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Advertisers face increased barriers to connecting with target audiences, as Google moves ahead with its plans to give consumers a choice over how third-party cookies are used in their Chrome browsers. Social media, however, remains a channel where advertisers can continue to achieve the targeting and personalization they’re used to—at least, in theory.
Evolutions in the social media landscape present significant new challenges to marketing teams looking to take advantage of personalization opportunities. The source of many of these challenges? Fragmentation.
While the internet users of 10 years ago were actively engaged with an average of four social networks, social media users today toggle between an average of 6.7 different social platforms each month. As such, marketing teams are tasked with evaluating how to effectively find and connect with target audiences across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and more.
In this context, media teams are under more strain than ever before as they work to craft tailored strategies not only for each platform they choose to invest in, but also for the specific audiences they seek to engage across those platforms. The challenge grows even more complex considering the rise of niche platforms like Letterboxd and chat apps like Telegram, which have gained traction as users seek more personalized, private, and community-driven spaces. These newer platforms offer significant opportunities to connect with specific audiences, but the task of considering if, when, and how to test ad options on each one only increases complexity for marketing teams.
To maximize social media's potential for reaching targeted audiences with personalized messages, advertisers must afford their teams the time and resources they need to navigate this complex landscape efficiently. Adopting systems for gaining deeper audience insights and automating as many campaign processes as possible will be critical for success.
Many factors have contributed to the rise of social media fragmentation in recent years. One is simply the maturation of consumers’ interactions with these platforms: As social media usage has grown, so has the proliferation of content on social platforms, driving users to seek more personalized spaces and communities. Agency executives say they started to notice this shift around 2016 or 2017. The trend was then likely accelerated a few years later by the COVID-19 pandemic, as people in lockdown craved more social connection and sought it out within niche digital spaces.
These shifts in consumer behavior have contributed to the rise of more niche social networks like Nextdoor (a hub for locals in specific neighborhoods to connect online) and Discord (a platform for users to connect over channels, which are often centered around shared interests like gaming, hobbies, or fandoms). And this movement towards more private and hyper-specific communities has been embraced by major social platforms as well—think Meta’s focus on Facebook groups in the late twenty-teens, or X’s communities feature, which was rolled out in 2021.
Major social platforms’ curation of more community-minded experiences demonstrates another trend that’s contributing to fragmentation in the social space: Copycatting. Digiday dubbed 2022 the “year of copycats,” as many social companies introduced new features that resembled TikTok’s feed in order to keep up with the platform. This trend of copycatting has continued in the years since, as social media companies seek to adopt their competitors’ popular features in an effort to prevent users from leaving their platforms. The result is that while platforms like Facebook, X, and Snapchat used to be more distinct, the big players in the space are growing increasingly homogeneous. In this context, some advertisers are finding that focusing on specific communities within these broader platforms is the only way to cut through the noise. While specific communities offer new opportunities for advertisers to connect with targeted groups, it also increases complexity for marketing teams, as they must personalize their content to those communities—and then further personalize it to match the feel of the different social platforms they invest in.
Beyond the trend towards niche communities and the increasing homogeneity of major social platforms, other factors have led to the fragmentation of advertisers' social budgets. In the early 2020s, brands began rethinking their spend on Meta as costs rose and ad space grew saturated on the platform. Meta’s standing with advertisers has further fluctuated during bad press cycles , from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to reports that the platform’s algorithm amplifies misinformation and hate speech. Combine that with advertisers’ continuing exodus from X (the platform’s ad revenues dropped by 98% YOY from January through September 2023, and over one-fourth of advertisers plan to cut their spending on the platform in 2025,) the rise of TikTok, and moves made by other social platforms including Pinterest, Reddit, and Snapchat to improve their ad offerings in a bid to earn some of advertisers’ budgets, and it’s clear that fragmentation in the social space is driven by a variety of factors, none of which show any sign of letting up in the near future.
Fragmentation in the social landscape demonstrates a broader shift that advertising leaders must contend with to stay relevant in the coming years: the growing demand for hyper-personalized experiences, a shift driven largely by younger audiences.
Indeed, Gen Z is a major driver of fragmentation in the social space, as advertisers work to reach the generation across their favorite channels—namely, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat (although considerable portions of the demographic are also on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, X, and Reddit). And the urgency around personalizing content to audiences on these platforms will only increase as time goes on. While Gen Z accounts for about one-fifth of the population, the generation that comes after it, Gen Alpha, is expected to surpass baby boomers in number by 2025. Given that 65% of Gen Alpha kids aged 8-10 are already spending up to four hours a day on social, there’s no doubt that when they come of age as consumers, they’ll be as digitally savvy and as expectant of personalization on the social platforms they use as Gen Z, if not more so.
To reach these social media users across multiple platforms requires considerable time and effort, given that each platform requires a different strategy and, oftentimes, calls for distinct creative: Instagrammers expect a more polished approach, for example, while messy short-form realness reigns supreme on TikTok, and YouTube is generally geared toward longer-form content.
Advertisers must also navigate the complexities of balancing media plans across the fragmented social media landscape. Incorporating disparate social media platforms into cohesive campaigns presents a major challenge to marketing teams. Advertisers need to be able to holistically (and accurately) measure performance across all these platforms in order to optimize spend, make mid-flight adjustments, and gain insights to enhance future campaigns. But many agencies and marketing teams aren’t yet equipped to do this without investing significant human resources. In this context, social media advertisers need more time and better tools with which to achieve holistic campaigns that meet social media users in the places where they spend time.
The challenges presented to marketing teams as a result of fragmentation in the social space and the urgency to meet consumers—especially younger consumers—with hyper-personalized messaging are clear. First, teams need more time and/or resources to manage campaigns across an increasing number of social platforms (and digital marketing channels in general); and second, teams need access to data that’s unified, organized, and compliant to inform that personalization.
Adding head count is one way to bolster marketing teams’ ability to personalize across channels, but marketing organizations will need to level up their tech stacks as well. Strategically investing in tools that serve to automate manual tasks will be a key component of this. As marketing organizations strategize around how to invest in AI, they should ensure that they’re evaluating solutions that free up time for their teams. For example, marketing leaders may want to make the most of AI’s ability to quickly analyze large data sets across platforms in real time to identify which channels and audience segments are delivering the best results, then allocating (or reallocating) spend to top performers—or, alternatively, adjusting creative to boost lagging channels.
Automation is another key area that advertisers may want to consider adopting to mitigate rising media fragmentation and complexity. Solutions that reduce manual labor by automating parts of the campaign process—from automated in-flight campaign optimizations to automated reporting dashboards—save marketing teams time that they can use for more strategic tasks.
Finally, advertisers must optimize their tech stacks as it relates to the collection, standardization, compliance, unification, and activation of data. Though social media fragmentation poses many challenges, it also presents brands with an exciting opportunity to use their spend more efficiently and effectively by targeting groups of consumers in hyper-personalized ways. But to do so, they must thoroughly understand their target audiences. By investing in tools like CDPs, which help to collect, standardize, organize, and activate on first-party data (increasingly important in context of signal loss), and platforms that can unify data from multiple social platforms in one place, advertisers can make these processes easier, more effective, and less time consuming for their teams.
As advertisers lose more and more signals and the digital media landscape continues to fragment, they will continue to see social media as an appealing destination for their media dollars. But despite those platforms’ targeting capabilities, marketing teams won’t have the time or resources they need to maximize their media budgets and deliver optimized, personalized journeys without levelling up their tech stacks. Those teams that invest in solutions that can automate as much of the campaign process as possible—with a specific focus on solutions that gather, organize, and unify both customer and reporting data—will set themselves up for success not only in connecting with target audiences, but making the most of each touchpoint.
As digital advertising grapples with fragmentation within social media and other channels, the stakes are clear: Marketing teams must find ways to streamline and unify their campaigns across platforms in order to meet a consumer base that expects highly personalized, omnichannel advertising approaches. To connect with the consumers of today and to set themselves up for success in connecting with the consumers of tomorrow, brand and agency leaders must level up their tech stacks in order to empower their teams and facilitate the agility required by the current media ecosystem. By harnessing these tools, brands can thrive in a fragmented social landscape and build stronger, more personalized connections with their audiences.
Inefficient processes, rising costs, and shrinking profits are some of the biggest challenges agencies face today. And in recent years, these struggles have been amplified by industry developments such as increasing signal loss and growing media fragmentation. To stay competitive, many agency leaders are turning to their advertising and marketing technology stacks to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and deliver better results.
But this is often easier said than done. Leaders must carefully assess whether each piece of technology aligns with their unique business needs and goals, then ensure their teams have the necessary resources and training to use it effectively. With half of marketers finding martech complicated and difficult to use, many agency leaders struggle to realize the full benefits of their tech investments.
To meet the needs of today’s complex digital advertising ecosystem and prepare their organizations for the years ahead, agency leaders must take a strategic approach to evaluating and optimizing their existing tech stacks. This includes ensuring disparate systems integrate and work together smoothly, leveraging automation tools to streamline workflows and boost efficiency, and equipping teams with the training and resources needed to fully capitalize on these technologies. By aligning tech investments with operational goals and client needs, agencies can drive better outcomes, reduce team burnout, and position themselves for long-term success in a rapidly evolving industry.
Given the network of challenges facing agencies, leaders need tech stacks that not only tackle today’s operational inefficiencies but also position their organizations for long-term growth and adaptability. Optimizing these systems now can help agency leaders address some of their most pressing pain points—such as strained client-agency relationships, siloed data, team burnout, and more—while driving stronger outcomes across the board.
With 43.4% of agencies reporting that their relationships with clients are more strained today than they were two years ago, it’s clear they must prioritize the improvement of their client relationships. A streamlined tech stack can help with this goal.
A well-integrated tech stack reduces errors, ensuring more accurate campaign results and fewer communication breakdowns. It also facilitates more effective, data-driven campaigns, leading to better outcomes for clients. In addition, agencies can leverage their tech stacks to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. By showcasing how their tech enhances efficiency, improves transparency, and drives results, agencies can both build trust with existing clients and attract new clients.
In an era of increased signal loss and heightened data privacy concerns, it’s critical that agencies organize and handle their data effectively. Though having data is critical in and of itself, the value of that data is significantly diminished if it is not easily accessible. For instance, if an agency is working with a client who collects first-party data through a loyalty program, but the data is spread across several disconnected systems—such as a CRM, marketing automation platform, and separate analytics tools—then it becomes nearly impossible to action that data effectively. Without proper tech stack integration, the agency risks missing key insights, limiting the ability to create personalized campaigns that drive results.
A streamlined tech stack, on the other hand, ensures that data flows across systems, enabling real-time insights that can drive campaign decisions. Having a strong tech stack helps agencies deliver more effective, targeted campaigns that drive better results for clients—while also maintaining regulatory compliance and data security.
It’s no secret that burnout is a huge problem in the advertising industry. With more than 70% of agency professionals saying their job is harder today than it was two years ago, leaders are under increased pressure to find ways to alleviate stress and improve team morale in the workplace. One solution lies in optimizing tech stacks: By automating repetitive tasks and streamlining workflows, agencies can reduce the time spent on low-value work, allowing teams to focus on more strategic, meaningful tasks. This shift not only reduces burnout but also helps foster a more engaged and productive team.
The pace of technological innovation is accelerating rapidly. But if an agency’s tech stack doesn’t work cohesively, teams won’t be able to add new tools and harness their full potential. This lack of adaptability can stifle progress and hinder the effective use of emerging technologies to remain competitive in today’s complex advertising landscape.
For example, consider the rise of generative AI-driven solutions. Many of these tools offer marketing teams significant benefits, such as reducing burnout and improving retention. However, many businesses are struggling to realize their full potential. To make the most of AI-driven solutions, agencies’ tech stacks need to be organized in such a way that adding the right new solution can help to reduce complexity, rather than add to it. A cohesive and adaptable tech stack enables seamless integration of new tools, empowering teams to stay efficient, engaged, and ready to navigate the ever-evolving advertising landscape.
In 2024, marketers are only using about one-third of their martech stack’s capabilities—down from 58% in 2020. This underutilization can stem from a variety of factors. For some teams, it could be that they have too many tools that don’t work well together, while others may lack the necessary training or resources to fully leverage the technology they already have. And, in some cases, their tools may not align well with a team’s specific needs or goals, leading to inefficiencies or underperformance.
To address this, agency leaders should begin by auditing and assessing their existing tech stacks to identify the factors undermining their effectiveness. By pinpointing the root causes of tech stack underutilization, leaders can craft a targeted strategy to optimize their systems and unlock their full potential.
At the same time, marketers must evaluate how to optimize their tech stacks to prepare for how the industry is evolving, considering factors like rising signal loss, increased complexity across digital media channels, and heightened demands around personalization. To that end, agency leaders should consider solutions that foster interoperability, increase automation, and offer robust implementation and training support.
A key challenge agencies face when optimizing their tech stacks is ensuring that their tools work together effectively. More than half of agency professionals report using six or more tools in their adtech and martech stacks, with 17.3% juggling 10 or more to manage client campaigns. Using this many different systems is a challenge to begin with—and if these tools don’t operate well together, advertisers are left toggling between platforms. When martech and adtech platforms don’t work together seamlessly, an estimated 13% of teams’ time is wasted, 12% of budget wasted, and 12% of employee effort wasted.
In addition, a lack of interoperability can exacerbate the challenges posed by fragmentation and complexity across today’s digital media ecosystem. For instance, when a team uses several disparate platforms for different channels—i.e., connected TV, social media, and digital display—each system may operate with its own set of data and metrics, making it difficult to create a cohesive omnichannel strategy. Without a unified view of campaign performance across all channels, agencies risk missing critical insights and opportunities to optimize ads in real-time, resulting in inefficiency and reduced campaign effectiveness. As such, improving their teams' tech stacks presents a significant opportunity for agency leaders to drive meaningful change within their organizations and potentially boost profitability through better campaign outcomes.
So, how can leaders increase interoperability between their tools? One potential solution is exploring and investing in integrations that allow data to flow smoothly between platforms, reducing the need for duplicate data entry and ensuring that campaign insights are accessible from a single source of truth. Whether it’s linking a customer data platform (CDP) to a marketing automation system or integrating analytics tools with advertising platforms, increasing interoperability helps eliminate friction, improves decision-making, and ultimately streamlines workflows for teams.
Depending on a team’s unique needs, embracing automation tools can be another powerful way to optimize an agency’s tech stack. In fact, 61% of marketers say their organization has invested in new technology to automate or streamline processes in the past year, and 66% say their company has plans to do so in the next 12 months.
One key area where automation can make a significant impact is in meeting the growing demand for personalization—which is particularly pronounced among younger audiences. For example, tools powered by generative AI can automate the creation of multiple variations of creative assets, allowing agencies to quickly produce personalized content tailored to different audience segments. This capability not only streamlines the creative process and reduces manual, redundant tasks for team members, but also ensures that campaigns are highly relevant and engaging for diverse audience segments, improving both reach and performance.
To make their tech stacks more automated, leaders might consider investing in an automated advertising platform, which can integrate all media channels into one place. These platforms not only improve interoperability by connecting existing tools, but they also facilitate integration across systems, making it easier for agencies to invest in new innovations down the line.
Implementation and training are critical (and oft-overlooked) components of optimizing a tech stack. Without a well-defined plan for onboarding and training, even the most advanced tools can go underutilized, resulting in missed opportunities and wasted resources. In fact, a whopping 63% of marketers report a lack of technical expertise within their teams to use the tools available to them.
Investing in tech with a dedicated onboarding team can help make the transition smoother and ensure teams are equipped to use new systems effectively from the start. This support ensures that the technology is properly integrated into existing workflows and that teams are comfortable with new processes and platforms. Ongoing training is also essential for helping teams to maximize the long-term value of new systems, ensuring they’re trained on the latest updates and innovations that different systems offer. By fostering a culture of continuous learning, agencies can not only improve adoption but also keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape of marketing and advertising technology.
For agency leaders, optimizing their team’s tech stack is more than just a trend—it’s a critical strategy for both tackling present challenges and ensuring long-term success for their organization. By first examining existing systems to identify inefficiencies or gaps, agencies can make informed decisions about which tools to add or remove. Focusing on interoperability, streamlining workflows, and embracing automation tools can help agencies reduce inefficiency, minimize team burnout, and build stronger relationships with their clients, thus maintaining a competitive edge in a constantly evolving digital advertising landscape.
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Looking for deeper insights on the state of advertising agencies today? We surveyed advertising industry professionals from agencies across the US to see how they feel about their jobs, their agencies, their industry, and its future. Check out the findings in our 2024 Advertising Agency Report.
Like piling freshly grated parmesan on pasta, dipping pizza in ranch dressing, or pumping extra butter on movie theater popcorn, adding “digital” to out-of-home advertising makes what was already a good thing even better.
In its non-digital form, out-of-home (OOH) advertising allows advertisers to connect with consumers in high-traffic locations to drive awareness and/or action, and to reach people in places and moments where other forms of advertising can’t. From a series of bright and cheery billboards for a frozen custard shop along the highway, to a larger-than-life poster for a hot new film release placed just blocks from a movie theater, out-of-home-ads foster connection and emotion. And given how long OOH advertising has been around, it’s no surprise that the advent of its digital counterpart has been making waves.
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising takes everything great about OOH and adds the benefits inherent to digital technology—namely, the ability to target, track, optimize, refine, and measure the results of OOH ads. Programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) takes things a step further, allowing advertisers to harness the power of automation and real-time bidding technology to make the most of out-of-home ad spend. And as more and more marketers embrace these benefits, DOOH and pDOOH ad spend are experiencing rapid growth.
We’re here to give you the lowdown on digital out-of-home advertising so you can leverage its power in your upcoming campaigns and connect with people in intentional moments along their purchasing journeys. Ready? Let’s dive in.
DOOH advertising is defined as any digital advertising media that people encounter outside of their homes and not on user-owned devices like smartphones or tablets. Though people most closely associate DOOH with brightly colored digital billboards (like those in Times Square), the channel includes everything from massive digital billboards, to ads displayed on mall kiosk screens, to video ads that pop up on the gas station TV while you’re refueling.
As their acronyms suggest (and as we briefly touched on earlier), DOOH and OOH ads have a lot in common. Out-of-home advertising includes any ads a person would find outside of their home that are not found on their personal device(s), including billboards, images around bus stops and other public transit systems, posters in public areas, and more. It’s an umbrella term that covers non-digital out-of-home, digital out-of-home, and programmatic digital out-of-home. (Just remember: All DOOH is OOH, but not all OOH is DOOH!)
Non-digital out-of-home is one of the oldest, most established forms of advertising around— the origin of US billboards dates back to the 1830s. But non-digital out-of-home often requires long commitments and lacks flexibility when it comes to revising buys.
Enter: DOOH, the digital iteration of OOH advertising. The digital elements of DOOH have brought significant advancements to OOH advertising that have reenergized marketers’ view of the channel and its effectiveness. DOOH includes the digital forms of ads that consumers encounter outside of their homes, such as large format screens at sporting events, digital screens at gyms and doctors’ offices, and screens that include advertisements at the point-of-purchase.
How does programmatic digital out-of-home fit into this mix of acronyms? Much like how DOOH is a type of OOH advertising, pDOOH is a type of DOOH advertising, and it includes any DOOH inventory that is bought programmatically. Programmatic digital out-of-home allows advertisers to activate DOOH campaigns in an automated and data-driven way, typically by using a demand side platform (DSP).
There are several different venue formats when it comes to DOOH advertising. These include:
On top of these, other forms of digital signage are making their way into more and more places in our everyday environments. From screens scattered throughout the local gym, to bright and bold outdoor panels along sidewalks in urban areas, to small screens on the back of the headrests in taxis, digital displays are popping up everywhere.
Using a combination of these different venue types can allow you to get your brand or product messaging in front of the right consumer, at the right time.
With an oft-dizzying array of digital channels and media types to choose from, what distinct benefits does DOOH offer to advertisers? Here are some of the most notable:
DOOH offers brands an opportunity to connect with consumers in real-world moments—including those in which they’re unreachable (or less reachable) on their personal devices. And, given its one-to-many nature, DOOH is an effective channel for building brand awareness and boosting brand recognition at scale.
Even more, people tend to view DOOH ads favorably. Almost two-thirds of consumers have a favorable view of DOOH ads, representing a much more unanimous consumer base compared to the percentages of consumers who have a favorable view of TV/video (50%), social media (48%), audio (32%), and print (31%).
A digital sign in the subway station that reminds you to buy groceries (with a QR code that takes you right to the supermarket’s same-day delivery app).
A digital billboard that switches between images of iced coffee and hot beverages, depending on the weather.
An urban panel that highlights an upcoming concert at a nearby venue, and then directs customers to the ticketing website on their mobile phones.
Much like OOH, DOOH offers advertisers the chance to connect with consumers in a way that’s eye-catching, bold, and memorable (and on a screen that’s likely far bigger than those of their personal devices!). And, thanks to its digital nature, advertisers can potentially even lean into advancements in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to give consumers a truly immersive experience.
Given the variations in sizes, locations, and types of screens available for DOOH ads, marketers can get creative with their ads. This could include using multiple images or videos, since digital screens allow on-screen messaging to change every few seconds; incorporating interactive elements like QR codes to direct consumers to take action; or leveraging touch-screen technology for a more immersive customer experience.
And, unlike many other ad formats, DOOH ads are non-skippable and highly viewable, so bold and engaging messaging/creative has a high probability of making an impression. In other words, these ads provide a great opportunity to make a statement!
More traditional OOH investments are known for their long buying cycles and relative lack of flexibility when it comes to revising buys and/or creative displays. And it makes sense, right? Making tweaks to the messaging on the non-digital billboard along the highway is a far greater undertaking than updating the digital files to be displayed on a DOOH screen.
DOOH, on the other hand, offers advertisers increased flexibility within their campaigns: On-screen messaging can change every few minutes, and it’s easier to adjust creative and/or make optimizations during a campaign. Additionally, advertisers can use DOOH within cross-device campaigns—whether by incorporating QR codes that viewers scan on their mobile devices, or by geotargeting personal devices of consumers around a specific DOOH ad or campaign—leveraging DOOH’s flexibility to reach and connect with consumers in a way that drives action.
Consumers are demanding increased privacy, and the advertising industry is slowly but surely moving towards a privacy-first model. So, how does DOOH advertising fit into the privacy conversation?
Since DOOH is anonymized and a one-to-many channel, it’s inherently privacy friendly. With DOOH, there’s no need to think about alternative solutions to targeting or attribution. Though DOOH ads can be targeted based on a screen’s geolocation, context, and other parameters, targeting is not done at a personal level.
Though this one’s specific to programmatic DOOH, it’s worth noting: Thanks to the power of real-time bidding, pDOOH allows advertisers to put ads in front of consumers at the right time and place. Where traditional OOH investments are known for requiring long commitments and lacking flexibility, pDOOH empowers advertisers to use real-time data to act flexibly and nimbly in their campaigns.
In its original non-digital form, OOH advertising is largely location-based. Just think of that billboard for a juicy burger and extra-crispy fries that shows up just as you’re about to reach the appropriate exit on the highway, or the poster plastered inside the ski bus that advertises services for a personal injury lawyer (yikes!).
DOOH allows for similar location-based targeting (geotargeting), as well as additional targeting features, including:
These enhanced targeting parameters allow advertisers to get even more specific in ensuring their ad gets in front of their ideal consumer in a precise and strategically beneficial moment.
Thanks to recent advancements and innovations in location technology, DOOH ads are now far more measurable. By understanding when and where an ad was played, who was nearby, and what actions people near an ad (and likely exposed to that ad) took, marketers can measure the impacts of their DOOH campaigns.
Marketers can track the impact of DOOH ads based on metrics like impressions, bids won, impressions per bid, and win rate. They can also set KPIs across the purchase funnel, including:
DOOH fundamentals aside, how is the advertising industry investing in OOH, DOOH, and pDOOH, and what new trends are shaping the space?
To start, while OOH ad spend is enjoying moderate-but-steady growth, DOOH and pDOOH ad spend are seeing growth rates in the double digits. While only 15% of current OOH inventory is digital, DOOH will account for over a third of total US OOH ad spending this year. And pDOOH will account for over a quarter of digital OOH ad spend for the first time in 2024, with advertisers increasingly looking to take advantage its programmatic benefits.
The dynamism of DOOH has also changed how advertisers view the tactic, taking it beyond its more traditional role as a brand awareness play. For example, the addition of QR codes to DOOH ad creative can help spur action and support attribution, enabling DOOH to play a role in performance marketing strategies. In fact, 76% of consumers take action after seeing a digital billboard ad.
And, as is the case throughout advertising, AI is increasingly making an impact on DOOH. Generative AI, for example, can streamline the campaign planning process by determining the best formats and placements to target the intended audience, and then automate the process of analyzing consumer data so that marketers can act on it more quickly.
Overall, while OOH is growing more moderately, DOOH and pDOOH are taking off, and new developments in the space are offering advertisers more opportunities for automation and personalization.
DOOH advertising gives marketers the opportunity to connect with consumers in a big, bold way, at times when people may not be actively using their phones, tablets, and other personal devices. Unlike traditional OOH, digital OOH gives allows advertisers to embrace the latest innovations in adtech to personalize, target, and measure the results of their out-of-home ads. As such, savvy marketers are increasingly embracing the channel as part of their larger, omnichannel media strategy.
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Want to learn even more about how to successfully integrate DOOH into your ad campaigns? Check out The Power of Place: Your Guide to Digital Out-of-Home Advertising for all the information you need to make the most of the DOOH opportunity.
How many streaming services does your household have access to? Once upon a time, many of us only had a single Netflix account to our name. Now, however, it’s more common to juggle multiple subscriptions across not only Netflix, but also Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Hulu, Peacock, Max, Disney+, and more. Welcome to the wild world of connected TV viewing!
The lack of unified connected TV (CTV) inventory is mildly frustrating for consumers (wait, which app can we stream Sunday Night Football on?), but it’s doubly so for marketers. And with the recent attention the channel has received from consumers and advertisers alike, ensuring brand safety and preventing ad fraud on CTV adds an additional layer of difficulty for teams. Combine that with the challenge of knowing who precisely is in front of a TV set at a given moment, and it’s clear that, much like the broader marketing landscape, CTV is complex.
The cost of this complexity and fragmentation can extend beyond the consumer experience, trickling all the way down to team satisfaction and turnover rates. CTV media fragmentation results in inordinate amounts of time spent on the low-value, manual tasks necessary to cobble together data and holistic insights from many disparate media sources. In the context of burnout within the digital advertising industry, it’s critical that brands and agencies seek out ways to automate as many aspects of the CTV media buying process as possible in order to retain talent and avoid the high costs of turnover.
Despite the challenges of navigating fragmentation, ensuring brand safety, and embracing tech to streamline CTV advertising, savvy marketers know that connected TV is an effective channel to include in a holistic marketing mix. After all, 86% of US households own a connected TV device, and in 2025 the average US adult will spend nearly two and a half hours watching CTV devices each day. Even more, it’s the fastest-growing major ad channel in the US, with CTV ad spend projected to hit $32.57 billion in 2025, representing 9.6% of total digital media ad spend.
To make the most of the CTV opportunity, advertisers need to understand how to work around industry fragmentation to run effective, brand-safe campaigns and connect with viewers when and where they’re watching video. With a proactive approach to planning, targeting, and measurement, advertising teams can fully capitalize on CTV within today’s complex landscape.
Planning an effective CTV campaign requires marketers to grapple with pain points related to targeting and measuring. While identifying targeting parameters and KPIs early in the planning process is best practice for any campaign, it’s even more important when it comes to CTV (more on this later!), due to the channel-specific challenges those areas present.
In addition to identifying KPIs early in the planning process, planning for optimizations is another best practice to include in the early stages of a CTV campaign. This could include preparing multiple versions of the same video, editing those versions to different lengths, and planning to A/B test them to see which lengths perform best.
Once teams have identified KPIs and planned for optimizations, they should consider the following when planning an effective CTV campaign:
Though the CTV advertising boom has opened up exciting opportunities for brands and advertisers, the rapid increase in ad investment on the channel has also attracted attention from fraudsters and other bad actors. And, combined with the fact that more than 80% of CTV ad buyers say finding brand suitable ad placements is a significant concern, it’s clear that safeguarding against brand safety threats on the channel is a key step to crafting an effective CTV campaign.
Formulating a brand safety plan during the planning process is key, as this ensures that clear guidelines are established for suitable content and targeting criteria from the start. When it comes to CTV targeting, tools like allowlists, blocklists, and CTV-specific contextual targeting segments can help teams focus their ads on desired placements. By getting clear on their specific brand values and creating a strategy that incorporates both pre-bid and post-bid monitoring, teams can actively manage where their ads appear. This approach not only helps to avoid unsuitable placements, but also allows for quick adjustments if any brand safety risks arise during the campaign.
Additionally, there are many partnerships (such as those discussed earlier) that can help teams avoid ad fraud and prioritize brand suitable CTV placements. With the right partnerships, advertisers can access verified inventory, utilize advanced measurement tools, and ensure their ads run in safe, brand-appropriate placements, thus enhancing overall campaign effectiveness. Ultimately, by considering brand safety from the very beginning of the campaign process, brands and advertisers can protect their CTV campaigns and drive meaningful engagement with their audiences.
Once advertisers have identified KPIs, planned for optimizations, made intentional creative choices based on their audience, and crafted a proactive brand safety plan, it’s time to focus on CTV targeting.
There are many targeting opportunities in the realm of CTV, each offering unique advantages for reaching audiences. For instance, contextual advertising solutions are privacy-friendly, scalable, and cost-efficient, making them an ideal choice for CTV campaigns. These audience segments are classified using groups such as content category, broadcast type, production type, app store, and device, to better target media based on user viewing habits. For example, a home décor brand may want to run their ads within a content category that features home improvement projects, and a gaming company may want to target viewers tuning into CTV inventory through gaming console devices.
Leveraging private marketplace deals (PMPs) is another privacy-friendly way for CTV marketers to target. Within a PMP auction, advertisers can layer on contextual, first-party, and demographic data to further target specific audiences. And since these deals consist of high quality, premium inventory, they can help teams avoid ad fraud by offering enhanced control and quality assurance compared to inventory found via open marketplaces.
A few other key targeting tactics that advertisers can leverage within their CTV campaigns include geotargeting, dayparting, and retargeting. These allow marketers to reach viewers in specific locations and at specific times, and to extend their first-party segments across devices.
A final note on effectively targeting CTV ads: Intentionality is key! If teams curate an allowlist that is too limited (i.e., they’ve layered on too many different targeting tactics), it will be difficult to effectively scale that campaign and reach a broad audience.
As explored earlier, fragmentation is one of the most pressing challenges facing CTV advertisers—and it can make measurement and reporting especially tricky.
One of the best ways to maintain focus is to intentionally plan and optimize towards specific key performance indicators (KPIs), which will also help advertisers to ensure that they’re connecting with the right audiences in the right ways.
So, which KPIs should marketers consider when planning CTV campaigns? Video completion rate (VCR), which tells advertisers the rate at which their ad was viewed in its entirety, tends to be the most common. Other KPI options to consider for CTV campaigns include:
There are a variety of partners—or, even better, automated advertising platforms with a variety of partner integrations—that marketers can layer onto a CTV campaign to leverage custom capabilities for each campaign and optimize towards specific KPIs. Partnerships and integrations teams might use for their CTV campaigns include:
While the fragmented nature of CTV advertising presents challenges for marketers, brands and agencies willing to think outside the box and test creative solutions will enjoy the broad brand awareness and conversions CTV offers. By taking an intentional approach throughout each stage of their campaigns, advertising teams can optimize their reach, drive meaningful engagement, and capitalize on the full potential of connected TV advertising.
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As CTV continues to grow and evolve, it’s critical for advertisers to understand how to balance it with other digital video channels. Looking for a deeper dive on how to embrace the connected TV advertising opportunity within a holistic digital video strategy? Check out Video Unleashed: The Ultimate Guide to Digital Video Advertising for all the data, trends, and research marketing teams need to craft a holistic, omnichannel video experience.
In recent years, the advertising industry has been abuzz with the promise of future-forward developments. From the potential of Web3 and blockchain to AI, AR/VR, and beyond, advertiser expectations have shifted from curiosity to a strong appetite for actionable advancement.
Advertisers now want to move past roadmaps and promises of tomorrow, as many digital learning challenges—such as addressability, measurement, streaming activation, and new opportunities for reach and incrementality—persist. Yet as teams strive for meaningful action, they need to acknowledge the gaps between promise and practicality, integrating solutions in a way that drives tangible results.
This webinar offers a grounded perspective on the trends set to shape 2025. Noor Naseer and Kaitlin O’Brien from Basis’ Media Innovations & Technology team share insights on the disconnect between expectations vs. reality on critical media concerns. They also explore how advertisers can better address lingering challenges to maximize the potential of new innovations and create impact with their campaigns in 2025—and beyond.
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Looking for more trends content? Check out our Trends Hub and our 2025 Trends Report today!
For advertisers, few industries present as much complexity as the cannabis sector. The drug is still prohibited on a federal level, and to complicate the landscape even further, each state, marketing channel, and publisher carries its own set of ad regulations for cannabis marketers to navigate.
At the same time, the cannabis market continues to grow. The US market is expected to reach $76.39 billion by 2030, outpacing previous forecasts and showing a predicted compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.1% from 2024 to 2030. This level of business growth represents a significant opportunity for cannabis brands.
The challenge for cannabis advertisers is to capitalize on that opportunity by making the most of the advertising channels available to them, while maintaining compliance. To craft campaign strategies that effectively execute on this goal, cannabis marketers will want to keep the following considerations in mind:
For brands and marketers in the cannabis space, it is critical to spend time researching and developing a thorough understanding of the cannabis marketing-related laws that exist in target markets. This is foundational not only for ensuring regulatory compliance, but also for building trust with consumers and fostering a responsible brand image.
While each state carries its own set of regulations—for example, Virginia prohibits cannabis advertisers from running ads during school hours, while Montana prohibits the use of billboards for cannabis advertising—there are a few rules that hold true across the board, including the following:
As more and more state-level regulations are considered by politicians and voters, it’s important for advertisers to stay up to date on these developments. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on movement at the federal level as well, as the US Department of Justice considers reclassifying cannabis from a Schedule I to a less-restricted Schedule III drug. Cannabis’ reclassification would have implications that could allow brands to write off marketing costs as operating expenses, free up capital for marketing budgets, and theoretically loosen regulations for cannabis advertising.
Like state cannabis marketing regulations, each marketing channel (and each publisher and vendor within that channel) has its own approach to cannabis. For example, in the world of paid social, X (formerly Twitter) became the first major social platform to allow cannabis ads in the states where it’s legal in 2023, and Snapchat began allowing ads for cannabis and related products under strict guidelines that same year. Cannabis marketers must understand and monitor each platform’s policies to ensure that they’re taking advantage of platforms that do allow cannabis advertising (when those platforms make sense for their brand or client).
While the Federal Communications Commission does not allow cannabis advertisements to be aired on linear TV or radio, advertisers can run their ads via connected TV or digital audio. In fact, Spotify recently became the first streaming audio platform to allow cannabis advertisements, with restrictions on the explicit promotion of certain products.
In addition, out-of-home advertising has become a staple in cannabis marketing: 62% of the industry’s total ad spend is dedicated to it, according to Vivvix. Digital out-of-home (DOOH) presents a particularly exciting opportunity for cannabis advertisers, as it combines the advantages of traditional OOH with digital advertising capabilities like tracking and real-time optimization. As cannabis legalization expands, an increase in dispensaries will create more opportunities for in-store DOOH advertising to reach ready-to-buy customers. And unlike online platforms, DOOH faces fewer restrictions for cannabis ads, allowing broader audience reach and making the channel a more efficient, flexible option for cannabis marketers.
Traditional advertising comprises the lion’s share of the cannabis industry’s total ad spend: 74%, according to Vivvix. But of the remainder that’s invested in digital advertising, 96% is spent programmatically—and for good reason.
Many brands choose to run ads in publications centered around cannabis, such as High Times or Cannabis Culture, leveraging contextual placements that offer great opportunities to reach interested consumers. But those publications only represent one subset of cannabis consumers. With programmatic advertising, marketers can leverage automation to bridge the gap between cannabis-focused publications and more mainstream publications, ensuring advertisements reach cannabis consumers with precision across the web and doing so efficiently by navigating compliant inventory at scale. Programmatic also enhances campaigns with data-driven placements that provide an efficient ROAS.
At the same time, while Google and Meta have all but removed their ad networks from cannabis ad contention, brands can use programmatic advertising to connect the dots between premium publishers and the exchanges and networks that do allow cannabis industry advertising. Brands seek partners that understand canna-friendly inventory supply and demand and remain compliant with network, publisher, platform, and legal regulations.
The advertising industry continues to adapt to signal loss caused by consumers’ data privacy demands, privacy-related regulations, and platform changes like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency initiative. And in 2025, advertisers will lose even more signals as a result of Google’s plans for a consent-based model in Chrome. To adapt to this evolving landscape, cannabis marketers must adjust and set realistic expectations for campaign success amidst ongoing signal loss.
Key cookieless solutions for cannabis advertisers include leveraging first-party data, contextual advertising, and purchase or point of sale (POS) data. First-party data provides valuable insights from interested customers, while contextual targeting allows for regulation-compliant advertising on high-traffic cannabis sites like Leafly and Weed Maps. POS data, gathered at dispensaries during checkout, can be anonymized and matched to household IDs for more accurate targeting and attribution.
For cannabis startups, affordable contextual placements on popular cannabis publications can help reach consumers early in their journey in a privacy-friendly way. More established brands can explore higher-cost options like host-read podcast ads, which leverage the trust between podcast hosts and their engaged listeners. Geotargeting at events where cannabis consumers are likely to be offers another experimental avenue for reaching potential customers. Ultimately, by investing in and exploring privacy-friendly solutions, cannabis advertisers can succeed in the privacy-first digital landscape while respecting consumer demands and industry regulations.
In the current cannabis marketing climate, there are thousands of brands and dispensaries competing for the same consumers. But some potential brand exposure is reduced given that consumers’ number-one dispensary choice factor is location. And with so many regulations around showing products, consumption, and potency, it is important for cannabis advertisers to focus on what sets their brand apart and makes them unique.
Creative messaging that intersects with consumers’ interests can increase relevance that may lead to brand awareness, product trials, and new or return sales. For creative inspiration, turn to what cannabis consumers care about. Consumers appreciate low prices on a large selection and top-notch customer service, both benefits that cannabis advertisers may want to feature in their messaging.
Brands should also consider testing creative that leans into company culture or values. This can be a particularly impactful approach when advertisers can’t or don’t want to mention cannabis or cannabis products in order to increase the compliance of a certain ad or campaign.
CBD’s popularity is growing: In 2018, the estimated CBD usage rate among US adults was 6%, and that rate is forecast to increase to 35% in 2024. This surge in consumer interest presents a significant opportunity for brands to capitalize on the CBD market through strategic advertising campaigns.
CBD, or cannabidiol, is the non-psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. Because of its non-psychoactive nature, CBD has fewer restrictions at the federal level. At the same time, research suggests that people who consume CBD are likely to also consume cannabis. So, creating ads that focus on a brand’s CBD products can help create overall brand awareness and website traffic that leads to product cross-promotion without advertisers having to worry about some of the restrictions that come with traditional cannabis advertising.
Navigating the complex landscape of cannabis advertising requires careful consideration of several key factors. Perhaps most importantly, staying informed about local, state, and platform regulations is crucial for maintaining compliance, building trust with consumers, and reaching target audiences effectively while adhering to guidelines.
Investing in privacy-friendly cookieless solutions like first-party data, contextual advertising, and point-of-sale data is also critically important in today’s digital advertising landscape. And, when it comes to creative, telling a brand’s story can help cannabis advertisers overcome regulatory hurdles and differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
By keeping these considerations in mind, cannabis brands can develop robust, compliant advertising strategies that effectively reach consumers and drive growth in this rapidly expanding industry.
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Looking to learn even more about cannabis advertising—from opportune consumer personas to campaign best practices? Check out our guide, Cannabis Marketing in the Roaring 2020s, for a deep dive.
After years of economic uncertainty and inflation, the market is beginning to show signs of stability. This is good news for retail marketers, as it could allow consumers to adapt to current prices and regain confidence in their purchasing decisions, encouraging them to spend more freely in the months ahead.
In this context, retail sales are forecast to grow at a slow and steady pace through 2028, hovering around 3% growth each year. Within the broader retail landscape, e-commerce continues to grow in popularity among shoppers and is forecast to account for 20% of total retail sales by 2028. This growth is, in large part, driven by the fact that consumers are increasingly purchasing essential goods online rather than in brick-and-mortar stores. For retail advertisers, this shift underscores the increasing importance of connecting with audiences on digital channels via a holistic, omnichannel approach.
Retail ad spending reflects these trends: It’s anticipated to surpass $100 billion for the first time in 2024 and reach $123.5 billion by 2026, with more than 87% of spending going to digital channels that year. To capitalize on this opportunity—particularly this expanding digital opportunity—retail marketers need to home in on the channels that consumers are spending time on, use data-driven insights to create the personalized experiences shoppers crave, and prioritize building trust with consumers. By focusing on consumer preferences and evolving technologies, retail marketing teams can make the most of their ad spending, connect meaningfully with consumers, and foster brand loyalty in an increasingly competitive landscape.
In 2025, finding the right media balance to connect intentionally with both in-store and online shoppers will be key. With approximately 43% of US shoppers preferring to shop mostly online compared to 27% favoring in-store visits, marketing teams must adapt their strategies to reach both groups—as well as the many consumers that opt for a hybrid of in-store and online shopping. This hybrid approach begins before the point of purchase, with a Basis x GWI Retail study finding that consumers generally take a hybrid approach to browsing as well, both looking at items in-store and searching online for items and reviews.
This trend underscores the need for an omnichannel strategy that seamlessly integrates across both online and in-person touchpoints. Currently, only 25% of consumers say they are satisfied with the omnichannel experience retailers provide, while 75% say they want a seamless experience. This highlights a significant opportunity for advertising teams to make meaningful improvements.
There are various approaches teams might consider to make the most of this opportunity. Advertisers might run CTV ads with a QR code that both links to a website and to a store locator; leverage digital out-of-home ads in conjunction with geotargeted mobile ads to connect with shoppers near a retailer’s brick-and-mortar location; or create personalized email campaigns that include exclusive in-store promotions, encouraging recipients to visit physical locations while reinforcing their online engagement. By weaving these elements together, brands can create a more cohesive shopping experience that effectively meets consumers wherever they are in their buying journey.
To empower their teams to achieve this omnichannel balance, retail marketing leaders might consider leveraging an automated advertising platform that integrates all channels into one place. By centralizing data and campaign management, such platforms ensure that retail marketers can easily monitor performance across all channels, optimize their strategies in real-time, and deliver a cohesive shopping experience that meets consumers where they are—be that in a physical store or browsing on their tablet at home.
The rise of social commerce is another trend that is slated to shape the retail marketing landscape in 2025. Over the past several years, social media and shopping have become nearly inseparable, with many social platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat—now serving both as digital storefronts as well as places to share ideas and connect with friends. Driven by the sheer amount of time users spend on social media each day as well as the influence of content creators, social commerce is quickly transforming how consumers discover and purchase products.
This trend is particularly pronounced among younger buyers. Shoppers aged 25-34 are leading the way, with 23.1% of them reporting at least one purchase via a social platform in the last year. In fact, 66.5% of all social buyers in the US are under 44, reflecting a younger demographic that is both digitally savvy and influenced by online trends. While Facebook currently accounts for the largest number of social commerce buyers across the total US adult population, younger generations are more likely to make purchases on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. This shift signals increased opportunities for advertisers to connect with younger buyers on these platforms in the years to come.
And just how substantial is social commerce’s impact on the broader retail landscape? US retail social commerce sales are skyrocketing: In 2023, they accounted for $67.06 billion in sales and are forecast to surpass $100 billion in sales in 2025. By 2027, that number is projected to reach $144.52 billion, representing an increase greater than 115% in just four years. For retail marketers, this growth emphasizes the need to embrace social platforms not just as advertising spaces but also as key channels for purchasing. As the lines between social media and e-commerce continue to blur, marketing teams that leverage social commerce effectively will be well-positioned to reach new audiences (particularly younger ones) and drive growth.
Making the most of brand loyalty programs is another key strategy for retail marketing teams looking to maximize customer engagement and drive loyalty in 2025. With close to three-quarters of US consumers citing such programs as an important or critically important factor to maintaining their brand loyalty, it’s clear that loyalty programs should be a key part of retail marketers’ strategies as they strive to connect meaningfully with consumers.
Yet as the market becomes increasingly saturated with loyalty programs, simply having one isn’t enough. The average US consumer belongs to nearly 18 loyalty programs, but only actively uses nine of them, demonstrating the need for retailers to prioritize features that resonate with consumers. And just what features do customers want from a loyalty program? Shoppers say the top features brands can offer to maintain their loyalty are discounts, surprise offers and/or rewards, and exclusive benefits (for instance, free shipping or early access to newly restocked items). Personalization also plays a pivotal role in making the most of loyalty programs, whether that be offering individualized discounts based on shopping behavior, customized product recommendations, or even AI-powered shopping assistants.
Beyond building brand loyalty and bolstering sales, loyalty programs are also a good way for marketers to effectively collect and leverage first-party data. By tracking customer purchases, preferences, and engagement patterns, retail marketers can gain valuable insights to tailor their marketing strategies, refine their loyalty program offerings, and improve their overall customer experience. Amidst the challenges posed by increasing signal loss, loyalty programs provide a unique opportunity for teams to build direct relationships with their customers and gather actionable first-party data in a privacy-first way.
As retail marketing teams and leaders prepare for the year ahead, focusing on emerging trends and evolving consumer behaviors will be key to standing out in an increasingly competitive landscape. From crafting a seamless experience that translates to both in-person and digital interactions, to tapping into the rapidly expanding world of social commerce, to leveraging loyalty programs both to foster brand loyalty and collect valuable first-party data, retail marketers can deliver meaningful experiences that resonate with today’s shoppers. By embracing these strategies, retail marketers will be well-positioned to not only meet consumer expectations but also drive growth and innovation in the ever-changing retail landscape.
We’re two years into marketing’s AI era, and while just about every agency, brand, and publisher is actively experimenting with AI, far fewer are actually deploying it at scale and achieving the sort of gains that have captured the imaginations of C-suites everywhere.
For advertising leaders, the challenge now lies in not just adopting AI, but in integrating it strategically to deliver measurable business value.
This year’s Advertising Week New York offered insights into how industry leaders are leveraging AI and automation to make the most of their data, identify new opportunities to optimize campaigns, and transform their organizations.
The promise of AI is vast, with 87.9% of marketing and advertising professionals believing the technology will radically transform digital advertising within the next 3-5 years. But to unlock its potential and derive true value, organizational infrastructures must evolve.
It's not enough to adopt the latest tools—success will depend on an organization’s ability to enhance the speed and efficiency of the teams and processes that interact with AI. This requires careful vetting of prospective AI tools/partners, real budgetary commitments, involvement and buy-in from CTOs and CIOs, and a clear roadmap for change management. AI is a powerful tool, but without the right investment in people and systems, its potential will remain untapped.
Of course, in order to do this, leaders will first need to determine what, exactly, they hope AI can help them solve.
As with any new technology solution, AI should serve a specific purpose and be embraced as a strategic investment. Yet too often, AI is pursued as a novelty rather than a solution—another toy to toss onto the tech stack.
Some of this is the FOMO factor (“fear of missing out” on the emerging trend), but another is the technology’s sheer newness and complexity, which can leave many organizations overwhelmed. Due to no fault of their own, they often lack the internal expertise to distinguish between genuinely impactful AI initiatives and those that will drain time and budget without delivering real value. This is where agencies and other strategic partners can play a crucial role, guiding clients through this process and helping businesses unlock the potential of AI while ensuring it delivers measurable, responsible result.
The key to success is aligning AI initiatives with well-defined business problems. Deriving transcendent value from AI and automation will come from integrating it into everyday business processes, particularly in areas like data analytics, consumer insights, and strategic planning. Off-the-shelf models will rarely meet all of an organization’s needs— AI tools must ultimately be tailored to that organization’s specific goals and context. Think of it like onboarding a new team member: You’ll want to give these tools the time, training, and customization they’ll need to become effective. The payoff, however, is substantial, and once properly integrated, AI can deliver efficiencies, streamline operations, and provide a deeper understanding of what drives business outcomes.
In order to properly identify the right AI and automation tools for your organizations, it’s essential to start with a clear objective: What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)? What outcomes are you targeting? What’s your budget, and how much risk are you willing to take on? How much effort and resources will the project demand? How will you measure success (or failure)? Without clarity, even the most advanced technology will struggle to deliver value. Once these and any other essential parameters are established, clients can draft a brief and proceed with issuing a request for proposal (RFP) to identify the best-suited vendors for their AI initiatives.
Collaboration with trustworthy partners who can help troubleshoot and refine AI implementations is also critical. This requires transparency, not to expose intellectual property, but to ensure that both parties can maximize the value of the data and models in use.
Lastly, as with all things marketing, it’s crucial to have robust measurement framework in place. AI can help advertisers do some remarkable things, but without clear, reliable metrics that quantify its impact, even the most well-intentioned of organizations can miss out on potential benefits. Decision-makers must ensure they have the right systems in place to track and assess AI's contribution—otherwise, they risk investing in innovation without truly understanding its return on investment.
Taking a solution-agnostic approach and testing different models against one another in can help organizations identify the solutions that best fit their needs. Transparency and governance must also be central to any AI strategy, ensuring that teams are continuously evaluating performance and holding systems accountable. This not only builds trust, but ensures that the tech delivers consistent, meaningful value to your business.
In the last few years, AI-generated creative has earned quite a few headlines...for good reasons, and bad. And research indicates that most marketing and advertising professionals think of AI as primarily a resource for content creation: A 2024 Basis report found 57.4% of marketers believe content creation is the aspect of digital marketing process that will be most impacted by AI (despite the fact that 70.2% feel AI-generated content is worse than their organization’s human-generated content.)
But advertising leaders are starting to realize that the technology is likely to make its greatest impact on the media side.
This will, of course, require a change of mindset: When asked how their organization is currently using AI, more than 67.4% of industry professionals said they were leveraging it for drafting content/creative, just 10.6% said they were using it to develop their media buying strategy. Furthermore, only 8.4% named media buying as the part of the digital marketing process they expect to be most impacted by AI, and even fewer (6.4%) pointed to strategic decision-making. Yet AI’s greatest power lies not as a creative consultant, but as a sophisticated and turbo-charged engine for data-driven insights.
Large language models (LLMs) are particularly adept at uncovering patterns across complex datasets, helping marketers refine their media spend, optimize partner combinations, and even outsmart competitors with smarter bids. With AI, advertisers can consolidate disparate data assets across numerous platforms and touchpoints to get a more comprehensive view of media performance across all channels and platforms. Then, through data clean rooms and other trusted partners, they can subsequently layer third-party data onto those first-party assets to enable the kind of deterministic matching advertisers crave—providing more accurate targeting and measurement while maintaining the data’s privacy, integrity and structure.
With this approach, AI becomes less of a creative tool and more of a strategic asset—a way to make informed, data-driven decisions that elevate campaigns and sharpen competitive edges. And these benefits can extend well beyond traditional data engineering teams.
The chat capabilities of LLMs can empower non-data scientists to access and make use of complex datasets, “democratizing” the data and empowering teams across the organization. In this way, AI bridges the gap between specialists and generalists, enabling anyone to interrogate data and uncover insights without requiring advanced technical skills. As these tools become more intuitive and accessible, they will enable broader teams to contribute to data-driven decision-making. The goal, as with all things AI, is not to replace human expertise, but to augment it—giving marketers the tools to ask better questions and get more insightful answers.
AI has the potential to revolutionize how marketers use data to inform strategy and execution. But achieving this potential requires more than just adoption—it demands a disciplined, strategic approach. From optimizing media spend to enhancing consumer insights, AI and automation can elevate marketing effectiveness if implemented with care and purpose.
Scaling AI requires careful planning, agile testing, and thoughtful governance. Leaders must resist the temptation to adopt one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, focus on model diversity and continual refinement. AI is a tool that can catalyze smarter, more impactful decision-making across an organization, but its value depends on how well it is integrated into that organization's core functions. By building transparent, adaptable systems and fostering cross-functional collaboration, leaders can ensure that AI not only enhances marketing efforts, but transforms them.
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Want to learn more about how advertisers are approaching AI, as well as how they’re thinking and feeling about an AI-driven future? Get all the latest insights in our report, AI and the Future of Marketing.
Audio has long been considered an intimate medium, with a trusted voice delivering a one-to-one experience for listeners. But digital innovation has transformed the way audio is perceived as an entertainment platform, and revolutionized consumers’ daily interactions with it.
Where once the only control audiences had over audio was the ability to change the radio station or pop in a new tape or CD (or LP), digital audio now gives listeners seemingly endless choices—all at the touch of a button or tap of a screen. People today use digital audio to soundtrack their lives, flowing in and out of audio experiences that reflect who they are, what they’re doing, and how they’re feeling in the moment—whether it’s workout time, focus time, party time, bedtime, or downtime.
Perhaps no other channel offers the opportunity for authenticity, connection, and flexibility in the way that audio does. And this, in a nutshell, is why brands are increasingly inserting themselves into the audio conversation. The emergence of audio as a mainstay in media plans, alongside developments within the space (including concepts like sonic branding and voice interactivity, as well as new innovations powered by AI), is a top digital advertising trend to watch as teams look ahead to 2025. But what consumer listening habits can marketers tap into to drive performance? Just how effective are audio ads, really? (Hint: very.) And where exactly are consumers tuning in? (Hint: everywhere.) Here, we’ve compiled a collection of stats that answer all these questions and more, helping advertisers separate the signal from the static noise and craft audio strategies set up to make a buzz.
A perfect storm of circumstance and opportunity is propelling digital audio into the marketing spotlight. Younger generations are drawn to formats like streaming online music and listening to podcasts, likely due to the convenience, personalization, and on-demand access they offer. Brands are embracing the idea of advertising on a cost-effective channel where they can command share of voice, amongst many other benefits. And technology like AI is enhancing the way audiences discover and engage with audio content, making it more seamlessly integrated into daily life and personalized to individual listeners. It’s a medium that has oft been underutilized in advertising—but that’s changing.
Over the last couple of years, few stories in digital media have been more compelling than the rise of the podcast. After a blitz of spending and high-profile acquisitions, the podcast market appears to finally be slowing down, but the podcast advertising market is an entirely different story, with the medium still largely underleveraged and undervalued. Listenership is still consistently rising and technology continues to add more layers of contextual targeting and flexibility to podcast advertising, signaling more opportunities for brands on the horizon.
Cutting through the metaphorical noise has always been a major challenge for brands as they compete to connect with audiences, and that challenge keeps growing as attention spans shrink. In audio advertising, though, marketers have a powerful ally in the battle for engagement—an outlet that can dynamically link ideas and narratives to help create an emotional association between the brand’s message and the listener.
The streaming audio ecosystem is dominated by a few key brands. Spotify is the top dog in the market, one of the most widely used digital products in the US and a powerful presence in broader culture. But the likes of Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, SiriusXM (parent company of Pandora), and iHeartMedia all retain a huge presence in digital audio. Fluctuating economic conditions and price increases at several streaming services over the last several years (including Apple Music, YouTube Premium, and Spotify) are colliding to ease some of the breakneck growth from the past several years.
Additionally, unlike video streaming, there isn’t much incentive for listeners to use—let alone pay for—multiple audio streaming platform subscriptions. The nature of licensing agreements dictates that subscription providers broadly offer the same audio catalog. Their features also overlap significantly (on-demand listening, custom radio, playlist tools, etc.), making it harder to entice audiences to add additional subscriptions for their digital listening.
Across the entire digital advertising ecosystem, AI—and particularly generative AI—has been making waves. More than 87% of marketers believe AI will radically transform digital advertising in the next few years, and its potential in the digital audio space is particularly exciting. Already, this powerful technology is changing how advertisers approach audio ads, allowing for more personalized and dynamic ad experiences. By leveraging AI, brands can craft tailored messages—often in real time—that resonate with individual listeners, enhancing engagement and driving better outcomes across podcast and streaming platforms.
Digital audio is ubiquitous and unique, offering a soundtrack to people’s daily lives through playlists, podcasts, and streaming services. Brands looking to build strong, lasting connections with their audiences have a significant opportunity to meaningfully engage with target audiences in these spaces.
Advertisers already have a plethora of tools at their disposal to help inform and execute strategies that lean into consumer listening habits. And with emerging AI-powered innovations, such as personalized audio ads and dynamic creative optimization, the future of audio advertising is looking even more exciting. If these numbers and emerging innovations are any indication, the audio advertising revolution is only just getting started.
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Want more insights on the power and potential of this channel and how it can impact your media plan? Check out our Audio Advertising Guide.