Top 5 Advertising Trends for 2025

Top 5 Advertising Trends for 2025

03 February 2025 |

AI

Despite global growth, advertising spend in Australia saw a decline throughout 2024. While the decline slowed towards the end of the calendar year, the prolonged impact of shrinking budgets and reduced marketing presence—coupled with the ongoing pressure to meet performance targets—will have strong implications for marketing in 2025. No wonder then that the continued influence of digital marketing and the push towards technological innovation for efficiency’s sake govern the trends for marketing in 2025.

Looking ahead, these factors are set to shape the landscape significantly. Here are the key developments to watch closely:

1. All encompassing integration of AI in advertising

The most pervasive innovation in marketing for 2025 continues to be artificial intelligence. In a review of the previous year, Kantar found growing positivity and excitement towards AI applications, specifically generative AI. No longer be dismissed as a passing trend; AI has shown its potential in a wide variety of marketing operations, from personalisation and creative production to enhancing investment efficiency and measurement, particularly through empowering predictive analytics.

As AI becomes more endemic in the industry, driven by its affordability, skills development and proliferation within consumer life, all players in the industry must be more aware, open, and adaptable to the opportunities it presents. Advertisers must navigate internal inertia and uncertainty by learning from the experiences of AI’s early adopters, who have found that it can expedite solutions where business objectives intersect with consumer problems, ultimately driving business growth.

2. Regulatory control and privacy concerns transform into first-party data opportunities

Despite Google scrapping its plan to remove third-party cookies from Chrome, stricter regulatory pressures globally have brought significant changes to key players in the Australian market over the recent years. This has created a widespread flow on impact across the industry, bringing to surface the need for advertisers to deeply consider and quickly develop their own data practices.

These first-party data strategies will become increasingly nuanced in 2025, to not only to align with consumer expectations for privacy and transparency, but also to re-establish personalisation and strategic activations, which have been rapidly changing within the industry. Advertisers can expect to be required to develop their own data collection policies, prioritising for security and transparency in how data is used.

Moreover, advertisers will need to ensure that their collection strategies provide value-add to the consumer to ensure the integrity and volume of date. Advertisers can expect consumers to have higher expectations regarding how their data is used in interactions with the advertiser. Meeting these expectations can foster loyalty, ultimately driving financial growth.

3. Personalisation will develop as an expectation

Unsurprisingly, with the convenience and opportunities afforded by AI, combined with the widening practice for consumers to accept value-exchange based data collection, expectations for what marketers will deliver in advertising will escalate in 2025.

Consumers’ growing ask of personalisation from this point on will extend beyond advertising capability of segmentation and targeted messaging, towards individualised experiences throughout the consumer lifecycle. This shift highlights where AI is expected to meet these rising expectations.

For instance, machine learning can develop real time optimisations to produce personalised recommendations for content, offers, products, and messaging vehicles based on its ability to significantly increase the scale and speed of testing and learning at an individualised basis.

It must be understood that in order to deliver the promises that machine learning and complex individualisation, data collection must first and foremost be addressed and completed immediately.

4. Growing need for authenticity and humanity in advertising

An interesting opportunity presenting itself in 2025 as a direct result of the hyper-acceleration of AI across all aspects of the industry is a need for authentic or human experiences. It is anticipated that along with all the benefits afforded by highly personalised, real-time communications, consumers will begin to long for authentic experiences and interactions.

Advertisers are poised to take advantage of this deeper need through its communications. While we can simply apply more familiar features through our AI applications, advertisers can further this influence through more effective use of long-term communications. For example, within social media, we can see the value of advertisers collaborating more deeply with consumers in their messaging, and partnering with individuals that can portray realistic experiences with a brand. Advertisers can also take advantage of employee advocacy programs to humanise the brand and satisfy consumers’ desire for transparency.

5. Developing skills for advertisers

In order to capitalise on technology and develop more consumer-facing practices, advertisers need to equip their teams with future-ready skill sets to bridge the gaps created by these industry developments. Across the emerging areas led by AI developments, needs for regulatory proficiency and data analysis, among other skills, will be a growing requirement for advertisers in 2025.

An internal culture of data centricity, partnering with agencies, and exploring training programs should be all in the roadmap for 2025 for advertisers. These steps will help ensure teams are equipped to navigate the evolving landscape and stay ahead of emerging trends.

Looking Ahead

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, embracing AI and data-driven strategies will be key to staying competitive. At ADMATIC, we are excited to see how these trends unfold in 2025. Get in touch with an ADMATICian today to learn how we can help you leverage these trends with tailored strategies and initiatives.