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Along with today’s rapidly changing advertising and marketing landscape, the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is undergoing profound transformation. Once a critical pillar of organizational strategy focused on driving brand growth, the CMO’s scope of work has expanded considerably. Now, CMOs must navigate a steady stream of digital and technological innovation alongside evolving market conditions and a less than predictable consumer. This shift requires CMOs to transform into multifaceted leaders with responsibilities that go far beyond a legacy marketing role.
Indeed, today’s CMO is more than a marketer. They’re a cross-functional leader who’s able to unite their knack for strategic thinking with sound business logic to challenge the status quo and drive the brand forward. As such, brands that recognize and embrace the CMO in this evolving role are best positioned to unlock their full potential.
Historically, CMOs were brand stewards: They developed brand identity and voice, crafted go-to-market strategies, managed paid media efforts, and supported sales enablement while digging into campaign and market data to guide future strategies.
While these fundamentals remain central, the responsibilities of today’s CMOs have expanded to include leading the response to rapidly shifting market dynamics, evaluating when and where to implement new tech while staying rooted in meaningful areas of impact, and identifying which internal and external stakeholders to collaborate with to get the job done.
Indeed, modern CMOs have one of the most complex roles in an organization. They are expected to provide strategic guidance not only within marketing but also to consult across sales, finance, IT, product development and human resources. And, they must bridge the gap between consumer-facing activities and internal business priorities, ensuring alignment to deliver meaningful results.
A CMO’s ability to manage these expanded responsibilities can differ by industry. For example, CMOs in the B2B space may find themselves uniquely well-suited for this shift, given the demand to unify their strategic backgrounds with their legacy focus on producing business outcomes. Basis’ CMO, Katie McAdams, notes that “B2B marketing in our industry has shifted from being viewed primarily as a sales enablement and lead generating function to becoming part of the design, implementation, and oversight of the company’s overarching strategy. The role and expectation of marketing today is to bring the product and sales strategies together to build alignment and ensure a seamless go-to-market plan is implemented.”
An essential part of meeting these expectations for strategic excellence is effective communication with stakeholders. To communicate strategies and their outcomes effectively, CMOs must zero in on the most impactful stories they can tell, and back up those stories with meaningful data. As McAdams shares, “The amount of data that we have access to across all our campaigns can be overwhelming, and it takes time to understand what to focus on. Picking a few critical KPIs that you’re going to prioritize and speak to regularly is key. Otherwise, you’ll end up overwhelming your team and your other internal stakeholders with so many data points that they’ll just check out.”
Ultimately, today's CMO has evolved from a functional marketing expert into a strategic, multi-disciplinary leader, balancing a dual mandate: leveraging their marketing expertise while taking on broader business leadership responsibilities that are integral to the organization’s success.
Despite the promise that an evolved CMO presents, the same conditions that have made today’s CMO a dynamic leader with a multi-faceted toolkit have also put the role at risk.
Uncertainty surrounding the necessity of a CMO in today’s business climate has become evident as lines between the responsibilities of a CMO and those of other C-suite executives like the CFO and CTO have blurred. At the same time, profitability and cost-cutting demands have put the role under heightened scrutiny in several major companies. In recent years, Fortune 500 companies like McDonald's, UPS, and Johnson & Johnson have eliminated their CMO positions, often merging the role with other senior leadership roles like COO, and dividing out the responsibilities to address shifting business priorities in response to new technological and consumer demands. As a result of this trend, CMOs are now fighting to prove out the value of their team and their role within the organization.
While the outlook may seem grim, the deeper truth is that businesses’ critical need for CMOs hasn’t disappeared, it’s just recalibrating to meet the evolving challenges of the landscape. Considering that just 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have a marketing background and only 41 of Fortune 1000 companies have a marketer on their board, this scarcity underscores the critical need for CMOs to provide the marketing expertise necessary for organizational success. If left unfulfilled, organizations will be left to feel the detrimental voids created by their absence.
A silver lining to the recent scrutiny? As brands reimagine or even reinstate the CMO—for example, McDonald’s quickly walked back their decision to eliminate the role—we’ve seen more hiring of first-time CMOs, particularly those promoted from within, to usher in a new era of leadership with the skillsets to match. Women have also been edging ahead, making up the majority of marketing leadership in six out of the nine industries analyzed by eMarketer.
The increasing complexity of the marketing ecosystem has placed a premium on technology. To maximize ROI, CMOs are increasingly investing in martech and adtech tools to improve efficiency and drive better results. However, these investments often fall short of their potential—not because they’re ineffective, but because the people using these platforms haven’t been adequately trained to do so. In fact, companies use just 56% of their martech investments, and 34% report that those tools underperform.
This underutilization underscores the importance of aligning technology with talent. CMOs should not only ensure their teams are equipped with the right tools, but also that there’s a plan in place to develop the skills to use them effectively. Upskilling and ongoing training are critical to closing the gap between tech investment and outcomes.
Interestingly, when asked how they would allocate an additional $1 million, CMOs most commonly said they would invest it in talent development. This reflects the growing recognition that people—not just technology—are key to unlocking the full potential of marketing innovations.
CMOs who successfully balance the implementation of technology with talent development drive both innovation and efficiency, ensuring their organizations stay ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape.
The pressure to deliver measurable business results is at an all-time high, with brands often prioritizing short-term revenue growth over long-term brand-building strategies. Caught in the middle are CMOs, whose legacies lie in carefully crafted long-term brand strategies but are now primarily tasked with producing revenue gains. The pandemic accelerated this trend, with the percentage of CMOs reporting that marketing is primarily responsible for revenue growth jumping almost 9% from February of 2020 to March of 2023. Alongside this, 75% of CMOs now rank short-term company commercial growth as their top priority.
However, this shift has come at a cost. A reported 41% reduction in brand-building spend from Spring 2023 to Spring 2024 indicates that CMOs are diverting resources from long-term initiatives to meet immediate performance goals. This creates a tension between achieving short-term wins and safeguarding the brand’s future equity—and long-term job security.
To navigate this challenge, CMOs must collaborate closely with CEOs, CFOs, and other senior leaders to align marketing strategies with broader business objectives. By advocating for the critical needs filled by marketing and demonstrating the impact of marketing on both short-term revenue and long-term growth, CMOs can secure the resources and support needed to strike this delicate balance.
Modern CMOs have a unique opportunity to challenge outdated practices and redefine industry norms. As change agents, they can ask bold questions, rethink standard strategies, and drive transformative initiatives that set their organizations apart. This approach requires CMOs to push boundaries, disrupt the status quo, and champion innovation—all while maintaining alignment with organizational goals.
“Basis has embraced large-scale brand initiatives as part of its repositioning strategy,” says McAdams, “and the success we’ve seen showcases how a challenger mindset can lead to significant market differentiation.”
To succeed as challengers, CMOs need strong support from key stakeholders within their organizations. Disruption often involves risk, and having the necessary backing is essential to ensuring these efforts lead to meaningful progress. McAdams shares that her partnerships with Basis’ President, CEO, and CFO are critical: “Aligning the full leadership team with our go-to-market plan and the investments required to make the big splashes we’ve envisioned has allowed us to move faster and capitalize on opportunities as they present themselves.”
Ultimately, CMOs today can benefit from acting as disruptors—but to do so effectively, they'll need to cultivate the internal relationships necessary to ensure that their disruptive strategies can succeed.
Marketing has always been a tool for differentiation, but the modern CMO will elevate it into a strategic force that drives measurable business outcomes. By embracing expanded roles as cross-functional leaders, CMOs are uniquely positioned to unify internal priorities, align with organizational objectives, and deliver value in an ever-changing landscape.
Success for today’s CMO hinges on their ability to balance innovation with talent development, short-term gains with long-term growth, and tradition with transformation. As the business landscape continues to evolve, CMOs will remain critical to shaping the future of their organizations—and the industry as a whole.
Picture this: The weekend is finally here, it’s game time, and you’ve got your homemade nachos all set to go (your secret ingredient: home-pickled jalapenos!). You plop down on the couch, crack open your first beer, turn on the big screen and...shoot. Where’s the game? Didn’t you read something about Amazon securing the rights for this season? No wait, that was Peacock...or was it Apple TV+? ESPN+? Maybe TBS? Or TNT? One of the Ts? Fox? CBS? Hulu? YouTube TV? Is this one of the games on Netflix? Why can’t you find it?! Was there ever even a game today? THE NACHOS ARE GETTING COLD!
Tuning in to live sports used to be so simple. And we’re not even talking about 50+ years ago, when that meant “going to the game” or “turning on the radio” for 95% of your live sports consumption. As recently as the 2000s, when it came to sports broadcasts, there were the major networks, ESPN, an occasional game on one of the Turner channels, and that pretty much was it.
Today, sports leagues are scattering their broadcast rights around like digital Johnny Appleseeds, adding to an already-complex CTV and streaming video environment and creating new challenges for advertisers and consumers alike. The clear reason for this shift? Money—big money. US sports TV and streaming rights hit $29.54 billion in 2024 and are forecast to reach nearly $35 billion by 2027—almost double what they were just a decade earlier. All this has taken place in the face of (or, perhaps, helped fuel) cord cutting that drives essential revenue away from traditional broadcasters and into the pockets of streaming services.
In light of these dramatic shifts, how can digital advertisers effectively reach and connect with sports fans? And is navigating the disparate live sports landscape worth all the trouble? (Spoiler alert: yes, yes it is!) Read on to learn all about it.
First off, let’s look at some of those new (or, at least, new-ish) sports broadcast partnerships, an area that’s seen some significant departures from the “old normal” in recent years:
The fact that so many major American sports entities have granted exclusive broadcast rights to streaming platforms marks a significant shift in the industry. And with digital live sports viewership surpassing linear TV in 2023—a gap that’s expected to keep widening—it’s clear that the streaming-first revolution in sports broadcasting has arrived.
Just as meaningful is the price those companies paid for their live sports streaming rights: $200 million a year from Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and NBCUniversal for WNBA games; $85 million a year from Apple for baseball; $5 billion over the next ten years from Netflix for the WWE “Raw” programming; $1 billion per year from Amazon for their weekly regular season NFL matchup; a reported $2+ billion per year from Google for Sunday Ticket; and $150 million from Netflix for their two Christmas day games in 2024.
To make up for these kinds of skyrocketing costs, linear broadcasters and streaming video platforms alike are turning to two main revenue sources: subscription price hikes and—you guessed it!—advertising. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how (and why) advertisers can make the most of this evolving landscape.
More than two-thirds of Americans are sports fans. And people who watch sports aren’t going to catch a replay of the game once it hits Netflix in a few months—they’re going to watch it live. This is a valuable “guaranteed” audience upon which platforms and advertisers alike can place outsized value compared to other broadcasts (no wonder sports tend to dominate lists of the most-watched US broadcasts year after year). When brands want to ensure they are meeting a large, built-in audience all at once, there are few opportunities quite like live sports.
Which is not to say that brands can’t benefit from advertising against other sports content, such as highlights, clips, and replays (more on this in a bit!). Those often represent prime contextual advertising opportunities, whether via contextual partners like Comscore and DoubleVerify, or with specific publishers such as the AP, Gannett, or (of course) ESPN.
On the more local level, no matter what embarrassment, scandal, or years-long losing streak might afflict their favorite team, fans tend to “root root root for the home team” through thick and thin. For advertisers that want to geotarget, sporting events often post remarkable ratings in specific markets—and fan loyalty can translate to brand loyalty. No wonder organizations of all kinds pay out top dollars to be the official beer, official pizza, official bank, official cryptocurrency platform, or even official HR/payroll provider of your hometown team.
Another key factor that’s fueling sports viewership? Gambling, which has gone from being federally banned (save for in Nevada) in 2018 to being all over American sports coverage today. As legalized sports gambling has come to more and more states, total consumer spending on gambling has skyrocketed—surpassing $100 billion for the first time in 2023, and expected to exceed $200 billion in 2025.
This growing excitement around sports betting is delivering new, passionate audiences to live sports. Eleven percent of the US population was a sports bettor in 2023, and in 2025, there are expected to be nearly 37 million online sports bettors in the US. And if someone is spending money on the game, they’re a whole lot more likely to tune in, with 85% of sports bettors saying it makes them more interested in watching the games.
As for where and how they're watching...
More than 163 million Americans regularly watch live sports—nearly 50% of the total population. Perhaps even more notably, more than 114 million of those viewers currently tune in on digital devices, and that number is projected to rise to 133 million by 2028. Yep: just like the rest of the video world, the future of live sports advertising is digital.
Of course, as is the case with that larger digital video environment, the increasingly disparate nature of sports broadcast agreements (even in light of new offerings like ESPN’s forthcoming sports streaming service) is only adding to the complexity and fragmentation that mark the digital video and CTV space. Among avid sports fans, 69% feel it’s a hassle to navigate multiple providers to watch the same sport and 59% feel it’s gotten more difficult to find what they want to watch, and you can only imagine how frustrating that must be when the start of the game is rapidly approaching (and your nachos are getting cold...) And for advertisers, the evolution from a few reliable live sports hubs to numerous broadcasters across multiple channels can mean added complexity in campaigns targeting these audiences. So as streaming becomes the norm for live sports, advertisers and viewers alike are adapting to some growing pains.
That said, to their credit, the big tech companies that have waded into the live sports streaming wars are taking crucial steps toward optimizing benefits for advertisers. Amazon has a deal in place with Nielsen to measure the Thursday Night Football streaming numbers using the same panel-based national TV ratings system that it applies to linear programming, so advertisers will have some good transparency into viewership numbers on the property. Amazon has also rolled out shoppable ad experiences to allow advertisers to more deeply engage with live audiences. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal and Walmart rolled out new shoppable experiences and measurement capabilities across both linear and streaming ad inventory in November 2024, allowing advertisers to harness the power of retail media (through Walmart Connect) during live sports.
Even the more traditional homes of live sports have readily embraced the potential of streaming those events for maximum impact. CBS, for instance, included viewership across all platforms including the CBS Television Network, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, and NFL digital properties when it reported the ratings from Super Bowl LVIII—the most-watched TV broadcast of all time besides the 1969 moon landing. And annual events like the Masters golf championship and NCAA men’s basketball tournament have long had authorized (and ad-filled) streams as part of their overall broadcast packages. As viewers increasingly flock to OTT and CTV for their live sports consumption, brands will have new ways to personalize and target these consumers as part of their cross-channel marketing strategies.
Speaking of which...
The digital evolution of live sports broadcasts goes beyond individual devices.
More and more fans are watching the game on digital platforms, particularly bigger screens like CTV. For instance, sports viewership on YouTube’s connected TV app grew by 30% in 2024. Connected TV (CTV) is becoming a major player in sports advertising—and if you’re a brand that’s trying to connect with millennial and/or Gen Z viewers, CTV may already be your best bet.
But the real secret weapon for advertisers may be resting in your pocket (or your hand) right now: smartphones. Sports broadcasts present a unique cross-platform marketing opportunity, with viewers across generations saying they often use second screens to look up players and team statistics, use social media to engage with others, watch other games on a separate device, place bets, and more—all while watching live sports at home. Additionally, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase became the talk of the 2022 Super Bowl ad scene with its 60-second, $14 million spot that featured nothing more than a floating QR code. That spot got more than 20 million people to pull out their phones and scan the code within one minute of its airing, driving so many people to a site offering $15 in Bitcoin to anyone who registered for a new Coinbase account that it crashed the app itself.
While few cross-channel efforts will lead to those kinds of jaw-dropping results, the strategy behind it shows the potential of cross-channel advertising during sporting events. Additionally, sports fans are a widely targetable audience segment through private marketplaces (PMPs) like Tapjoy and can be further segmented via top data providers like Alliant (golf), eXelate (NBA), and Cuebiq (NHL), helping advertisers continue to market to viewers even after the game clock hits 0:00. Put it all together, and sports programming represents a great way to consistently reach and remarket to specific target audiences across multiple devices.
Beyond allowing advertisers to connect with viewers across a variety of devices when and where they’re tuning into sports, there’s also a significant opportunity to build upon the momentum of live sports and continue the conversation after (or even leading up to) the big game. Sports fans are often ideal audiences for marketers as they are deeply engaged when it comes to their favorite teams. Considering the fact that 41% of fans are already locked into their favorite pro sports team by the age of 12 (and 62% by the age of 17), it’s clear that sports fans are an active, impassioned audience ripe for engagement. By leaning into this passion and connecting with these fans within relevant content related to their favorite teams, marketers can further deepen brand loyalty and drive meaningful engagement.
Whether by running ads alongside clips and replays, within sports shows, or even alongside social media content, advertisers have ever-expanding opportunities to engage with sports fans beyond live events themselves—and perhaps even to persuade more viewers to tune into live games. The power of such placements is underscored by deals like the recent NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery agreement which includes the studio show Inside the NBA, as well as other NBA content like Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, a social media network that distributes sports clips and content.
In addition to using ad placements within gameday-adjacent content, brands and marketers can also harness the power of sports by working with athlete influencers. Take, for instance, rugby star and Olympian Ilona Maher. She rose to fame not only for her powerful presence and performance on the field, but also for her active presence on social media—where she now has over three million followers across Instagram and TikTok and works with major brands like Brooks, Paula’s Choice, and Secret. Additionally, many athletes have also started their own podcasts (like Angel Reese’s “Unapologetically Angel” and the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights”), offering brands the opportunity to place high-impact ads to connect with fans within their shows.
Sports offer brands a unique opportunity to connect with deeply passionate and engaged audiences, both during and outside of the game. By leveraging gameday-adjacent content and collaborating with athlete influencers, brands and marketers can tap into the enthusiasm of sports fans to build stronger connections, deepen brand loyalty, and drive meaningful engagement across a variety of platforms.
Sporting events are a fixture of American culture. From Super Bowl Sunday every winter to the WNBA Finals every summer, live sports are a reliable way to bring people together in front of their TVs, laptops, and other streaming devices to catch the action (and, of course, the commercials). And even as the way fans consume their sports continues to evolve hand-in-hand with the rest of the video realm, advertisers will look to live sports as a pillar of their omnichannel marketing strategies. In short: it’s a home run opportunity for brands to hit their goals, assist in the revenue-driving process, and score some big wins.
(And yes, there were seven sports puns in that last sentence. Touchdown.)
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As noted above, the role of CTV in live sports advertising is expected to dramatically increase in the years ahead. But sports are not the only programming powering CTV’s rise, and advertisers are taking notice: US CTV ad spend hit $28.79 billion in 2024, and it’s projected to soar to $46.89 billion by 2028.
Want to learn more about CTV advertising? Check out our guide for tips on everything from CTV campaign best practices, to safeguards against CTV ad fraud, to effective targeting tactics, and much, much more.
In today's dynamic advertising landscape, media buyers must navigate a complex web of partner relationships, buying decisions, and shifting industry trends. In this episode of Adtech Unfiltered, Shelby Saville, Chief Executive Officer at Starcom US, shares valuable insights from her time serving as Chief Investment Officer at Publicis Media US.
Together with host Noor Naseer, Saville discusses her approach to partner engagement, what drives investment strategies, and how buying teams can adapt to stay ahead. Her candid perspective offers actionable lessons for both buyers and sellers looking to succeed in an ever-evolving ecosystem.
In a surprise announcement, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Meta will stop using fact checkers for content posted to Facebook, Instagram, or Threads. Instead, they will be employing “Community Notes” akin to those used at X, where Elon Musk has outsourced content moderation to its users.
Zuckerberg and Meta’s new chief global-affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, explained the rationale for their decision in a blog post published January 7, saying the fact-checking program that they launched in the wake of the Donald Trump’s first election victory back in 2016 was "too politically biased" and had damaged user trust.
When it comes to the kind of content that Meta now deems permissible for posting on its platforms, the company has also updated its Hateful Content guidelines to allow users to post controversial and/or offensive content that was previously banned, including “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.” The revised guidelines have also eliminated explicit mention of other previously-banned content, granting tacit approval to posts referring to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it.’”
In addition to the content moderation changes, the company also announced it would be updating its algorithms to once again prioritize political content in its users' feeds.
Together, these moves have the potential to transform the user experience on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads and have left both users and advertisers holding their collective breaths, anticipating the consequences of the changes while hoping for the best—and preparing for the worst.
Why is Meta taking these actions? Where to begin.
Per the company’s official position, “We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” said Zuckerberg. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Going beyond the company’s official explanation, Meta’s policy pivot appears to be motivated by a number of different factors—the most obvious of which is the incoming Trump Administration, as alluded to in Zuckerberg’s video message and affirmed by Trump himself at a press conference shortly after the announcement. Meta has had a tumultuous past with the former and future president, having suspended him from its platforms following the events of January 6, 2021, and is seeking to curry favor with the new administration.
Zuckerberg also made reference to his hope of working with Trump "to push back on governments around the world," specifically mentioning Europe and what he called its "ever-increasing number of laws" and "institutionalizing censorship." Given Meta's many legal issues in the EU, which have resulted in nearly 3 billion euros in fines to date, the callout seems especially pointed and could signal a new twist in the advertising industry's ongoing regulatory saga.
Meta also revealed plans to promote "civic" (aka political) content on its platforms after previously deprecating it back in 2021. This, too, is likely to appeal to the incoming administration, but it comes with an additional benefit: Political content tends to drive strong engagement, and the company may well be using this moment as an opportunity to re-prioritize these posts in users’ feeds to reap those benefits.
“Meta’s hope is that this change boosts conversation and engagement on the platform,” said Colleen Fielder, Group VP, Social and Partner Marketing Solutions at Basis. “If that proves true and time spent on their platforms increases, that could be a positive for advertisers.”
Additionally, Zuckerberg announced that Meta’s trust and safety team will be relocated from California to Texas, saying that it would “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.” In truth, Meta is likely making the move for both optics and for cost-saving purposes, avoiding California’s higher taxes while catering to Republicans—who will now control both the White House and Congress—by relocating teams to a tried-and-true red state.
“From Meta’s perspective, this is potentially a win-win-win situation,” said Amy Rumpler, SVP, Search & Social Media Services at Basis. “Meta will benefit from cost savings and reorganization, the government will be appeased, and users will still have the ability to inform others if they believe content is misleading or misinformation. The key difference is a separate group of people won’t have the same amount of control around removing content they deem as inappropriate.”
The elimination of third-party fact checkers and weakened Hateful Content guidelines introduce new brand safety risks on Meta, threatening to exacerbate what has long been an area of concern (and source of criticism) for the social media giant. However, it remains to be seen whether this new system will be meaningfully different (or meaningfully worse) than the old one—at least as far as advertisers are concerned.
The risk, of course, is that a rise in harmful posts could mar the experience of using Meta's platforms—and, in particular, Facebook—to the point that users flee, further accelerating social media fragmentation and undermining one of marketers' most reliable resources. But for many advertisers, Facebook and Instagram remain essential channels whose reach extends to virtually every audience, so until there is a user exodus, most marketers will stay put, instead keeping a weary by watchful eye on how things develop.
Crucially, Meta also noted that, unlike X, they are planning to focus on maintaining strong relationships with advertisers and that they have empowered advertisers with brand safety tools to navigate this new environment.
“Policy changes aside, they do still have a brand safety system in place which allows advertisers to avoid alignment with content that falls in specific categories of sensitivity—which, if advertisers aren’t already using by default, they should consider implementing now,” said Rumpler.
Additionally, the re-prioritization of political content on its platforms—likely fueled by both a desire to appeal to Trump as well as the knowledge that this content drives especially high engagement (and that it did so during the previous Trump administration)—could provide Meta with an engagement boost that attracts users and, at least temporarily, intrigues advertisers.
Altogether, in the short term, the changes are unlikely to change much for marketers, but the industry will need to pay careful attention to how users respond. While Facebook and Instagram are fairly ubiquitous, their new policies could lead to very different reactions from different communities across the US. Some groups may grow more engaged on Meta platforms, but others could feel alienated or threatened to the point that they leave Facebook or Instagram altogether. Brands should keep a close eye on how their audiences react in the months ahead, monitoring ad performance carefully while keeping tabs on engagement trends—and, of course, leveraging brand safety tools as effectively as possible.
If you’re a digital advertising professional (and if you’re reading this, we’re going to hazard a guess that you are!) then signal loss is probably top of mind as we head into 2025. While it’s true that Google no longer plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, its new intentions to implement a consent-based model will pose similar challenges for marketers, with almost 90% of US browsers expected to become cookieless in the long-term.
For travel and tourism marketers who are already navigating a highly saturated market—and given consumers’ increased price sensitivity thanks to the tumult of the last few years—this mounting signal loss makes things all the more complex. As such, it’s critical that advertisers in the industry begin implementing and optimizing privacy-friendly solutions now, if they haven’t done so already.
For specific insights on how travel and tourism marketers can approach this transition, we spoke to Nicole Stahlecker, VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis Technologies. With over a decade of agency and digital media expertise—and extensive experience in travel and tourism advertising—Nicole brings a wealth of knowledge to this discussion. Read on for her top recommendations for travel and tourism marketers as they approach privacy-first advertising in 2025.
Nicole Stahlecker: So many travel and tourism marketers are sitting on a goldmine of first-party data. The problem? It’s often housed in distinct platforms across tons of different third-party vendors, rather than centralized in a customer data platform (CDP). Because that data is so disparate, marketers can’t action it collaboratively, or easily confirm when and how consent for it was given, since different platforms have different levels of privacy consent. This becomes particularly challenging for teams operating internationally, and as a result, they end up using only a limited amount of the data available to them and actioning it on the strictest of levels to ensure they’re meeting all data privacy regulations and requirements.
Since first-party data will be so critical to getting personalized messages in front of prospective travelers as we lose more and more signals, finding ways to unify, organize, and maximize that data is absolutely key. To that end, there are two action steps marketers should take as soon as possible:
The first is to clean up existing data so that it’s organized and usable from a customer data privacy standpoint. This might include working with vendors and platforms to gain access to that data, and/or investing in a CDP. The second step is to come up with a plan for how to collect and house first-party data in a clean and organized way moving forward, so advertisers can use it in future campaigns.
NS: When it comes to cookieless targeting, contextual targeting is key for travel and tourism marketers. There’s never going to be anything that beats that age-old marketing adage of putting your message in front of the right person, in the right place, and at the right time, and when it comes to those objectives, contextual targeting never lets us down. For example, tour companies know that the people most likely to book a tour are already going to be looking at other relevant information for that destination. By placing ads strategically near content about that location (such as on a travel blog that explores best times to book for that destination), advertisers can ensure they’re connecting with target audiences at a time when they’re likely in a decision-making mindset.
When it comes to attribution, leaning on your historical data will be most impactful. Just like keeping your first-party data clean, organized, and readily accessible is going to benefit your team, so too will keeping track of your campaigns and their results. Even though you won’t be able to track attribution the way you used to as signal loss increases, you can compare your recent data to your historical data and make improvements based on that.
NS: Sure! First, let’s imagine you’re a museum, and you have one location in a single destination. When it comes to targeting, you might take want to advantage of geotargeted digital out-of-home ads to capture the attention of tourists who are physically walking around near your museum and might be enticed by these displays.
For larger companies, or those with a presence that extends beyond a single location, you don’t want to overuse geotargeting—and you certainly don’t want to assume that you know where your customers are coming from, as you might miss out on potential audiences. For instance, let’s say you’re a hotel with multiple locations. You would likely lean more heavily on targeting based on your first-party data by linking your data collection with your advertising platforms. This would allow you to both target people who performed specific actions on your site, as well as create predictive (AKA lookalike) audiences to find similar users. You’d then be able to target these audiences based on their booking history, other individual actions on your website, demographic information, and more.
2025 will be a critical year for travel and tourism marketers to implement and fine-tune cookieless solutions to connect with their target audiences. By focusing on collecting, storing, and intentionally leveraging first-party data, as well as harnessing the power of contextual targeting, travel and tourism marketers can find success in today’s privacy-centric digital landscape.
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Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
Retail and e-commerce advertisers have long depended on third-party cookies for audience targeting and campaign success attribution. After all, with so many product categories falling under the retail umbrella, and significant variation within each category (size, color, material, etc.), marketers needed a way to target audiences with personalized ads for specific products and to then measure the impact of their efforts.
But with rising signal loss across the digital advertising ecosystem, retail marketers must shift towards privacy-first advertising strategies for targeting and attribution. This will be especially important in 2025, with Google appearing set to implement a consent-based model for cookie-based tracking in Chrome. Even though Google has walked back its original plans to deprecate third-party cookies, this new model is expected to have the same consequences for advertisers.
In this context, retail and e-commerce marketers must adapt by building expertise in cookieless solutions, prioritizing first-party data, and adopting automated targeting and measurement methods. But what exactly should those efforts look like? Below, Andrew Barbuto, Senior Agency Lead at Basis Technologies, highlights industry marketers’ top considerations and challenges amidst signal loss, explores potential solutions, and provides examples of privacy-first approaches for different types of retail businesses that can lead to advertising success.
Andrew Barbuto: I’d say there are two major considerations. The first is the ability to target to serve personalized ads. Because of signal loss, advertisers must change the ways they track consumer interests, behaviors, and habits.
Then there’s the measurement of that advertising. Part of the value proposition in digital advertising has long been the ability to tie an individual impression to an action or an acquisition. Without the volume of cookie-based signals advertisers are used to, that’s going to be a challenge for a couple of reasons. First, view-through conversions will go away completely, which will impact almost everything except the click-through conversions. Second, advertisers will likely up their investments in retail media networks, as they have treasure troves of first-party data that can be used for targeting. However, the ways these networks attribute sales are siloed and not standardized, and the biggest players like Amazon and Walmart don’t have much incentive to share their data. That means that results will be coming in from a variety of sources, which makes it difficult to get a holistic view of campaign performance. Retail advertisers will benefit from considering solutions that tie all of these approaches together—tools like data clean rooms, CRM solutions, CDPs, and click-based conversion attribution systems will be key.
AB: Prioritizing the collection and maximization of first-party data will be key to success for retail and e-commerce advertisers. Marketers can collect first-party data through things like promotions and loyalty programs, and then utilize it to create those personalized touchpoints. Customer data platforms (CDPs) are particularly useful for these tasks, as they can organize first-party data for targeting, and help with attribution as well by giving marketers a look into the customer journey and what tactics were most impactful on conversions in a given campaign. Marketers can also use the cookieless analysis of a data management platform like TransUnion for lookalike modeling based on first-party data to grow their addressable audience.
Contextual targeting is another big one for retail and e-commerce. It’s particularly relevant because people are researching products, doing shopper comparisons, and reading reviews on their phones and desktops. To be able to influence them while they’re researching in a contextually relevant environment is well worth the investment.
Next, connected TV is a great, privacy-friendly place for retail advertisers to get premium inventory on private marketplaces, and it’s good for awareness all the way down to conversion. Within their creative, advertising teams can include a QR code, which customers can scan to go to their website. At the same time, they can be running a digital campaign with a similar message to reach audiences while they’re on their desktops or mobile devices consuming shorter-form content.
A few other solutions that come to mind:
AB: Let’s take a large sporting apparel retailer as the first example. They’d want to consider onboarding first-party CRM data into a CDP like LiveRamp for precise ad targeting that doesn’t require third-party cookies. Based on the data they gather about a given consumer’s shopping behavior, they can advertise to them around the web for repeat purchases, new products, or related accessories, across different channels like video, native, or display, from upper- to lower-funnel ad placements. They could also utilize a DMP like TransUnion, which also doesn’t rely on third-party cookies, to build lookalike models off their CRM data and deploy awareness advertising to obtain new customers. Last, they could send people to their brand website and retarget off that site, or they could direct them to a landing page that promotes sales at a retailer partner like a big box or sporting goods store—but, of course, generating traffic to your own site comes with the added benefit of potentially increasing your CRM pool.
For a retail business that has brick-and-mortar stores, a geotargeted campaign can target people in proximity of their retail locations in a way that’s not reliant on cookies. Then, advertisers can use a footfall attribution partner like Cuebiq to measure physical store visits based on advertising. For a more specific example within this category, let’s take a business that sells diamond products in different luxury diamond stores. Their target customers will do research online, but the majority of that industry’s sales happen in-person at their local jewelry store and not online. So, advertisers can target people with a combination of proximity and geotargeting, past website visits, as well as people who have visited a physical jeweler. The business could also switch its KPI from “website visits” to “in-store foot traffic,” which is where sales are more likely to happen and, again, isn’t based on third-party cookies for measurement.
Advertisers may be losing the signals they’re used to, but consumers will still become aware of products, visit brand websites and apps, browse options, buy online or in-store, and spread the word about their experience—good or bad. And they’ll still hand over email addresses and join loyalty programs in exchange for discounts, points, and perks.
With all that online behavior, retail and e-commerce advertisers shouldn’t dread the progression of signal loss. Contextual targeting, first-party data activation, and making the most of premium inventory on emerging platforms can provide a holiday catalog-sized array of options for privacy-friendly campaign targeting and attribution.
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Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
We hate to say “restaurant and dining” in the same breath as “cookies going away”…but at least it’s only the third-party kind of cookies, right? While it’s true that Google has stated it won’t deprecate cookies in Chrome, its plan to grant users more control over cookie-based tracking is expected to have the same impact on advertisers.
Of course, this isn’t the only force pushing digital advertisers towards a privacy-first approach: Marketing teams have already had to deal with signal loss in recent years due to factors like Safari and Firefox going cookieless, the uptick in digital advertising regulation, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, and consumer demands for data privacy.
To help advertisers find their footing amidst increasing signal loss, we called on restaurant and dining marketing expert Vanessa Allen, Basis VP of Integrated Client Solutions. Read on for her insights into navigating the landscape of signal loss, as well as her top recommendations for cookieless advertising solutions that can turn prospects into customers and visitors into regulars.
Vanessa Allen: In today’s digital age, signal loss is leading to an eroding internet-based identity. To mitigate this, my top piece of advice for marketers is to prioritize the collection and use of first-party data in a compliant, privacy-friendly way. The good news is, the restaurant and dining industry has several consumer touchpoints where businesses can collect first-party data: point-of-sale systems for transaction data, loyalty platforms for behavior and interest tracking, and reservation systems for timing and frequency of visits. Marketers can then use a customer data platform (CDP) to turn that data into audience segments for ad targeting and to find lookalikes of existing customers.
VA: In addition to first-party data, there are quite a few cookieless and identity-friendly strategies available for restaurant and dining marketers.
Contextual targeting provides a great opportunity to capitalize on clear customer signals. For instance, the person reading a blog post about the best restaurants in Denver will get value from seeing ads for dining options in Colorado’s capital, and the aspiring cook reviewing online pasta recipes might be convinced to order in from the Italian restaurant advertising its delivery options. Contextual targeting can be especially effective for lower-funnel activities: There’s a lot of intent behind researching menus and reviews, as people are viewing that content at or near the moment of decision. Another benefit of contextual advertising is that it tends to be less expensive to deploy programmatically than other solutions, but still allows marketers to measure lower-funnel metrics—like cost per acquisition to generate orders for fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants, or cost per landing page view for fine dining.
Geotargeting a relevant location is another cookieless solution that is ideal for prospecting, as it can make locals and travelers aware of nearby food and drink options. It can even cause a change in buying behavior, as advertisers can geofence their competition and advertise on their customers’ phones. For example, the coffee lover who’s in line at a coffee shop could see a geofenced mobile ad for a discounted drink across the street, which could potentially intercept that sale.
Attribution is changing because of signal loss as well, but there are solutions when all the stakeholders learn how to work together. For instance, businesses can share sales data with their advertising partners, and with the right formatting and FTP setup, that sales data can blend nicely with ad campaign data in the same dashboard to show how advertising efforts are influencing sales.
VA: Let’s take a fast-casual restaurant as the first example. To collect and activate their first-party data effectively, businesses can collect data at the time of purchase and send it into a CRM. That data can then be activated strategically based on dining behaviors—for example, fast-casual customers aren’t likely to dine at the same restaurant again for about a week, so they can be put into a seven-day lookback window. They aren’t targeted programmatically or on social media until a week after their last purchase, which ensures budget is spent efficiently. When they see ads a week later, they’re ready to buy again.
Next, let’s look at a fine dining restaurant. A marketer for this kind of business can generate awareness with location targeting, which reduces reliance on cookies, and census data, which can show customer affinity for these restaurants. Contextual targeting is also effective for finding people researching tentpole events like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, graduations, and other times when people might spend more money on a nice dinner out. If some of that research happens on more premium websites, a private marketplace deal can use a certified publisher’s first-party data to create interest with the right audience.
Ongoing signal loss, combined with Google’s plans to give Chrome users an informed choice over cookie-based tracking, means that the urgency around restaurant and dining marketers adopting privacy-first advertising strategies may well reach a boiling point in 2025. By collecting and activating first-party data and leveraging privacy-friendly media tactics such as contextual and geotargeting, industry marketers can place themselves at the head of the table.
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Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
From Apple’s App Tracking Transparency to consumer privacy demands and resulting regulatory action, digital advertisers have grappled with widespread signal loss in recent years. But 2025 may bring even more drastic change in this area: While Google no longer plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, its new user “opt-in” plans are expected to result in the same signal loss for advertisers. For healthcare and pharmaceutical advertisers, this shift will add yet another layer of targeting and measurement complexity to an industry that is already wrought with privacy-related regulations.
For insights and strategies to help health and pharma advertisers navigate signal loss, we turned to Katherine Mitton, Director of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis Technologies. Read on for her top recommendations on weathering the identity crisis.
Katherine Mitton: My biggest piece of advice is to set up systems that allow for the collection of as much HIPAA-compliant data as possible. If brands haven’t already invested in advanced customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and capabilities, that should be their top priority. Then, once they have those systems and solutions in place, they can shift their focus to building up their CRM list so that, once third-party cookies are completely gone, they can still understand who they need to target and build lookalike audience segments to extend that targeting.
Beyond that, it’s important for health and pharma marketers to maintain a mixed-funnel approach in their campaigns. When third-party cookies are gone, advertisers won’t be able to track their mid-to-lower funnel actions the same way they can now. Those mid-to-lower funnel tactics will remain an important part of a holistic media mix, but health and pharma brands will need to lean more deeply on historical performance to prove out their impact. We know that they work—we’re just not going to have the attribution for them anymore.
KM: Beyond leveraging their own first-party data and CRM lists, health and pharma advertisers have several other options for privacy-friendly targeting solutions. Luckily, advertisers in the space already have experience navigating a lot of regulation (i.e., maintaining HIPAA and OCR compliance), so there’s a level of comfort with alternative targeting and measurement methods that advertisers in other industries may not have.
One cookieless solution that will be particularly useful in the health and pharma space is healthcare provider (HCP) targeting. Now is a great time for agencies to communicate the benefits HCP targeting offers their clients and to bolster the partnerships that enable it. That might look like working with third-party providers that specialize in healthcare systems and targeting based on providers’ specific specialties. Or, it might include leveraging platforms like LinkedIn that allow job title-based targeting, which is another way for health and pharma advertisers to get their message in front of doctors and other healthcare professionals without using third-party cookies.
Contextual targeting is another critical privacy-friendly targeting tool. If advertisers are trying to reach patients via contextual, that might look like placing ads for their products or services alongside relevant health info that prospective patients will likely be engaging with. And if they’re trying to reach HCPs, that strategy might include targeting medical journals, medical resources, and other online medical content that appeals to the HCP audience.
When it comes to attribution, leaning on historical performance will be key for lower-funnel tactics where pixel-based attribution isn’t going to be possible anymore. Agencies will need to educate their clients early and often about the impact of cookie loss on performance measurement and lead the way in resetting expectations. For instance, if one of their client’s paid search ads historically drove a lot of conversions, an agency can encourage their brand partners to continue to invest in those tactics even if they can no longer show the same attribution. Additionally, third-party brand lift studies can be a helpful way to measure success of campaigns without cookies. These studies are privacy-friendly and, when used in conjunction with historical performance, can help agencies and brands evaluate their ad campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
KM: Let’s imagine you’re a pharmaceutical company with a drug that treats a very specific condition. Your target audience is already pretty small, and targeting patients directly is tough due to HIPAA and OCR regulations. Your best options would likely be to do some contextual targeting based on keywords related to the condition your drug treats, and to leverage partnerships that enable the targeting of healthcare providers who treat the condition your drug is tied to.
As another example, let’s say you’re an agency that works with a telemedicine provider. I’d recommend investing in some contextual targeting based on keywords and driving folks who see those ads to a landing page where they can opt in for more information. Once that’s done, you’ll have first-party data you can leverage to target these audiences with customized messages based on the personal information they shared.
With an abundance of industry-specific privacy regulations, healthcare and pharmaceutical marketers are navigating a complex advertising ecosystem even without signal loss. With the shift towards a privacy-first advertising model, these teams must get even more intentional about how they target and measure their ads. By investing in the collection and actioning of first-party data, upping their contextual targeting spend, leaning on historical performance, and leveraging opportunities like HCP targeting, health and pharma advertisers can make the most of their ad spend in a privacy-first world.
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Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
Heading into 2025, financial services marketers face an unenviable list of challenges—from convincing people to borrow money at today’s high rates, to communicating product value and service expertise in an ultra-competitive market, to reaching and converting unbanked, underbanked, or alternative-banking customers.
Signal loss isn’t making things any easier, as Google’s plans to offer consumers an “informed choice” experience for third-party cookies in Chrome will ultimately pose the same challenges marketers expected with cookie deprecation.
But the financial services industry has proven resilient in the face of change. It’s better positioned for greater regulatory scrutiny. First-party consumer data is available, attainable, and actionable. And solutions abound for targeting and retargeting potential new customers and attributing their conversions—including inquiries, online applications, scheduled appointments, and more—to advertising campaigns.
To help financial services advertisers adapt to signal loss, we spoke to Julia Hewitt, Basis GVP of Integrated Client Solutions, to gather her top recommendations and insights.
Julia Hewitt: Financial services advertisers will need to consider how they’re reaching their audience online, which looks different today than it did five years ago thanks to cookie loss, digital advertising regulations, mobile ID erosion, and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. Whether it’s through targeted advertising, organic content, or community sponsorships, financial services marketers need to cut through the noise to reach their ideal prospects at key moments of intent.
Then, once you reach them, you need to consider what you are doing to help them connect with your brand and, ultimately, entice them to provide you with some form of first-party data: If people are clicking on your ad or going to your website, what content are you providing? Do you have tools they can use—let’s say, to calculate the cost of a loan? Or to run comparisons with other financial services? Do you have a newsletter they can sign up for that includes information that’s highly relevant to them and their needs? These are the sorts of things that could generate an inquiry or an opt-in that gives you the data you need for targeting, personalization, and attribution.
Of course, the challenges that come from signal loss will affect reach and personalization. There are regulations that require you to comply with how you’re targeting people and how transparent you are with how you plan to use their data—we’ve seen it with programmatic advertising, we’ve seen it with Meta, and we’ve seen it with Google. As cookies and the ability to track app data fall by the wayside, timing and relevance get more difficult. But the good news is that, as an industry, we’re used to change. We’re used to adapting. This is just another wave to get through.
JH: Contextual targeting is a great approach for financial services marketers and brands to lean into. When people are researching homes and home loans, cars and auto loans, home or auto insurance, or credit card rates, they’re researching because they intend to buy, borrow, or inquire. Advertising next to this content can strengthen awareness or trigger a decision to click and engage with these financial services companies. A big thing with contextual advertising is identifying the content, keywords, publishers, and/or private marketplaces that will connect your brand with moments that are important to your potential customers.
And, of course, using first-party data is key. But to be able to use it, you first have to collect it. A company website can offer lots of places for that data collection, including inquiries, appointment schedulers, content downloads, or e-newsletter signups. The right martech can then help segment that data to apply it strategically so you’re not advertising retirement planning ads to 18-year-olds heading off to college.
When collecting first-party data, it’s critical to keep regulations and customer expectations around data privacy top-of-mind. Inform users about how you’ll use their data, and make sure they have access to your data usage policies to be compliant.
Finally, we can’t forget attribution, which will continue to evolve as we continue to lose signals. Google Analytics or other web analytics dashboards can help, and there are several other attribution solutions in the works (including from Google) that will replace the “cookie trail” from ad exposure through event-level metrics to conversion. Media mix modeling solutions can also help advertisers evaluate a holistic picture of the customer journey. There is no one-size-fits all approach, but relying on data to influence your digital marketing strategy can allow advertisers to be more efficient and effective.
JH: Imagine a financial advisory brokerage that needs more financial advisors on staff, so they might decide to advertise to recruit a highly qualified person to provide that specific type of service. They’ll want to set up their adtech stack to be able to measure and analyze click-through data from their digital advertising campaigns with tactics like granular ad tags instead of cookies, then determine the best-performing websites for ad placements and strengthen those partnerships.
A similar process could be applied in B2C marketing as well. Marketers could measure clicks on ads to identify high-performing placements and personas. Then, using machine learning and predictive modeling, they could locate those personas and others with similar traits, targeting products or services that align with their preferences.
There are also opportunities to use your website to identify specific audience behaviors and feed that information into a CRM for better segmentation. For example, web visitors might submit their email addresses when downloading an online guide to home-buying or to follow up on the results from an auto loan calculator. That can create first-party data sets that pull in more personal data. That category-level information can also enrich a person’s CRM record with zero-party or interest-level data, which can then be used for a more personalized, relevant ad experience.
While signal loss presents challenges for finserv marketing teams, implementing these recommendations now will help them gain a competitive edge against teams who aren’t as proactive. By collecting first-party data intentionally, strategically investing in contextual targeting, and leveraging data analysis for segmentation and optimization, finserv advertisers can achieve targeting and message resonance at rates that would make the Fed jealous.
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Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.