In a time of obsession over AI and automation, are too many media buyers choosing to set it and forget it? Albert Thompson, Managing Director of Digital Innovation at Walton Issacson, thinks so.
In this episode, Thompson shares how bringing more human insight to programmatic campaigns is vital for optimal media performance. Together with host Noor Naseer, he explores how buyers can blend automation with human expertise to drive more successful campaigns.
As generative AI and content moderation rollbacks transform the social media landscape, advertisers must navigate a new era of brand safety challenges.
Consumers, advertisers, and regulators alike have long voiced concerns around the spread of misinformation and hate speech on social media platforms. In 2024, global information experts ranked social media owners among the top threats to a trustworthy online news environment—just the latest in a long history of criticism over their inability to mitigate (or disinterest in mitigating) the proliferation of harmful content.
Researchers have found that social media algorithms can amplify hate, divisive content, and misinformation, in part because these algorithms are designed to showcase posts that will receive high levels of engagement, and inflammatory content often garners lots of comments and clicks. These concerns have hit new levels of urgency in recent years with the rise of generative AI, which can be used to create deepfakes and other forms of disinformation at greater scale and lower cost, making it easier than ever for bad actors to craft disinformation campaigns.
At the same time, the biggest players in the social media space have recently revamped and rolled back their systems for moderating content, with critics worrying the changes will make it even easier for hate speech and misinformation to proliferate on those platforms.
The spread of hate speech and mis- and disinformation on social media is everyone’s problem—from the social platforms themselves, to the consumers who spend nearly two and a half hours a day with them, to the advertisers who will spend over $100 billion on them this year. Because social media is such a critical part of any brand’s marketing mix, and with these problems likely to intensify as AI evolves and content moderation is reduced, advertising leaders must strategize to protect their brands/clients and consumers in this new era of brand safety.
In tandem with concerns around the spread of hate speech and misinformation on social media, advertisers have grown increasingly worried about brand safety and brand suitability, naming it their top programmatic advertising concern while ranking paid social as the channel with the highest brand safety risk.
The emergence of AI has only heightened those fears, with one recent survey finding an astonishing 100% of marketers agreeing that generative AI poses a brand safety and misinformation risk to their industry, and 88.7% calling the threat moderate to significant.
Advertising professionals are right to feel concerned, with over 80% of consumers saying it’s important to them that the content surrounding ads is appropriate, and three-quarters saying they feel less favorable towards brands who advertise on sites that spread misinformation. Even more, 89% of Americans say they feel that social media companies should implement stricter policies to curb the spread of misinformation on their platforms. Those social media companies, however, have a long history of failing to do so.
Social platforms have been in the spotlight because of their penchant for amplifying hateful and inaccurate content for a while now. Back in 2016, a Buzzfeed editor discovered a cluster of fake news sites registered in Veles, Macedonia, which spread false stories that circulated widely on Facebook. These articles, which were run for profit via Facebook ads, gained massive traction on social media during the US presidential election due to their sensationalism, with headlines like “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President.”
This marked the beginning of the public’s understanding of “fake news” and its circulation on social media. Fast-forward to 2022, and Meta, Twitter (now X), TikTok, and YouTube were under investigation by the US Senate Homeland Security Committee, which found that the social media companies’ business models amplified “dangerous and radicalizing extremist content, including white supremacist and anti-government content.”
Around the same time, a NewsGuard investigation explored the dissemination of misinformation on TikTok. Researchers found that when they searched keywords related to important news topics such as COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, almost 20% of the search results contained misinformation. This is especially worrisome today, given that about four in 10 young adults in the US say they regularly get their news from TikTok.
While the amount of misinformation on social media was alarming back in 2022, it’s only grown more so in the years since as generative AI has risen in prominence. Today, generative AI tools equip users with the ability to quickly create convincing fake photos, videos, and audio clips—tasks that, just a few years ago, would have taken entire teams of people as well as time, technical skill, and money. Now, over half of consumers are worried that AI will escalate political mis- and disinformation, and 64% of US consumers feel that those types of content are most widespread on social media.
Beyond the many political and ethical concerns these problems raise, advertisers must understand the spread of hate speech and mis- and disinformation on social media because of the significant brand safety threats it poses. And because social platforms are entrusted with advertisers’ dollars—indeed, those dollars make up their biggest source of revenue—advertisers are likely interested in how these companies are working to protect them from emerging threats.
If advertisers, researchers, and social media users alike are concerned about the spread of hate speech and mis- and disinformation on social media, social platforms must be invested in mitigating those problems, right?
Well…kind of.
On the heels of a rough couple of years for tech companies, during which several popular social platforms missed revenue expectations and saw their stocks plummet, many of the teams and projects those companies set up to enhance trust, safety, and ethics on their platforms were shuttered or dramatically reduced between late 2022 and early 2023. Meta shut down a fact-checking tool designed to combat misinformation and laid off hundreds of content moderators and other positions related to trust, integrity, and responsibility. X laid off its entire ethical AI team, save one person, at the end of 2022, as well as 15% of its trust and safety department. In December 2023, the media advocacy group Free Press found that Meta, X, and YouTube had collectively removed 17 policies that safeguarded against hate and disinformation on their platforms.
In 2024, even after a strong Q2, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a research tool that researchers, journalists, and civil society groups used to track and understand how information is disseminated on Facebook and Instagram. While Meta replaced CrowdTangle with what it calls the Meta Content Library, this new set of tools is more limited than CrowdTangle was, and Meta has restricted access to only a few hundred pre-selected researchers. The fact that social platforms downsized so many of their trust and safety teams and programs just before a presidential election year—during which researchers, technologists, and political scientists forecasted disinformation acting as an unprecedented threat—prompted some advertisers to question whether these platforms are doing enough to address their brand safety concerns.
The trend of social platforms reducing content moderation has continued in 2025, with Meta announcing an end to its third-party fact-checking program in early January. In its place, Meta is implementing an X-inspired feature called Community Notes, which will rely on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users to report posts they feel are inaccurate or offensive. Meta also updated its Hateful Content guidelines, implementing a more lenient approach that allows content that was previously banned—such as discussion of “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it.’” These changes were swiftly condemned by human rights organizations, but given Meta’s entrenchment in advertisers’ marketing strategies, it seems unlikely that brands will pull back from spending on its platforms in the way many have with X.
In fact, these changes come with potential upsides for Meta and, in turn, advertisers as well. Because controversial content often garners more engagement, Meta’s move to loosen content moderation—and reinstate allowance of political content—could boost user engagement and time spent on its platforms. However, advertisers should closely monitor developments in the coming months to see whether these positive outcomes materialize, and if they do, whether they outweigh potential downsides, such as alienating certain communities on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Considering these persistent brand safety threats, as well as social networks’ recent disinvestment in their trust and safety teams and programs, how can advertisers protect their brands or clients from brand safety threats on social platforms? While there’s no perfect way to avoid serving ads near misinformation and hate speech on social media, there are measures advertising teams can take to minimize risk.
First, despite recent cutbacks, most major players in the social space do still have policies and programs designed to reduce the amount of inaccurate and hateful content on their platforms. For example, in addition to content moderation by users, Meta and X employ AI-led content moderation (a tactic also used by TikTok and Snap).
Major social platforms also offer an array of brand safety tools and controls that advertisers can tap into. Before its January announcements around updating its content moderation systems and hateful content guidelines, Meta released a new set of brand safety controls, including a feature that allows advertisers to mute comments on specific ads before they’re published.
To further safeguard brand safety, advertisers can work with partners like DoubleVerify, which offers pre-screen protection capabilities that help to ensure ads are served in safe and suitable environments. They can also leverage allow lists and block lists to better control the environments in which their ads are served.
Continuous social media monitoring—done by teams who are trained to detect mis- and disinformation—is another important way to safeguard brand content on social media. Advertisers can even harness the power of AI for good in this area, with AI-driven social listening tools that make it easy to monitor and keep track of online conversations involving specific brands.
And, because the threat is so prevalent, marketing leaders should ensure their teams have a plan of action in case their brand’s or client’s ads appear next to harmful content on social. This is a key step, given that brands can regain some favorability with consumers when they denounce misinformation.
In the face of pressing concerns over misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech on social media, many advertising leaders will want to stay vigilant about brand safety when advertising on social platforms. As generative AI continues to evolve and content moderation on social platforms is reduced, the spread of harmful content will only grow, amplifying risks for both brands and consumers alike. For marketers, it’s key to not only monitor these challenges, but also to take proactive steps to safeguard brand integrity.
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Curious to learn more about how leading marketers and advertisers across the US feel about AI? Check out our report, AI and the Future of Marketing, to see how agencies and brands are thinking about and using the technology, as well as how they feel about the ways it is shaping the industry.
AI remains the pivotal topic of conversation across the world of business—from Wall Street, to board rooms, to sales pitches, to paid media.
In the advertising world, artificial intelligence has already been at work for over a decade, powering programmatic advertising and optimizing media buying across the open internet. Now, recent developments in the realm of generative AI are revolutionizing the landscape even further. Given the Trump Administration’s pro-AI position and recent private sector investments of up to $500 billion in AI-related infrastructure, the next few years are poised to deliver continued innovation and widespread adoption of the technology.
As agencies and brands navigate these new opportunities, their leaders must balance two directives: First, embracing AI tools to increase efficiencies, grow revenue, and stay at the cutting edge of innovation. And second, protecting their businesses from the risks that come along with these tools. It’s a fine line to tread, but leading organizations are finding ways to approach these new technologies so that they benefit their businesses and bottom lines while minimizing liabilities.
To do this, advertisers must thoroughly understand the risks posed by AI. The most significant ones fall into three main categories: brand safety concerns tied to gen AI-created misinformation, considerations around how AI-generated advertising will land with a consumer base that’s largely wary of AI, and potential legal risks to agencies and brands related to data privacy and deceptive advertising practices.
Industry leaders must grow increasingly knowledgeable on these topics and develop best practices, processes, and skillsets across their teams to ensure any forays into new AI-driven advertising tools are safeguarded against risk.
AI offers many promising benefits for advertisers, from cost efficiency to speed to ease of launch. However, these advantages come with some significant brand safety concerns. It’s important for advertisers to understand these threats, implement safeguards around their use of AI, and stay up to date on this quickly developing landscape in order to make the most of these tools and solutions without opening themselves up to consumer backlash and wasted spend.
Generative AI is one of the biggest drivers of brand safety concerns today, with 100% of industry professionals believing the technology poses a brand safety and misinformation risk to marketers and advertisers, and 88.7% calling the risk a moderate to significant one. Gen AI technology is not perfect, and these tools have regularly demonstrated a tendency to produce content that’s, at one end of the spectrum, low-quality and likely ineffective for advertising, and, on the other end of the spectrum, inaccurate or offensive.
Two particular areas of concern include generative AI’s tendency to make up false information (a flaw known as AI hallucinations) and indications of biases in AI-generated content (due to large language models relying on human inputs and human-generated content, which often contain biases).
These concerns have been on full display in recent years. In 2024, for example, Google had to suspend the image-generating capabilities of its Gemini chatbot, which is integrated into Google’s advertising tools, after it produced historically inaccurate images—specifically, images of “multi-ethnic Nazis and non-white U.S. Founding Fathers.” The controversy demonstrates how developers are still learning how to program these technologies to effectively avoid bias: Gemini was programmed to avoid racial and ethnic bias, which, ironically, backfired when the images in question ended up being inaccurate.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that advertisers should forgo the efficiencies offered by generative AI. However, it’s critical that teams understand the risks and put proper safeguards in place to minimize their likelihood.
“If teams are thoughtful in reviewing the outputs, then using AI to repurpose existing creative or develop elements of media assets should be fine,” says Molly Marshall, Client Strategy and Insights Partner at Basis. “But AI can’t currently replicate the creative process in terms of identifying a strong insight and developing creative that meaningfully relates to a target consumer, so AI-generated creative should complement and iterate upon an existing strategy, not wholly develop it.”
Generative AI has also prompted some headaches for brands that have started using AI-powered chatbots to streamline and personalize customer service on their websites. The technology promises to transform the customer service industry—however, upon testing chatbots offered by TurboTax and H&R Block, reports found that the chatbots offered inaccurate information at least half of the time.
“Chatbots offer brands a big opportunity to streamline communication with customers, especially as brick-and-mortar stores close and more customer service is going virtual,” says Marshall. “But the potential damage from chatbots that share inaccurate information may outweigh those benefits for some brands.”
Advertisers must also prepare for the growing presence of generative AI in online content. AI-generated material is becoming increasingly common—for example, the amount of AI content in the top 20 Google search results jumped from just 5.6% when ChatGPT was first released in 2022 to more than 19% in early 2025.
Generative AI has also made it easier for bad actors to create made-for-advertising sites (MFAs) filled with low-quality content, misinformation-filled pages strategically developed around key search terms, and other content that could pose significant risks to brands that run ads alongside it. This risk is amplified by the new administration’s lighter regulatory approach—particularly its executive order that “revokes certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation.” Though this deregulatory stance may create space for more innovation, it may also make it easier for those with malicious intent to flood the internet with low-quality, AI-generated, mis- and disinformation-filled content. As a result, advertisers will need to be more deliberate around their ad spend and put new guardrails in place to avoid waste as well as risky (if not downright harmful) ad placements.
Programmatic advertisers, in particular, will need to seek out solutions that help steer their dollars away from MFA sites and other brand unsafe environments, as research has found that 15% of their budgets are spent on MFAs. “Advertisers must be able to react in real-time to block misleading sites and keywords,” says Marshall, and should embrace technological solutions like MFA block lists to help minimize the risk.
These concerns have been compounded by the recent trend of platforms rolling back their content moderation efforts. For instance, Meta recently removed its fact-checking program in lieu of a “Community Notes” approach that sources content moderation to users, as well as updated their Hateful Content guidelines, allowing users to share controversial and/or harmful content that was previously banned. This pullback of content moderation, coupled with the proliferation of AI-generated content that can be low-quality if not blatantly incorrect or harmful, makes it critical for brands and agencies to develop strong brand safety frameworks and to prioritize partnerships with premium, trusted publishers. Agencies and brands may also eventually need to develop teams focused on dealing with misinformation and disinformation to protect their spend.
Advertisers must also balance their own enthusiasm around AI with a consumer base that isn’t quite so excited. While nearly 77% of industry professionals believe that generative AI will have a positive impact on marketing and advertising, the majority of consumers don’t trust the technology: A 2024 report from the Edelman Trust Institute found that US consumer trust in artificial intelligence has fallen by 15% in the last five years, from 50% to 35%. And when it comes to the use of AI in advertising, nearly two-thirds of US adults say they are either somewhat or very uncomfortable with AI-generated ads.
These opinions don’t necessarily mean that advertisers should stop embracing the AI-led tools that work for them—especially considering that AI has effectively driven behind-the-scenes advertising features such as machine learning, algorithmic optimization, bid multipliers, and group budget optimization for some time now.
What it does mean is that leaders need to be cognizant of consumer sentiment toward AI, and to act accordingly. This could include informing consumers about how AI is used in a client or stakeholder’s marketing efforts, via a social media post or a dedicated page on their website. Brands may also opt to disclose when an ad or content is generated by AI, as adding disclosures can lead to a 47% increase in the appeal of those ads, a 73% increase in the trustworthiness of those ads, and a 96% jump in trust for the brands behind them.
Data privacy is also top of mind for consumers, with 71% of US consumers worrying that their digital activities put them at risk for security incidents. And, 81% of consumers who have heard of AI feel that companies will use the technology to collect and analyze their personal information in ways people aren’t comfortable with. Organizations can gain consumers’ trust by offering transparency around how they safeguard their customers’ data, and by prioritizing partnerships with privacy-focused organizations or gaining voluntary certifications like SOC 2 compliance that indicate a commitment to data security and ethical data practices.
Leaders who prioritize this type of transparency can develop stronger, more trust-based relationships with their consumer base—which may provide a key competitive edge in a competitive environment.
Finally, there are a variety of legal concerns advertising leaders must account for as they adopt new AI tools. Artificial intelligence has advanced more quickly than legislators can keep up with it, but there are a variety of regulations that have been introduced in the US and beyond that aim to mitigate the threats posed by AI. At the same time, advertisers must ensure compliance with existing legislation to avoid hefty fines and other legal consequences.
As advertisers grapple with widespread signal loss, AI has emerged as a powerful tool for enabling privacy-friendly personalized marketing.
AI can enable lookalike and predictive audiences based on first-party data, and generate a variety of data-based insights to help advertisers better understand their audience and their consumers’ path to purchase. Many advertisers are embracing these tools as a way to make up for the loss of cookies and other factors impacting signal loss.
At the same time, AI technologies can pose some data privacy-related risks. Many AI-powered advertising solutions use personal data to fuel their machine learning algorithms, and depending on the tool itself, there’s some ambiguity around where exactly all that data comes from, where it’s stored, and who can access it. What’s more, some artificial intelligence tools leverage the data they collect to deduce sensitive personal information such as location, health information, and political or religious views.
To ensure the ethical use of consumer data and to protect their businesses from legal consequences, advertising organizations must thoroughly vet any data-focused vendors or tools to ensure their data gathering, processing, analyzing, and storage systems comply with digital advertising regulations—and, of course, ensure their own data systems comply as well. Leaders must also stay on top of new AI- and data privacy-related regulations as they take hold, even if this is an area that might see less regulatory activity under the Trump Administration.
Another area of legal concern for advertisers has to do with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for safeguarding US consumers from unfair or deceptive advertising practices.
One such practice relates to the use of dark patterns, or design techniques that can manipulate consumers into purchasing an item or service or providing personal data—and which can be created and enhanced with AI. “Identify[ing] and “crack[ing] down on businesses that deploy deceptive and unlawful dark patterns” has been a focus of the FTC’s for many years. On the state level, the Colorado Privacy Act and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) have also outlined regulations around dark patterns in advertising.
Though the new chairman of the FTC appointed by President Trump, Andrew Ferguson, could very well take a lighter regulatory approach to AI than the prior chairwoman, Lina Kahn, advertisers should remain cautious. Even with the potential for a more lenient stance on AI oversight, the FTC’s core mission to protect consumers from misleading claims and/or harmful practices remains unchanged.
Lastly, advertisers must pay close attention to any ownership- and copyright-related legal concerns around AI-generated content.
In January 2025, the US Copyright Office released a report on the legal and policy issues related to AI and copyright. This report concludes that “the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements.” The key phrase here is "sufficient expressive elements," which suggests that merely pressing a button to create AI-generated content isn’t enough—there must be human involvement in curating, editing, or refining the work in a way that demonstrates original authorship. Without that kind of human involvement in the creation process, AI-generated content might not qualify for copyright protection.
At the same time, some ambiguity remains around what exactly constitutes “sufficient expressive elements,” and this will likely be determined on a case-by-case basis. As such, advertising teams must establish and adhere to strong creative processes with clear documentation of how AI is being used to develop assets—particularly those they might want to copyright. Advertising leaders should also stay on top of any further developments in this area to ensure compliance as more legislators and regulators refine rules around the ownership of AI-generated works. Enlisting a solid legal counsel or team will be key to navigating the complexity of this arena.
By investing the time in advancing their teams’ AI knowledge and skillsets now, leaders will set their organizations up for success as the technology becomes increasingly prevalent throughout digital advertising. The sooner advertisers learn how to implement and take advantage of these tools in a discerning and ethical way, the greater their competitive edge will be over those who procrastinate.
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Want to learn more about how advertisers are approaching AI? We surveyed marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to better understand advertiser sentiments around the technology, as well as how they’re leveraging AI-driven tools in their work. Check out the top takeaways in our report, AI and the Future of Marketing.
Navigating a Shifting Landscape in 2025 and Beyond
As the Trump Administration settles into the White House in 2025, the digital advertising industry stands at a crossroads. After years of rising regulatory scrutiny and growing concern around consumer privacy, the industry now faces a dramatically different political environment—one that promises less scrutiny and diminished federal oversight but, simultaneously, comes with new risks and uncertainty.
For advertising agencies and in-house marketing teams, this shifting landscape presents both significant opportunities and complex challenges, all of which will require strategic foresight and operational agility.
Here, we’ll explore and analyze how the new administration’s policies and priorities are likely to impact the digital advertising ecosystem, examining how expected shifts in regulatory approaches, market dynamics, technological innovation, and brand positioning will reshape marketing in an increasingly polarized world.
The Trump Administration’s return signals a radical realignment in the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley. Unlike the Biden Administration’s aggressive antitrust actions and regulatory initiatives, the new regime is taking a broad deregulatory approach that, in turn, is expected to deliver benefits to major technology platforms and providers.
This reset, already evident in early administration signals, will likely come with several significant implications for the advertising industry:
“At a high level, I think this administration is going to be much more industry-friendly and focused on removing restrictions, so we’ll likely see some deregulation,” says Derek Zolner, General Counsel at Basis. “With Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and, of course, Elon Musk all donating to the Inauguration and cozying up to Trump, I think we could see some preferred treatment of the tech industry in general, which should also carry over to the ad tech space.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the prospects of federal-level privacy regulation are completely dead. Industry coalitions, including the US Chamber of Commerce, have encouraged Republican lawmakers to introduce and pass a national privacy framework that establishes “a uniform privacy standard” for the United States. The theoretical legislation would likely have similar protections to those found in the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, but fall short of stricter regulations like those in the CPRA. And, perhaps most notably, it would supersede any existing state-level regulations, effectively neutering laws like those in California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia. The odds of such a bill becoming a law are still fairly long, but it does merit monitoring in the coming months.
In the meantime, for digital advertisers, this regulatory recalibration creates some breathing room after years of increased expectations and growing compliance challenges. However, it simultaneously raises the stakes for responsible self-governance, which will be essential to keeping consumer trust in an era where the public’s distrust around data privacy (and broader institutional skepticism) are on the rise. Industry leaders should view this not as an opportunity to revert to problematic practices, but rather to establish meaningful and durable self-regulatory frameworks that can satisfy consumers and weather any potential future political changes.
As federal oversight recedes, state-level regulation will increasingly fill the void, creating a complex patchwork of compliance requirements that may prove more challenging than unified federal standards.
California’s role as a leader in this space will almost certainly continue, and the CPRA’s expanded requirements may even inspire similar legislation in other Democratic-led states, creating an uneven regulatory map that further complicates advertisers’ efforts to reach audiences. “I could see the states that still have blue administrations—California leading among them—still taking very active roles on the privacy front,” says Zolner. “So privacy isn’t going to just ‘go away’ as a concern.”
The implication for advertisers is clear: National (or global) campaigns will need to navigate multiple regulatory standards simultaneously, taking the patchwork of legislation into account when crafting media plans that go beyond any single state’s border. This will require advertisers to continue developing modular approaches to data collection, targeting, and measurement that can adapt to varying compliance requirements across jurisdictions. Forward-thinking agencies and marketing teams will need to embrace technology that allows them to efficiently scale complex campaigns, while also building or onboarding compliance systems that are capable of applying different standards to different audience segments based on geography.
Of course, the impact of the Trump Administration on the advertising industry will extend beyond regulation.
The White House’s emerging economic policies—particularly around international trade, tariffs, and industrial policy—may introduce significant uncertainty into business planning cycles, with cascading effects for advertising budgets and strategies.
New or expanded tariffs could throw global supply chains into disarray, affecting product availability, spiking pricing, and disrupting promotional calendars for advertisers across multiple sectors. And potential tax cuts, paired with dramatic reductions in federal spending, could boost short-term consumer confidence…or, alternatively, create yet more longer-term economic volatility, further complicating media investment planning.
If the changes lead to a downward drift in consumer spending or bring volatility to the stock market, companies may come (as they often do) for marketing budgets, forcing leaders to grapple with increased pressure to demonstrate immediate ROI as businesses adjust to economic uncertainties. One potential result: a renewed focus on performance media over brand building, shifting away from the brandformance trend of the past few years.
In this type of uncertain environment, advertisers will increasingly depend upon advertising approaches and technology that allow them to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions. Future-friendly strategies could include:
The brands that thrive in the coming years will be those that embrace technology that provides a unified look at all of their campaigns and data across all channels and platforms, automation to more seamlessly integrate those solutions, and AI to identify and capitalize upon granular performance details. In doing so, those advertisers can pivot more quickly and effectively toward winning tactics, developing what might be thought of as “strategic reflexes”—or predetermined response patterns that can be activated quickly when economic conditions shift.
The Trump Administration’s pronounced pro-AI stance—paired with extraordinary private sector investment in the technology and reduced fear among marketers regarding AI’s societal and industry impacts—will converge to dramatically accelerate adoption across the advertising ecosystem.
Here are a few of the positives marketers can anticipate in the coming years:
For advertising professionals, this acceleration presents transformative opportunities. Unfortunately, it also comes with serious risks and somber ethical considerations. The rising adoption and sophistication of AI, coupled with fewer guardrails and a proliferation of synthetic content, will almost certainly lead to a corresponding spike in AI-generated misinformation, hate speech, and MFA-esque content and websites. Altogether, it could create unprecedented brand safety challenges, as deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation become increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content, making it all the more essential for advertisers to adopt robust brand safety and ad fraud protections and to cultivate connections with trustworthy, premium publishers.
In the absence of regulatory guidance, brands and agencies should prioritize the establishment of specific internal ethical frameworks for AI usage. Marketing leaders must develop their own principles for the responsible use of AI in customer targeting, messaging, engagement, and measurement—considering not just what is technically possible, but what maintains consumer trust.
“You will always have some players in the market that are willing to walk up as close to the line of what's either legally or self-regulatorily acceptable, because they see extra margin there,” says Zolner. “But ultimately, success depends upon the health of the industry and the individual businesses, and it’s always better to not be a target for public anger.”
While perhaps not as immediately visible or prevalent as during President Trump’s previous term, political polarization remains high across the US, and it's expected to further intensify under the new administration. Additionally, the White House, Republican attorneys general, and conservative activists around the US have made their displeasure known by explicitly targeting companies that openly embrace and promote policies like DEI and LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.
In this charged environment, brands could face heightened risks when engaging with social issues or political topics. Consequently, we are likely to witness a significant corporate retreat from public positions on controversial matters.
Many brands—including Target, Meta, Walmart, McDonald’s, and others—have begun to pivot away from some of the purpose-driven positioning and internal policies they had adopted (or highlighted) in recent years. In turn, diversity-focused advertising efforts could see a corresponding downward cycle. For most brands (save historical outliers like Nike or Patagonia), cause-based marketing efforts will likely shift away from politically charged topics and toward less controversial issues. Meanwhile, those companies that do maintain more progressive or inclusive internal policies are likely to communicate those policies less prominently toward external audiences, instead embracing a more neutral public position in the hopes of avoiding consumer controversy and governmental wrath.
For marketing and advertising professionals, this environment requires more sophisticated and nuanced approaches to positioning and issues management, and should prompt brands to pursue a firmer grounding in authenticity and company values rather than trend-hopping, clout chasing, or virtue signaling.
To ensure consistent strategic alignment, leaders should craft and adopt clearly articulated internal frameworks that identify which issues align with core values, and which fall outside their legitimate scope. From a paid media perspective, advertisers can focus on both tailored messaging and refined targeting efforts to facilitate more granular audience segmentation, which can enable brands to communicate different aspects of their values to different consumer groups.
Of course, even for those brands that try to stay apolitical, there is always a risk of unexpected backlash. In today’s hyper-charged political environment, even seemingly innocuous campaigns have the potential to trigger a significant response, so advanced preparation and robust crisis response capabilities could prove essential.
In all, the most successful brands will not chase every social trend, but neither will they remain entirely silent. Instead, marketers should identify specific issues that are closely aligned with their core business and stakeholder interests and strategically evaluate where they can make authentic contributions.
Perhaps the greatest immediate concern for marketers in this new political era is brand safety. With content moderation standards beginning to loosen across major platforms and AI enabling more prevalent and sophisticated forms of harmful content, brand safety challenges could intensify dramatically in the years ahead.
These mounting risks to brand safety have already begun. Meta began the year by joining Musk’s X in ending its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram, instead turning to “Community Notes” for content moderation. It 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,” and granting tacit approval to posts referring to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it.’”
Then there’s the problem of AI-powered disinformation, as synthetic content creates unprecedented challenges in distinguishing between legitimate publishers/real users and bad actors. Research indicates that marketing and advertising professionals have already universally acknowledged and accepted AI’s brand safety risks, and those concerns will only intensify over the course of this new presidential term.
In the end, brand safety is not merely about avoiding reputational damage, but about fundamentally maintaining consumer trust in fragmented information environments. As such, marketing and advertising leaders will need to exercise caution and take proactive measure to navigate this challenging environment.
With different platforms taking different approaches to content moderation, advertisers need to deliberately evaluate and strategize around their use of individual social platforms for specific campaigns and audiences, leveraging any and all brand safety tools while doing so. Additionally, rather than relying solely on those platform standards, brands must also articulate their own definitions of acceptable adjacent content, developing proprietary brand safety frameworks to help avoid undesired context and uninvited controversy.
Sophisticated brand safety and ad fraud tools will become increasingly essential, while AI-powered contextual targeting will help advertisers implement their more nuanced strategies and avoid non-suitable content. Lastly, the premium inventory and curation trend that began in 2024 will remain a hot topic, as direct relationships with vetted publishers provide advertisers with a much-desired safe harbor in a chaotic content sea.
As the industry navigates the shifts brought on by the new Trump Administration, several strategic imperatives have begun to emerge for advertising agencies and in-house marketing teams:
In this environment of growing complexity and diminished federal oversight, industry leaders will need to carefully evaluate their tech stacks, their talent, and their internal frameworks to increase their likelihood of success and achieve marketing goals. Those who view the moment as an opportunity to establish more durable and responsible approaches to marketing—rather than an excuse to revert to problematic practices and exploit regulatory openings—will be in the best position to succeed over the long term, and to build lasting competitive advantages.
After all, while a successful campaign can deliver short-term value, consumer trust remains the industry’s most valuable and vulnerable asset—regardless of which party controls Washington.
As the Trump Administration enters the White House in 2025, the digital advertising industry faces a significant shift. Federal regulatory oversight is expected to recede, creating new opportunities for innovation, while policy changes and growing political polarization will simultaneously introduce uncertainty and risks. In this environment, industry leaders will need to navigate evolving regulatory landscapes, economic fluctuations, AI acceleration, and shifting brand safety concerns with strategic agility.
To stay ahead, advertising leaders must:
1) Develop regulatory agility: Build and deploy comprehensive compliance frameworks to navigate varying state and federal policies.
2) Embrace agility: Build flexible strategies for economic and political volatility, and adopt technology that allows your organization to quickly adapt and optimize campaigns.
3) Establish AI governance: Explore all the opportunities that AI can provide your agency or brand, and define detailed internal guidelines for responsible use.
4) Refine brand positioning: Align marketing messages with core business values while taking safeguards to minimize reputational risks.
5) Elevate brand safety measures: Implement comprehensive tools to avoid ad placements in controversial or harmful contexts.
In a rapidly evolving and highly-polarized environment, the most successful brands and agencies will be those that take a proactive stance—leveraging technology, refining messaging, and prioritizing long-term consumer trust over short-term gains. While the industry is poised for disruption, those who embrace innovation and positioning with responsibility will emerge as leaders in the next phase of digital advertising.
Read the full report for an in-depth analysis of these industry shifts and actionable recommendations.
Consumer attention is in short supply. From TikTokers to early education teachers to adults in general, it seems that few demographics feel like they (or the people around them) can stay focused for as long as they used to.
In this context, advertisers must contend with the challenge of consumers paying less attention to ads. To advertise effectively in today’s saturated digital environment, marketing teams must have an attention strategy—a game plan for leveraging the confines of attention-related constraints to outperform their competitors.
Perhaps the most important tool advertisers have at their disposal for capturing audience attention is personalization. But in addition to tailoring specific ad placements to capture attention, advertisers must also consider how to capture attention in a broader omnichannel context. Attention gained over time, via various interactions on various channels and platforms, is what garners the brand equity that leads to lasting connection, trust, and action from target audiences.
Ultimately, by empowering their teams to achieve both personalization at scale as well as a sophisticated omnichannel approach, advertisers can outperform their competitors and earn lasting audience attention despite shrinking attention spans and a saturated digital environment.
Multiple studies have tracked decreasing attention to the same tasks over time, appearing to confirm the idea that attention spans are shrinking. But the reality is likely more nuanced: The very concept of attention is hard to define, and attention spans can vary based on environment, activity, and mood, as well as channel, platform, and content.
Experts also challenge the idea that attention is fundamentally shrinking, attributing shifts in focus to increasingly distracting environments, rather than neurological changes. And others argue that attention spans haven’t changed at all, pointing to examples like gamers who play for hours in a single sitting (one 2022 survey found that PC gamers most commonly averaged 1-2 hours per session).
“I don’t think media is responsible for shortening people’s attention spans,” says Lauren Johnson, Client Strategy and Effectiveness Lead at Basis. “I believe what holds someone’s attention is what’s relevant to them. That’s a big reason why so many people, especially younger generations, are spending so much time on TikTok and YouTube: The content on those platforms is highly relevant and personalized to them.”
What is clear is that consumers have grown more discerning of ads. This is especially true for younger audiences, like Gen Z, who tune out of ads after just 1.3 seconds. “If you’re not relevant, younger audiences don’t care,” says Johnson. “It’s a learned behavior that these younger generations can filter digital noise out better than earlier generations, because it’s native to them.”
While advertisers may only have a second or two to capture audience attention, it remains possible to retain that attention for any number of seconds or minutes—that is, if the content is captivating and relevant enough.
Given that consumers typically only pay attention to advertisements for the first couple of seconds (especially in skippable or scrollable environments), marketing teams need a “first second strategy” to hook audiences within that time frame. Some proven tactics include:
Personalization can further strengthen these approaches, while helping retain audience attention past the first couple of seconds.
One of the best ways to capture and retain consumer attention is to serve the right message to the right person at the right time. (It may be an adage, but it’s an adage for a reason!)
Today’s marketing teams have both the advantage and the challenge of being able to hyper-personalize their marketing approaches based on consumer data. The best way to out-personalize competitors’ creative and media placements is through data—namely, by having the most efficient processes for collecting, organizing, pulling insights from, and activating data.
This is not always an easy task, with marketers citing finding and maintaining quality data, managing data and privacy regulations, and centralizing data/removing silos as some of their top challenges to executing a data-driven strategy.
The right platform, designed to streamline campaign workflows, increase interoperability, and expedite the process of collecting, organizing, storing, and activating on consumer data (while maintaining privacy compliance), can give marketers a considerable competitive advantage over their peers in terms of being able to achieve personalization at scale, and thus more effectively capture consumer attention.
At the same time, personalization doesn’t just mean tailoring the creative and media placement to the individual, but also to the context. “Our job as brands and advertisers is to try and make sure we are relevant to whatever environment consumers are in and that whatever content we serve them is interesting to them, or at least makes them pause,” says Johnson.
To achieve this, advertisers must plan around the environment and experience of each platform they advertise on. For example, tapping into popular trends and relevant influencers are effective ways to capture audience attention on TikTok, while digital out-of-home is well-suited for capitalizing on context and leveraging dynamic, showstopping creative. Marketing teams must use these insights to tailor bespoke ads for the platforms they run on, as study after study confirms that this draws more attention from viewers than generic ads.
At the same time, advertisers should be sure to maintain a level of cohesion across platforms—different, tailored ads within the same campaign have a higher impact on brand equity than using the same ads across platforms, or employing separate campaigns on separate platforms.
Advertisers can also capture attention by personalizing content to specific moments—for instance, by tapping into trends on social media.
Brands can use social media trends to their advantage, leaning into pop culture moments and trending audio to participate in the conversations their audiences are having in real time. To do so, they need to be able to move quickly, prioritizing the “messy realness” that characterizes these digital spaces rather than investing in high-end video production. This kind of agility can benefit advertisers beyond social media as well, adding a heightened level of relevance and personalization to advertisements on channels like DOOH.
To achieve this level of agility, leaders should embrace tools that streamline operations and reduce the complexity of working across channels and platforms. Advertising automation, which eliminates manual labor and streamlines workflows throughout the campaign journey, can make it easier for marketing teams to swiftly capitalize on cultural moments. Reporting tools that offer a holistic view of performance can also enhance agility, allowing marketers to assess cross-channel campaign performance in real-time and make in-flight changes if/when necessary.
Speaking of measurement…
Naturally, advertisers seeking to capture attention are interested in how effectively they’re doing so across platforms, formats, and creative placements.
Attention metrics have been characterized as an evolution of viewability—telling advertisers not just whether an ad placement is viewable, but whether consumers are paying attention to it. There are a variety of use cases, from supporting always-on measurement to inform in-flight campaign adjustments and optimizations to helping advertisers better understand which platforms and placements best capture audience attention.
These metrics have captured advertisers’ attention in recent years: 47% of advertisers reported they’d be significantly or somewhat more focused on attention metrics in 2024, up from 36% from 2023, and adoption should continue to rise in 2025.
However, like many measurement solutions, attention metrics are imperfect. A big factor here is the lack of standardization: With each provider offering different metrics, gaining a holistic view of measurement across campaigns can be difficult. Some providers use biometric signals to assess attention, which comes with privacy and compliance concerns. And while attention metrics can provide valuable data around consumer interaction with ads, they still can’t tell advertisers much about those consumers’ motivations or sentiments around those ads—in other words, just because someone interacted with an ad doesn’t mean they feel positively about it, or that they are interacting with it in a positive way.
Given these and other challenges, the jury is out on what place attention metrics will ultimately take in advertisers’ toolkits—or if they will even find a permanent home there. “I can’t tell if attention metrics are here to stay, or if they’re something new that the industry is excited about now but may fade out of relevance in the coming years,” says Johnson. “Until the industry finds a way to standardize it, it’s not going to scale.”
Ultimately, Johnson notes, it’s worth testing and experimenting with attention metrics—especially for brands and campaigns focused on upper-funnel objectives like awareness and consideration—as we know there is a strong correlation between attention and business outcomes. But it’s not currently a “need to have” measurement solution for all agencies and brands. Though perhaps imperfect, marketing teams can always leverage all the other data they’re used to looking at (ex. reach, frequency, etc.) to infer how effective their ads are at capturing attention.
Finally, it’s important that marketers consider audience attention not just in context of specific ad placements, but in terms of their broader marketing strategy. Campaigns that leverage multiple platforms and channels tend to perform better together than separately: According to Kantar, brand impact increases by 234% when the same budget is spent across five channels rather than just one. As such, Johnson notes, there’s a benefit to considering not just the attention garnered by one ad placement, but the breadth of attention across multiple platforms and channels over a longer time frame.
“Do all your ad impressions need to be in the highest attention environment? No—there’s a balance,” says Johnson. “There’s value in display and search ads, where maybe people are catching the logo subconsciously, and that helps with the brand recognition. Then, placements in more high attention environments like social media and CTV can complement that subconscious brand recognition with more direct appeals to attention.”
Enabling this kind of omnichannel approach goes back to an agency or marketing teams’ tech stack. Just like achieving personalization at scale requires tools that allow marketers the time they need to personalize content across channels, so too does effective omnichannel advertising. Managing media placements across a variety of channels and platforms puts considerable strain on teams unless they have software that streamlines the process—for example, a platform that unifies campaigns across channels so that marketers don’t have to waste time toggling between seven or more different platforms.
The complexity of capturing audience attention today mirrors the saturated and fractured digital landscape in which modern advertisers work. However, gaining a competitive edge when it comes to attention—which in turn leads to a competitive edge in terms of revenue and business growth—boils down to a few key strategic approaches:
By investing in the tools and solutions that give teams the agility they need to achieve personalization and omnichannel activation, advertisers can win in this new era of attention.
Basis drove an 80% surge in new users for a Global 500 financial client with a precision-targeted, multi-channel campaign, showcasing the power of expert insights and data-driven activation in B2B marketing.
A global financial services provider needed to boost awareness and engagement for its 529 savings plan among financial advisors. After previous disappointing results, they partnered with Basis to increase high-quality traffic and awareness, engage financial advisors to drive enrollment, and improve key metrics like time on site and page views.
Tailored Multi-Channel Strategy
Basis implemented a customized approach to drive quality site traffic and boost awareness of the client’s 529 plan.
Improved Engagement
Focused efforts led to stronger metrics, including increased time on site and higher page views.
Strategic Alignment
By aligning with the client’s goals and addressing financial advisors’ needs, Basis transformed an underperforming campaign into a lasting success.
Data-Driven Strategy
Using audience insights, Basis tested and optimized platforms like Bing, Meta, DSP audio, and native buys, ensuring ads reached advisors in the most relevant environments with multiple touchpoints.
Expertise & Flexibility
Acting as an extension of the client’s team, the Basis Consulting & Activation Team adapted to regulations, shifting business priorities, and real-time feedback to keep strategies aligned and drive better outcomes.
Clear, Actionable Insights
Integrating Google Analytics and platform metrics, transparent reporting enabled the client to track performance, justify budgets, and refine strategies.
Operational Excellence
Proactive problem-solving eliminated waste and optimized resources by resolving challenges like fraudulent traffic and tracking consent changes.
Performance Gains
Year-over-year increases in traffic, page views, and site engagement exceeded expectations without expanding the budget.
Industry Recognition
Highlighted as “Best in Class” by LinkedIn for innovative strategy and execution.
Stakeholder Impact
The client shared that the campaign established a trusted solution for financial advisors and led to improved marketing performance and increased stakeholder satisfaction.
Here we are again, halfway through February: Love is in the air, spring is peeking around the corner, and candy hearts are in high demand.
Brands spend all year trying to woo consumers, but what better time than Valentine’s Day to dive into how to truly win their hearts? While it all starts with having a standout product and/or service, building on that foundation with meaningful marketing and advertising strategies can take customer relationships to the next level and foster long-term loyalty. Brands that get clear on their values, communicate those values authentically to key audiences, use personalization to enhance that authenticity, and respect consumers’ privacy needs just might find their customers crushing on them like it’s night one of “The Bachelor.”
The strongest relationships are those built on trust, and trust isn’t possible when you’re trying to be someone you’re not. With 87% of shoppers reporting they have paid more for a product because it came from a brand they trusted, building trust with consumers should be paramount for brands in 2025. To earn that trust, brands must get clear on their values and communicate those values authentically to prospective consumers, through both words and actions.
“Consumer behavior is often aspirational—there’s something about your specific brand that consumers want to be a part of,” says Susan Mandell, Basis’ VP of Brand Development. “It’s crucial to understand what sets your brand apart and lean into that in meaningful ways.”
Aligning values with action is key for building lasting connections. “If you’re a brand that talks about making social change or giving back, you might embrace a model where each purchase includes an added benefit for someone or some cause—a pair of shoes or socks donated, a membership gifted, a tree planted," says Mandell. "Backing your brand’s values up with such actions can further deepen the unique relationship with your consumers.”
The reality of showing up authentically, however, is that not every brand will be every consumer’s cup of tea. By the same token, brands that try to appeal to everyone may end up not appealing to anyone at all. “The thing with authenticity is that people can smell lies,” says Mandell. “They can tell when brands are going back and forth trying to try to cater to everyone. People want what’s real and authentic, and brands that lean into that desire will be able to build trust and foster deeper connections with their audience.”
A worn-out opening line won’t do much for the date you’re trying to woo, and a generalized approach won’t win over your customers. Personalization has long been the key to a great customer experience: Nearly 90% of today’s consumers prefer personalized ads and 87% say they’re more likely to interact with ads for products they are personally interested in or searching for.
But effective personalization doesn’t mean simply changing the name of a city in ad copy or partnering with a trending content creator just because they’re trending. Instead, it can be helpful to think of personalization as an extension of brand authenticity—a way to speak to target audiences in a manner that both resonates with them and stays true to brand values.
“Knowing who you are, who you want to be, and what you stand for as a brand is critical,” says Kelly Boyle, Group VP of Client Strategy & Insights at Basis. “That foundation can then serve as a jumping-off point for personalization, which is key to fostering the types of long-term, deep connections that most brands really want.”
Once a brand understands its values and the audiences that connect with them, it can show consumers how they personally fit into its story. For auto companies, this could look like showing cars in hiking or adventure-focused scenarios for certain audience segments and urban environments for others. Or, a CPG brand might place ads alongside recipe videos on YouTube, personalizing both the creative and the placement to its target audiences’ interests and behaviors.
“So much of effective personalization comes down to understanding who your audience is, what they care about, where they spend time, and how that overlaps with your specific brand,” says Boyle. “A personalization approach that’s really going to resonate is one where it doesn’t feel obvious—where an ad just organically fits with the things a consumer cares about, and they might not even realize that it’s personalized.”
If you want a love (and/or a digital marketing strategy) that lasts, you need to focus on an approach that respects the needs and boundaries of your object of affection. And, today, data privacy is at the forefront of many audiences’ minds: More than 70% of customers surveyed in 2024 were increasingly protective of their personal information, and 64% felt that brands are reckless with their personal data. It’s clear that there’s a deficit of trust between brands and consumers when it comes to data privacy.
“Brands today are looking to connect with customers in exciting, meaningful, and privacy-friendly ways,” says Jane Frye, VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis. “Contextually aligning with trusted content is one powerful way to engage audiences while also respecting their privacy. Leveraging first-party data is another key strategy for accomplishing this: By analyzing behavioral insights from first-party data, brands can identify the channels and ad placements that resonate most with their customers. This allows them to personalize their approach while respecting consumer privacy.”
Indeed, building trust is not only essential for earning consumers’ hard-earned dollars and building lasting relationships with them; it’s also an important aspect of navigating increasing signal loss and privacy concerns. Using first-party data effectively is a key strategy for privacy-compliant marketing that offers valuable insights into customer needs, wants, and preferences, enabling brands to foster authentic connections. By embracing privacy-friendly marketing approaches like the use of first-party data, brands can strengthen relationships and enhance long-term brand equity with target audiences.
Just like cheese, wine, and blue jeans, strong customer relationships get better with time. For brands, then, the time to start building (or expanding upon) those relationships is now. To that end, it will be critical for them to get clear on their values, show up as their authentic selves, embrace meaningful personalization, and respect consumers’ boundaries in order to help strengthen trust across the entire customer journey. Brands that do so will not only foster stronger relationships but also position themselves for long-term loyalty and growth. And who doesn't love the sound of that?
How will the latest legislation out of Europe and the United States impact digital advertising in 2025 and beyond?
It’s been a busy few years for digital advertising industry regulators, with new regulations taking effect around the US and new legislation popping up across the globe. What’s the latest, and how will it impact advertising and marketing professionals?
While the United States has taken its time determining how to handle Big Tech regulation, the European Union has embraced its reputation as the world’s fiercest tech regulator.
Unrestrained by free speech rules like America’s First Amendment, the EU has taken the lead on matters like consumer privacy (with GDPR), walled gardens like Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store (with the Digital Markets Act), and misinformation and hyper-personal ad targeting on social media (with the Digital Services Act).
Though some requirements of the Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect in 2023, with “Very Large Online Platforms” and “Very Large Online Search Engines” being subject to the law’s stipulations, it wasn’t until February 2024 that all platforms became subject to its broader implementation and enforcement. The law compels social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to dedicate more resources to stomping out misinformation and hate speech on their platforms, and bans any targeted online ads that are based on an individual’s ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Google and Meta are also now subject to annual audits to uncover “systemic risks” related to their social assets, search engines are required to suppress misleading search results, and even Amazon will have to comply with new rules aimed at curbing the sale of illegal products. Since the Digital Services Act went into effect, the European Commission has aggressively enforced it: X has been under investigation since 2023, while the Commission opened formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram in 2024 to assess compliance.
While the DSA has somewhat inhibited targeting precision in the region, it is also helping to foster safer advertising environments—particularly on social media—helping both brands and users enjoy a more hospitable digital ecosystem. With brand safety looking like an increasingly-elusive proposition in the United States, an internet with less misinformation and more trust sounds downright novel, providing marketers with some welcome upside in the face of targeting limitations.
As for the Digital Markets Act, in September 2023, the EU designated six companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft—as “gatekeepers” under this regulation. Though TikTok and Meta appealed this designation and Apple filed a legal challenge to the DMA itself, these tech giants have been forced to make changes to meet the rules and requirements outlined in the DMA, such as allowing users to choose different default browsers and search engines, download iPhone apps outside of Apple’s App store, and control how their personal online data is used.
Altogether, social media platforms face strict regulation in the EU—and serious consequences when they breach the bloc's privacy laws. Meta learned this the hard way, incurring a nearly $1.3 billion penalty for transferring user data between the United States and countries in the EU and the European Economic Area. It’s the biggest penalty an EU regulator has levied on a tech company since 2021 and a clear signal that privacy compliance is non-negotiable. That said, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework should hopefully help prevent similar data flow-related fines and confusion going forward.
Back stateside, industry regulation is a bit more decentralized—at least, for now. While federal-level legislation has mostly lingered in congressional purgatory, 11 new state-level data privacy acts have already taken effect this year—with many more set to take effect throughout 2025.
The broadest and most impactful of these enacted state-level regulations is the California Privacy Rights Act, aka CPRA. Building off the foundation of 2018’s groundbreaking California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the act created a California Privacy Protection Agency that’s dedicated to (and responsible for) enforcing the law—indicative of increased enforcement—while also reducing ambiguity around how to interpret some of the data-related aspects of the law. The CPRA now requires companies to give consumers the opportunity to not only opt out of the sale of their personal information, but also of giving or sharing that data with someone else, including a third party that might use it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
As Basis General Counsel Derek Zolner put it, “Essentially, the CCPA, CPRA, and the other data privacy acts that are popping up around the US are establishing legal enforcement mechanisms around personal control of one’s personal data and codifying many of the core principals of our industry—namely, transparency, notice, and the right to opt out. Only now, instead of the industry self-regulating these matters, state governments are intervening to take control of that enforcement.”
Meanwhile, at the federal level, privacy-focused legislation remains stuck in lawmaking purgatory. In April 2024, a bipartisan group of lawmakers released a draft piece of legislation that would establish a comprehensive federal consumer privacy framework, called the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA). In its original form, the APRA was expected to have serious implications for the digital advertising ecosystem—establishing strong data security standards as well as clear national data privacy rights and protections, giving individuals the right to sue those who violated these rights, and giving the FTC authority to enforce any violations of the bill. But the bill has since stalled and, with the change in administration, appears unlikely to be revived anytime soon.
As consumers grow increasingly skeptical of Big Tech’s handling of their personal data, state-based legislation has provided users with increased transparency and control…for the residents of those states. With national legislation looking increasingly unlikely, at least at any point in the near future, advertisers and publishers are likely to leverage different tactics in different states—or, alternatively, will default to the most stringent policies (such as the CPRA) across all their campaigns.
From a consumer perspective, as much as consumers say they want a unified, omnichannel experience, they’ve also made it clear that they want more control over who can—and who cannot—access their personal data as part of the advertising process. Private companies like Apple (with iPhone’s App Tracking Transparency and the lack of third-party cookies on its Safari browser) and even Google (which, while no longer deprecating cookies in Chrome, is planning to let users make an “informed choice” about third-party trackers in their browser) have shown a willingness to slowly but surely give consumers more control over their data. With signal loss having crossed 50% and third-party cookies heading toward the same fate as MySpace and the VCRs, advertisers should continue to embrace privacy-friendly tactics like alternative identifiers, contextual, and brand lift studies.
As if pending legislative action wasn’t enough, Google, Meta, and Amazon—which, together, account for almost two-thirds of the nearly $350 billion US digital ad market—are also facing both consumer scrutiny and federal lawsuits around monopolizing the adtech market, the social media market, and the online retail market in the US.
Google, in particular, has caught the eye of the Justice Department and several states. It has faced not one but two lawsuits alleging violation of US antitrust laws. The first case, brought by the Department of Justice and 11 state Attorneys General, aimed to prevent Google from “unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets.” This suit and its ruling come at a time when Google owns an almost 90% market share in search, though the company maintains that its supremacy in the landscape is because they “simply provided a superior product.” The 10-week trial for this case concluded in early May 2024, and in August 2024, a federal judge ruled that Google had, in fact, violated antitrust laws in online search. In his ruling, Judge Amit P. Mehta stated, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Potential penalties or remedies for Google’s misconduct have not yet been set, although the DOJ has proposed significant modifications to the tech giant’s business, including selling off its Chrome browser.
Additionally, Google is the subject of a second suit accusing the company of “monopolizing digital advertising technologies” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. While the first case addressed its monopolization of the search landscape, this second case relates to Google’s overall presence within the digital advertising landscape. During the trial, which wrapped up in November 2024, the Department of Justice argued that Google monopolized the ad server and ad network markets, attempted to monopolize the exchange market, and applied monopoly power by uniting all of the products they used to do so into a single offering. A ruling on this case is expected early this year.
This antitrust regulatory action isn’t limited to the US. Across the pond, Google faces similar antitrust charges for its digital advertising practices, with the European Commission citing Google’s heavy involvement at “almost all levels of the so-called adtech supply chain” and noting concerns that the world’s fourth-most valuable company “may have used its market position to favor its own intermediation services.” This marks the fourth time Google has run afoul of EU antitrust regulations in recent years, and with the bloc’s history of action against US-based tech giants, the case is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Beyond these antitrust suits, recent years have seen a notable increase in class-action lawsuits against brands for allegedly making false and/or misleading claims in their advertising.
For instance, Starbucks was sued for advertising that they’re “committed to 100% ethical sourcing” despite sourcing coffee beans and tea from “cooperatives and farms that have committed documented, severe human rights and labor abuses,” according to the lawsuit filed by the National Consumers League. Soda company Poppi faced a class-action lawsuit for advertising “prebiotic” and “gut healthy” benefits, when such benefits are negligible—particularly given how much sugar their products contain. The makers of Liquid I.V. were sued for including a “no preservatives” label on their electrolyte drink powder, despite using citric acid and other well-known preservatives. And Grubhub faced a lawsuit that alleges the company deceives customers by promising free delivery, but then charging fees at checkout.
This uptick in false advertising lawsuits shows a growing awareness and intolerance towards deceptive marketing practices among consumers and regulators alike. Both are increasingly willing to hold companies accountable for misleading claims, reflecting a broader demand for transparency and honesty in advertising. Additionally, several new enacted and proposed state-level regulations echo these growing demands, including a California law that targets misleading product labeling around recyclable plastic, a proposed Arizona bill aimed at helping to eliminate misleading information in healthcare advertising, and a proposed Louisiana bill addressing truth in advertising, specifically as it relates to related to how foreign seafood is sourced and labeled.
Given the increased legal scrutiny, consumer sentiments, and uptick in legislation aimed at tackling misleading or false advertising, brands and marketers must be diligent in ensuring that they are not just satisfying regulations, but using messaging that is rooted in truth and authenticity, lest they risk both legal repercussions and lasting damage to their reputations.
Since its public release in 2022, generative AI has garnered a lot of hype—and for good reason. From AI chatbots like ChatGPT, to AI image and art generators like Midjourney, to Microsoft and Google both embracing new AI-powered search capabilities, this emerging tech is making some serious waves in the marketing and advertising world (and beyond). But for all the excitement around generative AI, its boom has also been accompanied by fierce warnings and concerns from experts across the globe.
Amidst these mixed emotions, it’s no surprise that AI regulation has become a hot topic. In 2024, the world’s first comprehensive AI law, the EU AI Act, went into effect. The act outlines the many potential benefits of AI, while establishing “obligations for providers and users depending on the level of risk from artificial intelligence.”
The US, meanwhile, has yet to take action quite as deliberate as the EU’s, but that doesn’t mean Washington has been ignoring AI’s emergence. In 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared before Congress and directly encouraged lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence. Later that year, former President Joe Biden signed an executive order that aimed to address the “safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of Artificial Intelligence.” However, President Trump has since rescinded that order and, more generally, has signaled that his administration will adopt a more relaxed regulatory approach to AI. Meanwhile, several AI-focused bills have stalled in Congress, with their paths toward enactment looking increasingly uncertain.
On the state level, Utah became the first state to enact a consumer protection law focused on AI. The 2024 Utah Artificial Intelligence Policy Act (UAIP) mandates that organizations disclose their use of generative AI tools to consumers, and restricts organizations from attributing consumer protection violations to generative AI. And in California, draft regulations around the use of AI and automated decision-making would amend the CPRA to give Californians the right to access information about how implicated businesses use automated decision-making tools, including AI tools, in relation to consumers, as well as the right to opt out of their data being used by those tools.
With President Trump’s increasingly-warm ties to the AI industry, federal-level regulation appears to be off the table for the time being. However, international and state-level AI regulations continue to move forward, and more are likely to be introduced in the coming months and years as the technology continues to proliferate. With nearly three-quarters of marketing and advertising professionals saying they believe AI’s development and usage should be regulated—and with its incredible potential benefits still tempered by its significant risks—it’s critical that advertisers stay up-to-date on this evolving landscape to both ensure compliance and to understand where the industry is headed.
Last but not least, while the majority of industry-focused regulation has centered around American-based companies, there is one notable exception to the trend: TikTok, whose fate in the US is increasingly tenuous.
In 2024, Congress passed legislation requiring TikTok parent company ByteDance sell its stake in the app within 12 months or else the app would be banned in the US. While TikTok filed a subsequent lawsuit seeking to halt the law, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban in January 2025. The app was set to go dark on January 19, but on January 20, President Trump signed an executive order that aims to delay enforcement of this ban until early April. The legality of such an order remains unclear, but for the time being, the app remains online in the United States.
Looking ahead, TikTok’s fate may hinge upon ByteDance’s willingness to sell the app to an American company—or, alternatively, on Congress passing new legislation that amends or supersedes the 2024 bill to permit TikTok’s return to US app stores. While that was long rumored to be a non-starter for the company, recent signals indicate that both the Chinese government and ByteDance’s leadership may be increasingly open to a sale. And though a number of potential buyers have shown an interest in acquiring the wildly popular app, none have emerged as a front runner, leaving TikTok’s future uncertain.
With TikTok’s fate still unknown, advertisers should continue to craft their contingency plans to swiftly shift budgets should the app ultimately be banned in the US. But the clock is ti(c)king...
For much of the past decade, regulators have increasingly turned their eye toward the digital advertising industry and its key players. Advertising leaders looking to balance innovation with compliance must take regulators’ concerns seriously—specifically, by prioritizing consumer privacy, staying abreast of antitrust lawsuits, avoiding false and/or misleading messaging, approaching AI with caution and intentionality, and keeping an eye on regulatory developments across the board.
While the US is likely headed toward a looser regulatory environment, one way or another, the digital advertising industry is going to have to prioritize privacy. Consumers and regulators alike are demanding increased transparency and individual control over user data. And if Big Tech—and the advertising industry—don’t want to make the difficult choices involved in regulating themselves when it comes to consumer privacy, then world governments will likely be all too happy to do it for them.
