The advertising industry is moving fast. Once a risky bet, digital advertising and marketing are now becoming a norm.
A recent report highlighted that digital ad spending is anticipated to surpass $600 billion in 2024. And the numbers are set to rise to $876 billion by 2026.
Future of Marketing and Advertising
With the ever-changing digital landscapes of social media and the internet, advertising and marketing companies must advance alongside. The rise of new platforms, changing regulations, and evolving user preferences, are compelling brands to experiment with their existing advertising experience. The sector is expected to witness new changes in the coming new year, but to what extent?
While it is still certain what changes will take place in the coming years, it is true that the future of the advertising industry is transitioning and starting to take a new shape.
As new innovations continue to emerge and consumer expectations evolve, agencies and brands are exploring ways to stay on top of the competition. Let's explore some of the most promising advertising and marketing trends to look forward to in 2025 and beyond.
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Future of Digital Advertising and Marketing: 2025 Predictions
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Due to Programmatic Advertising, Artificial Intelligence will Play a Significant Role
Programmatic advertising integrates artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically buy and sell ad space in real-time. This helps businesses to save vast amounts of their time and reduce the cost per lead. In 2023, more than 90% of display ads were transacted programmatically. And this trend is here to flourish in 2024 as well. While the increase in programmatic advertising slowed down in 2024, marketers will spend more on programmatic ads by the end of the year and in 2024.
The future of advertising will be AI-powered in 2024. It will employ the effectiveness of AI to promote operations with machine learning. This implies that brands will be able to create personalized ads for their consumers. Artificial intelligence (AI)will play a vital role in how brands reach out to their target audience and understand what consumers want and need. This will enable brands to identify the different preferences of their consumers for their products or services.
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Shorter Video Ads will Drive the Advertising Landscape
If there's one king in the digital space right now, it's video. Video is likely to continue to be the most prominent digital marketing trend in 2025. 93% of marketers believe that video helps conversions better than any other content marketing format. And the popularity of video content is showing zero signs of slowing down.
Another significant trend is that video ads are now getting shorter. More than 56% of video ads are now less than two minutes long. Marketers are now optimizing their video content for different platforms as users expect different lengths for their video content.
Video marketing will still be an integral part of content marketing strategy for businesses. The expected runtime of video content for each platform is as follows:
- Instagram - 30 seconds
- Twitter - 15 seconds or less
- Facebook - 1 minute
- YouTube - 10 minutes
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QR Codes to Make Shopping Easier
A QR or Quick Response code is the digital equivalent of a barcode. It offers a precise way to reach the targeted users on their devices. Today many smartphones also have a QR scanner in the camera that can activate a digital response when scanned. By integrating these QR codes, brands can build endless marketing possibilities. The codes can be used to direct user traffic to a website with a product information display. And the best part, creating a QR code is easy. Once the QR code is generated, businesses can place it on their website and even display it in their digital ads and campaigns.
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The Physical Retail Space Will Integrate Omnichannel Advertising
A strategy used to unify a brand's voice across multiple channels and touchpoints, omnichannel marketing is gaining new popularity among businesses. However, an omnichannel approach involves a display, CTV, video, audio, and digital out-of-home (DOOH).
The omnichannel advertising trend is not limited to just digital advertising, though. Omnichannel is set to enter the physical retail space as well. While 30% of the world's population shops online, people still crave an in-store shopping experience. And the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the urge for such experiences.
Conversely, 54% of consumers enjoy exploring in-store products and then buying them online. This is referred to as showrooming. This has led to 32% of digitally native brands declaring their plans to expand or establish their presence in the digital place, hereby offering their consumers pop-up experiences.
Venturing into physical retail will open up a new path of opportunities for businesses in today's realm of programmatic advertising. Due to this rising popularity, advertisers are integrating the use of geotargeting tools to serve ads to target their audience through dynamic digital signage screens.
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Augmented Reality (AR) will Evolve and become more Widespread
As we move closer to 2025, it is safe to state that advertising and marketing will continue to modify and adapt with the rest of the world. One significant way advertising is changing is by integrating augmented reality into its operations and campaigns. Augmented reality (AR) is already finding a special place in ads and marketing campaigns. However, it is anticipated to become even more widespread in 2024 and beyond. With augmented reality (AR), marketers will be able to design interactive experiences for their consumers. Augmented reality can assist them in showing off their products in a new and innovative manner, as well as making their ad campaigns more engaging.
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Advertisers will need to get accustomed to the Changing Data Regulations
With new data regulations being rolled out, data regulation compliance is being perceived as a huge challenge for brands in 2024 and beyond. Brands often rely on third-party data consent tools that are often not updated quickly enough. In 2025, brands need to brace themselves to be challenged and explore new ways to keep their customer data systems compliant under the shifting data regulation.
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The Advertising Industry Will Transition into the Metaverse
With the arrival of the metaverse and users showing their interest in this virtual space, users are transitioning the operations into the metaverse as well. 33% of people are interested in participating in the Metaverse, and it is expected to rise to 42% among Gen Z and Millennials. Taking these statistics into consideration, digital advertising is set to enter the metaverse. While users mostly use the metaverse to watch TV and films, play games, browse products, and connect for live events, it symbolizes a huge opportunity for advertisers and marketers.
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Final Thoughts - Future of Digital Marketing & Advertising
The digital advertising and marketing world has been in a constant state of noticeable flux in the last few years. Brands and advertisers have been grappling with the shift in consumer priorities as well as the rise of individual first-party solutions.
With the advertising landscape continuing to transition at a faster pace, companies are seeking strong and trustworthy strategies to meet their organizational goals and design impactful campaigns. Due to this reason, the next phase of advertising is likely to experience the prioritization of omnichannel campaigns, offering access to flexible testing and fulfilling the growing demands for cross-channel audience building.
Now brands are exploring new avenues to integrate a measurement-focused perspective into their campaigns when it comes to streamlining their advertising activities. While many solutions already exist, it is important to choose one that is more emerging. These approaches are necessary for businesses to stay competitive in this constantly changing market environment.
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