Article25 Predictions For 2025: Part 2
I hope you all had a wonderful, relaxing and joyous Holiday – whether you celebrated Festivus or Christmas, or are in the midst of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or something else. This week’s issue picks up where last week left off: 25 predictions for 2025.
Last week covered trends in Financial Performance, AI + Automation, the re-emergence of brand marketing & PR’s pseudo-renaissance. If you missed it (or are just curious), check it out here.
Theme #5: New Platforms Finally Make Inroads on the Duopoly
15. YouTube Will Be the Breakout “Winner” of 2025
Somehow, someway, YouTube is still the most under-valued impression available to most marketers in 2025. As crazy as that sounds, it’s true. And that reality puts YouTube in a unique position to capture a larger share of ad dollars than ever before.
Meta’s perpetual issues (something is almost always broken in ads manager) & Tiktok’s pending ban have created fertile ground for YouTube to thrive – and the platform has been sowing the seeds to capitalize on this opportunity for 6+ years via deals/partnerships with NFL Sunday Ticket, Major League Soccer, Turner, ESPN, FS1, Peloton, Verizon & Lionsgate. Tack on the rise of new media (Joe Rogan, for example, frequently garners over 2M views on each episode posted to YouTube), cheap CPMs (YouTube has too many viewers + too much content with too few advertisers) and Google’s ad algorithm (which remains one of the best) – and all of the ingredients for YouTube’s rise are present.
What’s driving this even more are the unique functionalities within Youtube:
- Any video – not just your videos – can be used as an ad. If you have a rave review or testimonial, and it’s on Youtube, it can be your ad.
- Sequential Ads – marketing is storytelling – and what better way to do that than to sequence 2, 3, 4, or more videos together to captivate, compel + convert your target audience into paying customers/clients?
- The ability to leverage data from Google (search terms, audiences) + placements (for some YouTube campaigns) = absolute gold mine – if you know which ones (curious? Check out this issue on Youtube).
Long story long: If YouTube isn’t in your plans (or roadmap) for 2025, you might want to re-evaluate. 2025 is the year of YouTube.
16. X Makes a Comeback
X (formerly Twitter) has always been a second (at best) tier ad platform – but thanks largely to a new geopolitical landscape and an impressive product turnaround (X launched more new features in 2024 than all other major social media networks, combined), X Ads are looking more viable than they have in several years.
What’s particularly attractive is the unique blend of a shockingly influential AND active audience, massively under-priced ad inventory, several unique targeting methods (conversation targeting, follower look-alikes, major-events + movies/TV) and a sky-high probability that most of us will be spending the next 4 years learning about what’s happening on X – and it’s easy to see why more brands should be thinking about their strategy for X.
17. Placement Targeting Is Back
Privacy-everything is going to be a thing for a while (though maybe not as long as we once thought, thanks to the rise of the tech-right) – which has some pretty major implications given the increasing fragmentation of our media ecosystem.
- The value of zero-party + first-party data has never been higher.
- Platforms will see declining quality in behavioral + interest audiences, as users spend less time on individual platforms (therefore less signal) and more time in closed groups (see below), all while exercising more control over that data (further weakening the signal).
- (1) and (2) mean that – in short order – placements may be more valuable and predictive than audiences. As niche communities/sites become more prevalent, their mere presence on these sites/communities is sufficient evidence to believe they are relevant. The bonus is that placement targeting – by every privacy law under the sun (and even in the EU) is kosher.
This is the insight that drove AppLovin to be a breakout performer in Q4 2024 – and I predict we’ll see more of the same in 2025.
18. Google Gains Share of Wallet
While virtually everyone has written Google off following their antitrust battles, I think their best days are yet to come.
Why? Three reasons:
- Ecosystem Advantage: Google is the only legitimate tech giant to control the most widely-used OS (Android), the most widely used browser (Chrome), the most widely-used email platform (gmail), an excellent + widely-used cloud collaboration platform (g-suite), most of the programmatic stack (DSP, SSP + AdX), the world’s dominant search engine and the world’s largest video network (YouTube). In an increasingly AI-dominated world, access to real-time data is the point of leverage. Google has it. It’s that simple.
- Political Advantage: I fully expect to see Google’s anti-trust case go the way of Microsoft after Bush came into office: settled for a hefty check and a “catch ‘ya around, cowboy.” I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the Trump inauguration presented by YouTube.
- Tech + Data: Google still has the deepest bench of AI talent in the business. The rate at which Gemini has improved is remarkable, and it’s only going to get better. A better Gemini (and by extension, AI Overviews) means Google’s search dominance continues, which only serves to further entrench Google’s position as a go-to platform.
While I never bet against Zuck, I also don’t bet against Google. They may have their warts and eccentricities, but at the end of the day, I would rather be holding their cards than anyone else’s.
19. The Rise of “Dark Social”
One of my most eye-opening moments of 2024 occurred while speaking to a group of founders + in-house marketing leaders at an event. As we were speaking, each one cited at least one marketing group chat – a WhatsApp group, a Slack group, Telegram, a Discord, etc. – they had come to rely on for critical business decisions.
This isn’t surprising – most social feeds are awash in performative drivel, so it makes sense that senior decision-makers would migrate to places where the signal:noise ratio is favorable and where genuine, open, honest communication can occur with a lower probability of it turning into a thing.
What’s less clear are the impacts of this shift onto marketing playbooks. My guesses:
- The value of genuine subject-matter expertise – not the broad stuff that masquerades as such on LinkedIn – is going to be sky-high. The era of broad content marketing is (mercifully) over.
- Employee-influencers are going to be critical, as these individuals are likely to be invited into gated groups, where they’ll be able to both add value and gain insight.
- Community-influencers are going to be a hot topic, particularly for niche B2B businesses. Anything that enables a brand to be present (even if indirectly) during these “closed door” conversations is a massive win.
- Events & Community Building will both be back in vogue – the former because it physically brings together your target audience, and the latter for obvious reasons: if you control the forum where the debates are occurring, you’re at an advantage.
- I fully expect to see more niche/vertical-specific communities popping up, just as they have for eCommerce, SaaS, FinTech, etc.
In many ways, this is the synthesis of old-school backroom dealing (the thesis) and COVID-era hyper-public virtual everything (the antithesis) – it’s a new take on true professional networking. The brands and organizations that adapt to this new reality will reap significant benefits – both in terms of marketing performance and efficiency.
Theme #6: The Next Content + Creative Shift
20. Living Content Will Finally Have Its Time in the Sun
Living Content – defined as content that dynamically updates and evolves based on real-time (or near-real-time) user interactions, third-party system data, usage patterns and performance – is finally going to have its moment. For much of the last decade, the blocker between making this real was a combination of compute + “intelligence” – every feature needed to be coded. Both of those obstacles have been removed with the rise of AI + LLMs.
I fully expect this will go far beyond the rudimentary implementations of “521 people are viewing this right now” or “23 people loved this in the last 24 hours”), to something far more impressive:
- Automated review curation based on a user’s historical buying patterns, interests and usage/quiz answers.
- Curated customer photos/testimonials/videos automatically sourced from across the web and posted on the site (with proper attribution).
- Dynamic Q&A where the most relevant questions from both site data and search data are surfaced prominently.
- Perpetual case studies, where performance metrics, challenges and timelines are automatically updated as new data is available.
- User guides that evolve based on actual customer/client data.
- Analyses and thought leadership content that integrate real-time data and adapt strategic/tactical recommendations based on current conditions.
The possibilities are endless – but one thing is clear: this is the next generation of content.
21. The Return of True, Cross-Channel Content
As media (writ large) consumption unbundles – from everyone spending an overwhelming majority of their time on a few platforms to an increasingly fragmented media landscape – I think content will need to follow suit.
Right now, most brands operate in a channel-first framework: there’s a calendar for LinkedIn, there are LinkedIn-specific briefs, LinkedIn-specific KPIs, etc. The same is true for Instagram, YouTube, email, etc. And, in a world where everyone was on a few platforms, that approach was quite efficient and effective.
But we don’t live in that world anymore.
2025 will herald some tectonic shifts not just in how we consume content, but in how we create it. The days of channel-centric planning are over, and in their place will be narrative-driven content calendars.
In practical terms, this means brands will focus on, “What’s the core narrative we want to share this [period]?” – and from that will flow modular content briefs that include all applicable formats (text, video, images, audio, email, SMS, long-form content, shoppable content) up-front, leading to complimentary content across every format that their target audience uses to engage with the brand.
In many ways, this is what marketing did way back when – there were TV commercials and billboards and newspaper ads and radio spots, all with similar narrative-reinforcing messages. This will certainly look different (and it will evolve exponentially faster as new creative angles/offers perform), but, at its core, this is a return to a bygone era.
Digital marketers are going to have to learn to be marketers again.
22. Copywriting Will Be in Vogue Once Again
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that 25% to 40% of all ads run on major social media platforms will be AI-generated by December, 2025. It might actually be higher.
But what most people aren’t talking about are the implications of this to the ads themselves. I’ve written before that AI explodes the middle of the bell curve – it’s good, but it isn’t great. It’s interesting, but it’s not that innovative. While it’s difficult to describe, it’s easy to understand: there’s a certain “feel” to AI creatives.
That sense – that unease – that feeling – that’s the chink in the armor that savvy brands will drive a truck through with brilliant, original, god-damn-that’s-clever copywriting.
23. True Hybrid (Virtual + In-Person) Events Become More Mainstream
Over the past two years, we’ve all gotten accustomed to “parallel” events – a physical track and a virtual track that occurred simultaneously, but not together. The next iteration of this – which I think we’ll see in 2025 – is a fusion of these two into a single, unified experience, where the virtual complements and augments the in-person, and vice-versa.
At some of the events I attended this past year, there were glimpses of this on display – ShopTalk (for instance) has virtual networking that begins well before the event, along with real-time collaboration + messaging tools. Other events have content libraries, offering additional information not found in the actual presentation.
I think we’re going to see more of this, if for no other reason than pure economics: event organizers know there is staggering value in building an ongoing community around their events; the challenge is getting the actual attendees to care about the event app after the event ends.
The natural solution is to create + share unique, novel + relevant content to your audience not just at, but around your event – driving them to the app and then leveraging that activity to build an actual community, crowd-source programming and attract new attendees.
Theme #7: Marketing Measurement Becomes A Thing Again
24. Attribution Gives Way to Incrementality
For much of my career, marketing has been trending toward a “conversion-centric” measurement model – everything we measure is relative to the end goal (a lead, a sale, etc.).
But, between the changes to analytics (I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys GA4, save for Brie Anderson), privacy restrictions, increasingly fragmented user behavior and the rise of walled gardens, it’s near-impossible to make heads or tails of what’s actually working.
To that end, attribution has been on its last legs for a while now – and I hope 2025 is the year that puts it out of its misery. The harsh, simple truth is this: attribution was always an impossible problem (albeit one that we should try to solve) that was, until recently, economically preferable to true marketing mix modeling.
Unfortunately for attribution platforms, LLMs + AI have rendered the economic argument moot. Organizations can build a wildly capable MMM for the same price that it would cost to get TW or Northbeam – and get actual data on what’s driving incremental lift, not just attributed sales. Happy CFO, Happy CMO.
25. Klout Makes A Comeback
For those of you that remember, Klout was a website that attempted to compute the influence of various individuals, using public data and proprietary algorithms.
While I don’t expect Klout (per se) to come back, I do think brands are hungry for trust metrics that go beyond traditional “brand health” metrics and better quantify credibility, trust, influence and authority in specific verticals/industries/markets.
This goes hand-in-hand with my belief that more organizations will invest in influencer development, spend more time (and more capital) on content creation, and get back to going direct, with founders/executives playing a prominent role in company communications (including ads). The only way this happens – and the only way this makes sense – is if there are corresponding tools/tactics that validate this approach. That’s what Klout attempted to do, and it’s exactly what I think we’re going to see emerge in 2025.
That’s all for this week – and that’s all for 2024. See you in 2025!
Cheers,
Sam
