscape. In fact, weekly gamers are heavier media consumers than the global average and are more likely to engage with all major media types, especially video, streaming music, and social media.
This makes them prime audiences for omnichannel strategies. As digital natives, younger consumers move seamlessly between screens, platforms, and content types throughout the day. Since so many are also digital gamers, in-game advertising can serve as a natural and impactful touchpoint.
For instance, advertisers could reach a Gen Z gamer through in-game product placement, reinforce the message with a podcast ad, and drive conversion through a follow-up video ad on TikTok, YouTube, or another social media platform. With gaming as a core touchpoint, brands and advertisers can create cohesive, multichannel experiences that meet young audiences across multiple platforms and moments of influence.
For Gen Alpha, gaming isn’t just about entertainment. It’s where they socialize, learn, and build community. Where game enthusiasts in general still spend more time on social media than on gaming, Gen Alpha game enthusiasts spend more time on gaming than on social media. And according to the IAB, gaming is expected to become a core part of Gen Alpha’s daily life by 2030, much like social media is for Gen Z today.
For advertisers, adapting to this shift is critical. Brands looking to engage with Gen Alpha should treat gaming as a primary channel, rather than an afterthought. That means developing strategies that show up authentically in-game, aligning with the social dynamics of these platforms, and extending engagement across other digital touchpoints.
Gaming delivers scale, attention, and engagement for advertisers, but it remains underrepresented in ad budgets. Gamers, especially younger ones, aren’t just playing: They’re building community, engaging across platforms, and influencing digital culture. For advertisers, then, gaming presents a unique opportunity that bridges generations, powers omnichannel strategies, and offers a rare chance to build authentic connections in digital spaces that aren’t yet saturated.
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Looking for more insights about how to connect with Gen Alpha as they grow into the next generation of consumers? In our report, Gen Alpha: Online Habits and Media Preferences by the Numbers, we dive into their online behaviors today and what brands need to know to engage them in the future.
The TV upfronts may still be a fixture in the industry calendar, but their influence is shrinking. As streaming viewership continues to rise and more households opt for connected TV (CTV) over traditional channels, advertisers are shifting dollars away from fixed linear commitments. Even more, they’re gravitating towards the reach, efficiency, and flexibility offered by programmatic buying. The clear new winner in this evolving landscape? Programmatic connected TV.
Total CTV ad spending is projected to grow 16.8% in 2025, reaching $33.48 billion (though that growth could become stagnant this year due to tariffs set in place by the Trump Administration). And within that growth, programmatic CTV is a particularly dominant force: More than 90% of both display and video ad spending on CTV will be transacted programmatically in 2025. This shift reflects how advertisers are increasingly embracing ad-supported streaming environments and dynamic, data-driven buying models.
“The biggest change to the way that brands are approaching TV buying now is the flexibility,” says Christina Fortuna, Director of Media Investment at Basis. “With the upfronts, brands used to have to commit a large part of their budget to linear placements early on. With programmatic CTV, they can pivot quickly, adjusting strategy as they go or reacting to market changes in real time.”
In today’s landscape, TV is no longer a locked-in, ‘set it and forget it’ buy. Programmatic CTV puts advertisers in control, with the flexibility to pivot, optimize, and scale on demand. By leaning into this flexibility, leveraging AI, prioritizing brand safety, and embracing new measurement solutions, teams can maximize the programmatic connected TV advertising opportunity in 2025 and beyond.
As programmatic CTV continues to evolve, artificial intelligence is pushing rapid innovation in the space. “While AI has long powered programmatic advertising, recent advancements are enhancing its impact on programmatic CTV specifically,” says Fortuna. “It’s not only driving improved efficiency in both bidding and optimization, but also in contextual targeting and relevancy.”
Historically, the metadata associated with programming on streaming TV has been very broad. Advertisers could see the genre of a TV show, but couldn’t tell if the sentiment was more serious or comedic. “Recent advances in AI are allowing teams to dig deeper into the metadata, providing richer insights around episodes, specific topics mentioned within a show, and visual scenes within the frame. AI is giving advertisers a broader range of contextual targeting within the programmatic CTV space, allowing ads to be more personalized and relevant,” says Fortuna.
For example, providers like IRIS.TV now enable the use of AI-enriched segmenting on programmatic CTV inventory based on the content’s actual context, helping advertisers serve ads that align more precisely with what viewers are watching. And this precision matters: One study found that consumers pay nearly four times more attention to ads that are hyper-relevant to the content on screen. And compared to standard demographic-based targeting, AI-powered contextual ads delivered 300% higher aided brand recall and twice the unaided brand recall.
Additionally, solutions like Peer39 now offer more granular content-level reporting that goes beyond identifying just the app where the ad appeared. “For instance, a programmatic media buyer who previously saw only a broad category like ‘Sports’ in their reports can now access deeper insights—such as the specific sport being played, the teams involved, and even the location of the game,” says Fortuna. This more specific reporting can help teams optimize their programmatic CTV placements and maximize their spending.
As programmatic CTV continues to mature, so too do the tools and strategies available to protect brand safety. This is especially critical in the programmatic space, where automated buying at scale introduces new complexities and potential risks around ad placement. Considering this, the same AI-powered contextual targeting that allows brands to reach audiences with greater precision can support brand safety by empowering greater control over where ads are placed and what types of content they appear alongside.
Focusing on premium programmatic inventory also gives advertisers more control over where their CTV ads appear, making them all the more relevant and impactful for audiences. “In 2025, we’re seeing an increase in activity in the custom PMP space for programmatic CTV buys,” says Fortuna. “Advertisers are refining their inventory sources for programmatic buys to create curated, approved inventory lists—for example, teams can work with supply-side providers (SSPs) to include or exclude certain publishers or verticals based on a client’s specific needs.”
The key? Partner with platforms that work closely with their SSPs to ensure a clean, trusted inventory pool.
Accurate measurement and attribution have long been a challenge in the programmatic CTV space, but providers and measurement partners have made some significant strides to address these gaps.
“Before, we were backed into metrics like reach or completion rate, which don’t tell the full story,” Fortuna says. “With so many brands relying on last-touch attribution models, CTV rarely got credit—it would be search or social instead. That created a feedback loop for investment. But with more sophisticated measurement solutions available, it’s easier to demonstrate the full value of programmatic CTV.”
Some partners now offer QR code integrations to track programmatic CTV impact, while others have expanded their offerings to include outcome-based metrics like incremental lift, brand lift, and brand sentiment. Ultimately, maximizing programmatic CTV measurement in 2025 comes down to choosing the right partners and evaluating which metrics align with campaign goals. With better visibility into impact, advertisers can optimize with confidence, prove the value of programmatic CTV investment, and unlock the full potential of the channel.
Programmatic CTV offers advertisers the big screen, lean-in viewing of traditional linear TV as well as the flexibility, precision, and real-time optimization inherent to programmatic technology. By leveraging advancements in AI-driven contextual targeting and reporting, implementing a strong brand safety plan, and embracing new measurement solutions, advertisers can make the most of programmatic CTV advertising.
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Looking for even more insights on the state of CTV advertising in 2025? In our recent webinar, Mastering CTV: Strategies to Maximize Impact in 2025, Comscore’s Becca Marco joins Basis’ Noor Naseer to break down the latest trends, evolutions, and strategies to help advertisers maximize the channel in 2025 and beyond.
AI is swiftly transforming the search landscape.
As generative AI reshapes the user experience on search giants like Google and Bing and AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity gain traction with consumers, advertisers are preparing for a search landscape whose future looks markedly different than its past.
Although Google still dominates the market, early signs of fragmentation are emerging. Last year, Google’s market share dropped below 90% for the first time since 2015. While much of that volume went to established competitors like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo, newer AI search agents are gaining ground as well, with Gartner predicting that traditional search engine volume will decline by 25% by 2026 due to chatbot-like applications. Gen AI pioneer ChatGPT is projected to claim 1% of search market share this year, and OpenAI’s SearchGPT—which is currently in beta—could further challenge Google’s supremacy.
Future fragmentation aside, the shift towards conversational interfaces on traditional search engines is already impacting organic traffic and advertising opportunities, leaving media teams questioning how to adapt. To succeed in today’s evolving search landscape and ready themselves for success in the future of search engine marketing, advertising leaders must understand how AI is reshaping user behavior and take proactive measures to evolve how their search teams operate.
AI is driving a fundamental change in how consumers search online. Historically, people have used keywords to search (ex. “Miami beachside hotel.”) But AI is spurring a shift from keyword searching to natural language conversations (ex. "Can you find me a beachside hotel in Miami with vacancy on May 23rd?”) This can be seen with the growing popularity of AI agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity, as well as in traditional search engines with features like Google’s AI overviews (AIOs).
The shift towards conversational interactions could also lead to a larger focus on voice search. Google appears to be embracing the possibility, with a recent update to its Gemini tool that allows users to engage with AI much like they would with another person—similar to how Iron Man talks to Jarvis in the Marvel movies. Manus, an AI agent that recently went viral, is another AI agent that offers advanced conversational voice interactivity, and OpenAI has offered an Advanced Voice Mode since Q3 2024.
As consumer adoption of generative AI increases in the coming years—and competition among companies providing AI-powered chatbots rises—the overall search market will likely grow increasingly fragmented. While we’ll eventually see a decline in the use of traditional search engines, we’ll likely also see a net positive engagement with generative AI-powered search engine-like queries.
Currently, the biggest AI-related change that marketers are seeing with their search performance is a drop in organic traffic from Google and other traditional search engines. Industry experts predict that AIOs could result in as much as a 60% decrease in organic traffic, and an April 2025 study found that search results featuring an AI Overview were associated with a 34.5% lower average clickthrough rate (CTR).
While Google could work to mitigate the drop off in organic traffic with future updates, the current outlook has advertisers and businesses concerned. Earlier this year, education technology company Chegg filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that AIOs have negatively impacted the company’s traffic and revenue.
AIOs are also making brands feel like they have fewer avenues for effectively leveraging search advertising (at least for the time being). This change might push advertisers to invest more in programmatic, video, and other non-search channels.
In my conversations with brand and agency leaders, I’ve heard an equal amount of fear and excitement around how AI will change both the search landscape and digital advertising as a whole. Ensuring teams grow their AI expertise and increase their familiarity with these new tools is one way organizations can prepare for—and adapt to—the coming changes.
Marketing teams should use AI-powered targeting to continuously test and learn what resonates with target audiences in today’s evolving search environment. This tactic is growing even more important in the context of signal loss, offering a privacy-friendly way to reach target audiences on search platforms like Google and Bing, while simultaneously giving media teams hands-on experience with the machine learning-based systems that are increasingly shaping search. By leaning into these tools now, teams can build the agility and expertise they’ll need to stay competitive as search becomes increasingly AI-driven.
Nearly all (97.7%) advertising agencies are using generative AI today, with 38.6% of agency professionals using it daily and over 90% using it at least weekly. To make the most of the technology, marketing teams should actively experiment with various generative AI tools to better understand how and where they can make the campaign process more efficient and data driven.
At the same time, AI comes with risks such as inaccuracies and bias, and leaders must make sure to put the proper guardrails in place to minimize risk—particularly when it comes to generating creative content and analyzing consumer data.
Google’s Performance Max (PMax) is one of the most prominent examples of how AI is shaping the future of advertising, particularly when it comes to using generative AI to create ads. For instance, within PMax, an advertiser can upload a picture of their product and tell PMax to generate an image of that product on a beach at sunset. PMax will then spit out four variations of that basic image for use in an ensuing campaign. There are some enormous time- and cost-efficiency benefits to this: Advertisers can cut thousands of dollars that would typically be spent on production and go to market much more quickly. They can even download that asset and use it on other channels for greater creative continuity.
While advertisers may not love the levels of control and transparency offered by PMax, using it to test and learn will help marketing teams gain expertise with AI-driven systems and better understand their benefits and drawbacks.
The shift to AI overviews and resulting decline in organic traffic doesn’t mean that brands should deprioritize their SEO efforts. Brands that continue to invest in SEO will be better positioned to have their content featured as a source in Google’s AI overviews, which often include clickable links that drive traffic back to a brand’s site.
However, knowing that Google’s AIOs are driving a drop in clickthrough rate, as well as allowing more relevant—but often lesser ranked—listings to drive answers, marketing teams should also develop a separate strategy for appearing in AIOs. This strategy should focus on optimizing content not just to appear as a direct answer, but also to address potential follow-up questions and offer context, rationale, and detailed information about the products or services being promoted.
One of the greatest benefits that AI offers advertisers is its ability to quickly process and analyze huge amounts of data. As the technology develops, data-related insights will become more widely available, and businesses will need the infrastructure and the know-how to use those insights effectively.
Data-driven cultures prioritize using data to guide decision-making—and invest time, energy, and money into the people, processes, and tools that make it possible. For leaders, this might mean improving data quality and consolidation workflows, conducting audits of all existing data sources (e.g., social media, website analytics, customer surveys, etc.), or investing in a CDP to better capitalize on first-party data.
By investing in AI-powered tools, data-facing teams will be able to generate new insights, improve accuracy, and automate tasks. And because they’ll be using AI for data-related tasks, teams will likely grow increasingly comfortable with these kinds of tools, which will make it easier for organizations to leverage additional AI-powered solutions as they emerge.
With 67% of marketing and business professionals reporting that a lack of education and training is the top barrier to AI adoption, it’s clear that empowering teams with continuing AI education should be a priority for leaders. This is especially true given how rapidly AI is evolving, and how quickly new tools are coming to market. By partnering with vendors or consultants for tailored workshops, creating AI-focused knowledge-sharing forums, and investing in training and education platforms, advertising leaders can grow teams whose AI expertise gives them an edge over their competitors. Advertising leaders should also work to upskill their teams by prioritizing AI-related skills when hiring new employees.
Lastly, leaders should aim to stay on top of news related to how search engines are changing, monitor what new AI-driven advertising opportunities are available, and pay attention to what successes and failures their peers are having with artificial intelligence tools.
In particular, leaders must stay attuned to the potential challenges and pitfalls posed by artificial intelligence. 100% of marketers agree that generative AI presents a brand safety and misinformation risk. A hallucinating AI chatbot, for example, can make up fake “facts” and generate misinformation that can be difficult for content moderation tools to spot, and the resulting content can represent a threat to brand safety.
There are also many unanswered questions related to AI-generated content and copyright infringement—from the legality of chatbots being trained on unlicensed content, to questions around who owns AI-generated media. In the short term, be sure to keep an eye on how the regulatory landscape develops. While we don’t know exactly how governments will legislate the use of these technologies, it’s all but certain that they will eventually take regulatory action, and staying updated on those developments will be critical.
The quickly evolving search landscape asks a lot of marketing and advertising leaders. Advertisers will need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable in the coming years as artificial intelligence moves the industry towards an uncertain future. Teams that use AI to test and learn, grow data driven cultures, and stay learning will have a leg up on those who are less proactive about adapting to how AI is changing search.
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Want to learn more about how your peers are leveraging AI? We surveyed marketing professionals across brands, agencies, and publishers to find out what tasks marketing teams are using AI for, how AI tools are impacting efficiency, how they predict AI will transform the future of marketing, and more. Check out AI and the Future of Marketing for all the findings.
Advertising agencies are experiencing a period of extraordinary transformation, caught between rising client expectations, mounting operational pressures, and revolutionary technological opportunities. To better understand the industry’s greatest obstacles and opportunities, Basis conducted a comprehensive survey of 100s of professionals at leading advertising agencies. The findings offer a window into the brewing challenges, strategic priorities, and future outlook shaping the agency landscape.
Our 2025 Advertising Agency Report explores those findings while providing agency leaders with actionable, data-driven insights to navigate this changing environment and position themselves for sustainable growth in the years ahead.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
To get more insights into the state of advertising agencies, as well as an in-depth look at key takeaways and strategic opportunities based on the findings, download the full report today.
Advertising agencies are facing mounting pressure from all directions.
Economic volatility and decreased consumer spending are pushing marketers to make their budgets go further. Signal loss and privacy regulations are complicating the task of effectively reaching and engaging audiences. And, brand safety concerns are skyrocketing, driven by content moderation rollbacks on social media platforms, the proliferation of AI-generated mis- and disinformation, and low-quality content like made-for-advertising sites (MFAs) increasing across the open web. Clients are demanding greater transparency in everything from reporting to fees, putting additional strain on agency-client relationships. On top of it all, the digital media landscape is increasingly fragmented, and tech stack sprawl and siloed systems are making it harder to work in a connected, streamlined way.
In this context, it’s no wonder a growing majority of agency professionals agree that digital advertising has gotten harder over the last two years.
Though the challenges facing agencies are varied, inefficiency is a common thread either driving or aggravating many of them—indeed, agency leaders rank inefficient processes as the most pressing issue facing their businesses today. As such, by working to improve efficiency, agency leaders can make significant progress towards alleviating some of their biggest problems. Specifically, unifying data and embracing automation will allow agencies to work faster, drive better performance, and strengthen their relationships with clients.
Tech sprawl is at the heart of agencies’ efficiency problem. More than half of agency professionals say they now rely on eight or more tools to manage client campaigns, and 40% are juggling 10 or more. Teams are increasingly weighed down by fragmented systems and inefficient workflows, forcing marketers to operate in silos or waste valuable hours reconciling data manually.
The issue is further compounded by the fact that media fragmentation is at an all-time high. In fact, agency leaders rank siloed and disconnected systems as the second-most pressing challenge facing their organizations today. Without a unified view of performance, real-time optimization becomes inefficient and difficult, limiting agencies’ abilities to drive meaningful results.
Adding to the challenge, half of marketers agree that martech is complicated and difficult to use, and 63% of martech leaders say marketing teams lack the technical skills to successfully implement and use their tech stacks. These inefficiencies create operational bottlenecks that ultimately impact both agency performance and client satisfaction.
Finally, AI in advertising adds a new and often complicated layer to agency operations. While AI presents powerful opportunities to drive revenue, adding new AI tools to a tech stack can also increase the complexity of workflows. Without thoughtful implementation, proper training, and quality data, AI can contribute to inefficiencies rather than resolve them.
Unifying data and having a single source of truth should be a key priority for agency leaders in 2025. Centralizing data enables teams to deliver strategic recommendations that drive performance and craft compelling performance narratives for clients, rather than spending time pulling data from many different sources and attempting to unify it manually, which inevitably leads to errors.
Unifying data doesn’t necessarily mean overhauling entire tech stacks or tossing existing tools out the window, but rather finding solutions that bring existing systems together to ensure visibility, efficiency, and smarter decision making. With such solutions, teams can access real-time insights in a centralized dashboard—rather than spending hours pulling reports and reconciling data—allowing them to make faster, data-driven decisions. Unified reporting also empowers agencies to tell powerful performance stories with greater confidence, reinforcing their value and strengthening client relationships in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Additionally, a strong data foundation can help agencies to better harness AI. Right now, 58% of ad industry professionals say data quality or accessibility issues are a challenge for adopting AI in their media campaigns. Agency leaders that prioritize unifying their company’s data now will be better positioned to integrate AI-driven efficiencies and maintain a competitive edge in the evolving media landscape.
Even with a strong data foundation, agencies can lose valuable time to inefficient processes. Many teams still rely on manual reporting, campaign management, and optimization—practices that not only waste time but also increase the risk of errors. Media fragmentation compounds the issue, forcing teams to toggle between multiple platforms to pull performance insights, manually adjust bids across different channels, and use spreadsheets to reconcile data from various sources to create client reports.
Automation software addresses such inefficiencies by streamlining workflows and eliminating redundant tasks across the campaign life cycle. In reducing operational inefficiencies, automation frees up agency teams to focus on higher-value strategic work, which in turn drives stronger performance and strengthens client relationships. It makes sense, then, that 77.8% of agency professionals say their organization has plans to invest in tech to automate or streamline processes, and over a third of marketing decision-makers say the type of martech they plan to invest in the most over the next 12 months is marketing automation technology.
In an increasingly fragmented and complex digital landscape, agency leaders that focus on reducing inefficiencies by unifying their data and streamlining their operations will maintain a competitive edge. By embracing these strategies, agencies can ensure ad dollars are maximized and operations run smoothly. In turn, this will allow agencies to deliver stronger results, strengthen client relationships, and drive revenue in today’s ever-evolving digital advertising ecosystem.
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Want to learn more about how advertising agencies are navigating today’s complex digital media landscape? We surveyed professionals from agencies across the US to gather their insights on agency performance, industry trends, key challenges and opportunities, the impact of AI, and the future of agencies. Dive into the full findings in our 2025 Advertising Agency Report.
2025 is shaping up to be a critical year for advertising agencies.
Agencies are experiencing a period of extraordinary transformation, caught between rising client expectations, mounting operational pressures, and revolutionary technological opportunities. To better understand the industry’s greatest obstacles and opportunities, we conducted a comprehensive survey of 100s of professionals at leading advertising agencies. The findings offer a window into the brewing challenges, strategic priorities, and future outlook shaping the agency landscape. This report explores those findings while providing agency leaders with actionable, data-driven insights to navigate this changing landscape and position themselves for sustainable growth in the years ahead.
Select findings include:
Download the full report today to get more insights into the state of advertising agencies, as well as key takeaways and strategic opportunities based on the findings.
