The future of advertising is tech. We know — you’ve heard (and read) this cliche over and over again, but we can’t help but emphasize it any chance we get. The truth is, if you don’t fully embrace technology for your advertising efforts, you risk falling behind your competitors, even if you have superior products or services. That’s why keeping up with ad tech innovation is crucial. By the way, we don’t necessarily mean that you adopt each and every tech trend. The key idea here is “keeping up,” which means staying informed on the direction the industry (in this case, technology) is headed. When you know and understand the various technologies available, you can choose what works for your brand instead of blindly following the rest.
This guide, while exploring the various ad tech trends you should expect to see come 2025, isn’t an invitation to adopt each and every one of them. It’s more of an educational post, so you can choose what to embrace in line with your needs and goals. Let’s dive in.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Ad Tech
Here’s what to expect in 2025.
Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Ad Tech
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Given the rate at which development and adoption around this technology has and will grow, artificial intelligence (AI) will be the next big thing in advertising.
The year 2024 set the ball rolling for what’s to come in 2025 for AI advertising trends. Survey Monkey reveals that in 2024, 56% of marketers had implemented AI in their strategies. Further, despite the claims that AI will “take away” jobs, 69% of marketers feel excited about this technology’s ability to transform their jobs. This says a lot about the future of AI, not just for 2025 but also beyond.
Generative AI, in particular, had the biggest impact on the advertising industry. For instance, many, many marketers leveraged tools like ChatGPT to generate advertising content like emails, newsletters, blog posts, social media captions, and more. Chatbots were another common use case for AI in marketing for brands. But these time-saving tricks barely scratch the surface of what AI can do for marketers. With development still ongoing for AI, you should expect AI only to get better at what it can and will do.
Personalized experiences are what customers want. Your customers want to feel seen and understood, so to resonate with them, you must give them an experience like no other. AI will, in 2025, be at the center of this trend, especially if your brand has a large customer base.
Being able to customize an interaction for each and every customer you have can be overwhelming. With AI, you can quickly analyze your customers’ data and generate insights for creating customized digital experiences. Moreover, AI’s ability to analyze real-time data will be instrumental in dynamically creating ads according to what your customers search for or like online.
Importance of First-Party Data
All signs point toward a cookieless future despite Google’s final decision to keep third-party cookies activated on its browser, Chrome. That and increasing data privacy concerns mean that relying on third-party cookies for insights into who your customers are will no longer be viable. Plus, other browsers like Firefox and Safari have already deactivated third-party cookies. The only other option? First-party data.
Ad tech innovations in 2025 and beyond will follow suit to cater to ad strategies in a cookieless future. With first-party data, you collect information directly from your customers through their interactions on your website, apps, or other platforms. It’s more trustworthy, ethical, and effective when utilized properly.
By the way, leading brands like Nike have mastered this approach. The company’s “dedicated score” is among the pioneer ad tech innovations in the industry you can use to get inspiration. The tool uses data collected from users who visit Nike’s website and willingly input their data. Nike then uses this data to provide purchase suggestions and offers.
Emergence of Shoppable Ads
This ad tech innovation trend is already in motion thanks to brands like Google, Amazon, and Meta. It’s actually as simple as it sounds: Instead of showing your customers an ad while they browse online and expecting them to drop what they’re doing so they can go purchase your items, shoppable ads let customers interact with your ad without leaving their current screen. The result? A faster and more frictionless customer experience.
In 2024, cart abandonment rates across the world stood at a worrying 70.19%. Shoppable ads solve two major issues that cause customers to abandon carts while shopping online: complicated checkout processes and account creation requirements.
Growing Demand for Transparency and Trust
The past few years have seen increased concerns about data privacy. As a result, consumers have become more enlightened about the need to know how organizations use their data.
In a recent survey, over 55% of consumers in the U.S. revealed that they were more likely to trust a company if it didn’t collect their personal data. Further, over 65% of consumers said they would trust an organization if it was transparent about how it uses their personal data.
So, what does this mean? Just because consumer data is readily available doesn’t mean your organization can use it however it wishes. This phenomenon is further supported by increased consumer data regulations in the industry. Regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act encourage organizations to use transparent practices in how they collect and use consumer data.
This trend, as we see it, is just getting started, and you can expect it to cross over to 2025. In fact, there’s a looming possibility that the U.S. could enact a federal privacy act, the American Privacy Rights Act. This legislation, if passed, could be the equivalent of the EU’s GDPR. While still unclear whether Congress will pass it, this sets precedence for what’s to come in the future.
Contextual Targeting’s New Role in Connected TV
Connected TV (CTV) is quickly replacing traditional or linear TV. For the first time since its introduction, CTV household viewership in the U.S. in 2023 surpassed pay TV by over 6 million. This presents a huge opportunity for advertising, particularly contextual advertising, where you show ads to your target market depending on what they’re watching.
Contextual targeting eliminates the need to depend on user data to create relevant ads. Rather, it leverages what the viewer is currently watching. This type of advertising aligns with the new reality where users and industry regulations require transparency from brands when using consumer data.
Integration of Advertising and Marketing Technologies
Gone are the days when organizations will rely on several different advertising and marketing technologies. While this may have worked in the past, it led to a lot of inefficiencies: Think increased costs due to purchasing and maintaining different tools, lost productivity among employees trying to juggle multiple tools, and the creation of data silos. In 2025, advertising technology developers will consolidate different functions into one advertising platform that’s easy to manage.
The Impact of Consumer Expectations on Ad Strategies
The ad tech innovations we’ve discussed above aren’t a coincidence or a result of nature. Quite the opposite, actually. It all goes back to one common factor: the consumer. The last few years have seen more brands realize that customers are the most important element for success. It doesn’t matter if you have the best products or services. If you don’t meet your customers’ expectations and make their experience with your brand flawless, you will lose big time.
That said, let’s explore how customers impact ad strategies.
Understanding Digital-First Consumer Behavior
The way technology has evolved over time explains a lot about consumer behavior. Who knew that customers at one point would prefer shopping via digital means over physical stores? Statistics indicate that 43% of U.S. consumers prefer shopping online over in-store shopping. This figure is the highest in the world.
Personalization as a Driving Force
Customers today value personalized experiences. In fact, research indicates that over 60% of consumers have no problem spending more if it means they’ll get experiences customized to their needs.
Think about it from your own perspective. Say you go to a restaurant and, as soon as you mention the name under your reservation, you get a completely “you” experience. They remember your allergies, know exactly how you like your food served, and offer you your favorite dessert. You’ll keep going back and even recommend the restaurant to anyone who cares to listen, right? That’s exactly why you should prioritize personalization in your ad strategies.
Engaging Content: The New Currency of Advertising
“Time is money” is a saying that holds so much truth today. You don’t want to waste your customers’ time with boring content. Consumers today have the shortest attention span compared to previous generations. You only have about eight seconds to capture a person’s attention. If you miss it, forget about it. That’s why you have to create engaging content.
So, what exactly is engaging content?
- It resonates with your audience — they can relate to it.
- It reaches your target audience at the right time.
- It adds value to your customers.
- It gives your audience the opportunity to interact with its elements.
Innovations in Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising is quickly becoming the most preferred form of digital advertising. Industry surveys show that programmatic advertising will account for over 70% of total digital ad spend, an 11% growth from 2024. It’s no doubt worth looking into the innovations that will shape programmatic campaigns in 2025.
Automation through AI is one of the most significant ad tech innovations in programmatic advertising. It works by optimizing the ad buying process, improving campaign measurement and efficiency, and personalizing user experiences. These functions are vital, especially now that real-time analytics provide valuable information for marketers to make informed decisions.
Already, demand-side platforms like Google Marketing Platform and Amazon have adopted AI into their technologies to automate the ad selling process. Nonetheless, the truth is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of just how powerful AI and machine learning can be. As such, with the continuous development of these technologies, so will their precision for targeting also improve. Plus, it’s only recently that ad tech developers started adopting these technologies, so experiments are ongoing to find the best way to leverage them for ad targeting.
The Role of Retail Media in Ad Tech
Another ad tech innovation you’ll see in the coming years is the growth and wide adoption of retail media. Statista projects that by 2027, the share of retail media in digital advertising will grow to hit $106 billion, up from $37.7 billion in advertising dollars. This will account for about 27% of total digital spending. Retailers hold a lot of first-party data, which is extremely valuable now that we’re headed toward a cookieless future.
Consolidation of Retail Media Networks
As of 2024, there were more than 200 retail media networks in the digital advertising space in the U.S. As more retailers enter this space, retail media trends indicate that there’s a need for consolidation. Smaller retailers don’t have the “might” in terms of technology and scale to compete with larger retailers, so consolidation is their best bet at leveling the playground.
Strategies for Successful Retail Partnerships
Retail partnerships need a smart approach lest they fail. If you’re looking to enter into one, you should ensure that you:
- Identify partners that have aligned target audiences. They should complement your services or goods.
- Have a solid legal agreement laying out the terms and conditions of your partnership.
- Maintain honest and continuous communication with your partners to prevent misunderstandings.
- Leverage different types of ads, including onsite ads and in-store advertising.
Preparing for the Future: Strategies for Brands
Ad tech trends will happen one way or the other. How your brand or organization chooses to react will directly impact its ability to stay competitive over time. But one thing’s for sure: Keeping up with and adapting to change is essential for survival in a highly competitive advertising industry. So, what should you do? It all comes down to building agility in marketing operations with the following strategies.
Embracing Change and New Technologies
Brands can’t afford to ignore new technologies and trends just because they’ve worked in the past. Hanging on to outdated methods and technologies will quickly drag you down, and if they don’t, you’ll stay stagnant for a very long time, which is bad for business. But remember, not all technologies and approaches will work for you. You must do enough research and, if possible, conduct tests to find out if they’re the right fit for your organization.
Building a Data-Driven Culture
An organizational culture that prioritizes data-driven decisions is essential for surviving in 2025 and beyond. Plus, with so much data available, failing to use it is essentially setting yourself up for failure. Your organization can create this culture by, first and most importantly, investing in its people. This essentially means you take time to train new and current employees on how to leverage data for organizational operations. You can also prioritize data skills as the major determinant when you’re choosing candidates to fill open positions.
Challenges Ahead for Ad Tech
As with most trends, ad tech is bound to experience several challenges now and in the future.
Navigating the Decline of Third-Party Cookies
Third-party data is/was a major source of data for advertising. And even though Google has taken a step back on deactivating third-party cookies on its browser, the decline is inevitable. Major data privacy concerns and consumers’ ability to deactivate cookies present a challenge for ad tech development companies that depend on them.
Balancing Automation With Human Insight
The recent widespread adoption of automation, while necessary, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow suit. Some tasks still require human oversight, so leaving them at the “mercy” of automation may cause more problems than good. Finding that sweet spot where automation works with humans is where most organizations struggle. Should you fully automate and risk losing the human touch that’s especially important when dealing with customers? And if you choose to automate, will you still incorporate human insight into your decision-making?
Ensuring Compliance With Privacy Regulations
It might seem as though every other day there’s a new privacy regulation that’s bound to give you a hard time. Think hefty non-compliance fines, customer loss, ruined reputation, and legal repercussions. So much is on the line, and for good reason — you’re dealing with personal customer data, which, if it falls into the wrong hands, can cause a lot of damage. Which is why you must take the necessary steps to ensure you meet all the requirements for compliance.
Adapt to Change in Ad Tech With AUDIENCEX
Ad tech innovation presents benefits and challenges for businesses. The most successful businesses in advertising know that to succeed, you must find a way to navigate the challenges so you can enjoy the benefits. Part of that means partnering with an ad tech provider who understands the advertising industry and can provide a solution that will help you succeed.
AUDIENCEX is that solution. Our solution provides you with AI-driven predictive analytics combined with human expertise so you can get the best of both worlds. Moreover, our privacy-first approach leverages the largest opt-in data set, so you don’t have to worry about compliance issues.
Schedule a meeting with us today to find out more