2025 Brand Advertising Predictions

CTV, Retail Media, DOOH... Where will brands invest in 2025 and what developments will be made? We asked our Brand Advertising Committee (BAC) for their predictions on the trends and themes that will shape the industry over the next 12 months. Take a look below to see their insights, including 2025 buzzword predictions!   

A big thanks to Anita Caras, VP of Insights & Measurement, Teads, Jacques Cazin, Viznet Advisor, IAB Europe VP BAC and Emmanuel Josserand, Sr Dir, Brand, Agency and Industry Relations, FreeWheel, members of the BAC!

Sum Up 2024 in One or Two Words

Jacques:

• The fulgurance entry of AI!
• The importance of Attention KPI
• Retail Media on the top

Anita:

• Omnichannel measurement
• The incrementality of CTV
• Context and content curation 

Emmanuel:

• Retail Media 
• Effectiveness measurement 
• Quality and creativity are afterthoughts

What Will 2025 Have in Store for the Industry?

Jacques:

• CTV continues to grow with blurring frontiers between VOD/FAST/CTV/Traditional TVs due to digitalization pledging for cross-measurement between those sources; not talking about merging with other video sources (open web, social media…) 
• Booking platform/Easiness of booking video ads on multiple sources of inventory:  important topic if we want to avoid media buyers stating that it is easier to book all countries with a single click on Meta. Today Meta, Amazon, TikTok, and YT have their own system. It is an opportunity for the smaller players to unify. 

Anita:

• Further consolidation (M&A) to create scale across multiple touch points - media, ad tech, measurement but also further scrutiny on market dominance within specialist areas.  
• Ad opportunities for the ‘Big screen’ will continue to develop and grow - whether that is CTV Homescreen, or in-stream opportunities - leaving a huge role for measurement to reflect the ecosystem and catch up!

Emmanuel:

• With the rise of AI and ML, we’ll see more robust and performing Contextual advertising, including broadcasters and other video publishers, enabling new targeting capabilities and more effective advertising. 
• The rise of CTV/Streaming is enabling new video ad formats, next year we’ll see a number of trials with new interactive ad formats making it to the big screen; turning the TV into conversion and outcome-based tool for marketers.

Top Buzzwords for 2025

Jacques:

• Is this really the year of the end of the cookies? 🙂
• Cross-measurement
• Sustainability (at least I do hope as the political environment does not push for this) and Eco conception of the campaign's creation and activation
• AI for Ads creation (including video) and campaign planning performance optimisation  (including real-time assessment and personalisation)
• Campaign Contextualization (ACR, AI)

Anita:

• Outcomes, MMM, and MMA I believe will come back to the fore - full funnel measurement, Brandformance!

Emmanuel:

• Contextual advertising
• Innovative ad formats (in CTV/StreamingTV)
• The battle between DSPs and SSPs intensifies 

If you'd like to find out more and get involved in IAB Europe's committee work in 2025, please reach out to the team at communications@iabeurope.eu.