Introduction to Paid Media

It is widely believed that 2025 will mark a systemic shift not only in paid media consumption but it will also see wider adoption of emerging technologies after their initial hype. As with past recessions, 2023 has ushered in a renewed focus on efficiency. From automation and generative AI to data privacy and compliance to attribution and performance measurement – there is suddenly so much more to navigate. Paid media plays a critical role in the effectiveness of yet-to-be-built narratives about impactful topic clusters on the web. And helping individuals think through all of these various topics and their relationships with one another will combine art and science in powerful ways over the balance of the decade. Be it companies that need help with their long-term focus to produce relevant impact or companies that want a drawbridge up to avoid other companies from investing in their product categories while demand is muted, we aim to help clients through our multi-practice approach. So many of these things are interconnected. Paid media will continue to evolve rapidly over the coming years and 2025 is expected to be the inflection point where it finally sees accelerated convergence with other topics outside of its original domains.

Current State of Paid Media

The Future Marketing Survey quantifies brand interest and establishes budget allocations of agency leaders. Conducted in April 2023, a sample of national brand leaders with company size, industry vertical, and “percent of total budget spent” calculations similar to advertising expenditures were surveyed. The research presented was found to be statistically valid and reliable with a 95% confidence level with an acceptable margin of error. The 10 probed brand categories and all slides are contained in the download.

The state of paid media in 2025 is ever-changing and offers an overwhelming landscape. Future marketing budgets predict a shift from Search and Mobile to the issues of Privacy & Compliance, Selecting the Right Metric(s), Evolving Media Strategies, Ecommerce Website Growth and Gaps, Video Importance, AI Content Creation, Gaining Consumer Trust, Attribution Model Limitations, and the most concerning, New Content Regulations. Suppliers can lessen adoption barriers by providing educational marketing about their solutions, and objectives/strategies that are in line with the marketer’s goals. It’s necessary to engage in simulated test-and-learn ad experiences, and sensible sequential, adaptive, and non-disruptive user journeys, account-based marketing, and ultimately, relevant recommendations. Supported by brand offerings, capable measurement strategies that inform and guide consumers along their journey will lead to closing the sale, completing reactivation and retention objectives, and gaining brand equity.

Emerging Technologies in Paid Media

What is Paid Media? Paid media refers to paid advertising efforts, such as pay-per-click ads, display ads, social media ads, sponsored content, paid partnerships with influencers, and more. These paid efforts are combined into a “media mix” with organic efforts to contribute to a brand’s overall strategy. Companies pay to promote their products and services to increase awareness and sales. Content marketing is integrated with paid media on online channels and offline channels, such as print advertising, to create a seamless experience for consumers. Often related to inbound marketing, paid media strategies are carefully targeted based on audience preferences, interests, demographics, and more to gain visibility, attract attention, and educate audiences.

Current State of Paid Media

Before diving into what paid media will look like in the future, it’s helpful to have a foundation of what it looks like today. The following overview examines the current state of paid media. Paid media is essential to any well-rounded digital marketing strategy. A significant percentage of marketers agree that paid ads are important for their overall marketing strategy and believe paid media will become even more important. Paid media is also responsible for the increases in brand awareness and visibility and lead generation, and increases in sales and ROI that are the most important goals of digital marketing. Digital advertising spending increased significantly in recent years, and forecasts suggest that this growth will continue, reaching substantial figures in the coming years. With this increased spending, marketers are focusing on creating authentic, creative ad experiences.

Emerging Technologies in Paid Media

From artificial intelligence to augmented reality, paid media channels and advertising methods are changing. Budgets are also expanding and influencer marketing is shifting. These changes help build customer loyalty and increase visibility. But marketers must adapt quickly and keep up with the latest developments in the industry.

Considering this rapid pace of marketing industry change, creating future predictions for paid media is essential. Digital advertising continues to grow, serving as a source of revenue for multiple platforms and a method for brands of all shapes and sizes to reach their audiences. By anticipating what the future will look like, marketers can better prepare themselves and their companies for upcoming innovations and be one step ahead of the competition.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are expected to play an increasingly prominent role in shaping paid media strategies. Already a key proponent of enhancing audience targeting and segmentation, the combination of AI and automation harnesses the power of algorithm-driven optimization of advertisement implementation for optimal results. Predictive analytics algorithms are capable of analyzing past user behavior, market trends and other data sets to automate audience and creative segmentation, greatly enhancing user targeting. The ongoing deployment of algorithm-driven media execution will continue to reshape the paid media world by allowing advertisers to optimize their results in real-time by continuously learning and updating strategies and identifying trends that humans are incapable of.

At the heart of this engine is the advent of foundational machine learning models for creative optimization, and the generative AI revolution in particular. As generative AI tools grow increasingly powerful and ubiquitous, advertisers can automate the execution of segmented campaigns at a scale and speed that was previously unimaginable. From generating ad copy to creating visuals to deploying ads in a hyper-personalized and segmented manner, generative AI tools will soon dominate the horizon of optimization opportunities. Already, tools are assisting advertisers and marketers with speedy generation of ad creatives.

Augmented Reality Advertising

Augmented reality (AR) has already made its mark in the marketing landscape with viral campaigns that use filters and lens effects on social media and ads that blend the real world with digital elements appearing on mobile devices. By 2025, these experiences are bound to become even richer, making AR an essential part of the advertising playbook. The projected revenue for AR in advertising is six times what it is in 2022.

Paid media’s role is to raise awareness and reach the right audience at scale. As AR opens up exciting new creative possibilities, it will become an important tool for current best practices like media mix modeling, brand lift measurement, and closed-loop measurement, enabling brands to understand how these experiences fit into the broader customer journey. Brands are already trying AR ads and gamified experiences with measurable features, allowing them to identify new audiences and drive conversions. However, the creative ad formats currently available on AR platforms are pretty limited, usually consisting of simple filters and lenses. Major brands are investing in AR advertising, collaborating with content creators to jump-start campaigns.

AR advertising is hitting the mainstream. Some platforms have long allowed brands to pay for their own branded AR content and will now be rolling out tools to allow users to create their own. Other platforms have added branded AR features but are working towards opening their AR offerings to the masses. In 2025, we can expect AR advertising to grow even further, making it a staple for many brands.

Shifts in Consumer Behavior

Additionally, consumer behavior is shifting away from traditional one-way marketing narratives and towards active participation in brand stories. Audiences want to be involved in shaping the narratives of brands they love. So it’s timely for brands to embrace User-Generated Content strategies. User-Generated Content is created by real consumers or users of a brand for the purpose of commentary and sharing. Unlike paid and sponsored advertising content produced by the brands themselves, User-Generated Content can help foster more authentic connections with their customers. In fact, due to the perceived authenticity of User-Generated Content, brands can improve their marketing ROI by 5–8 times when they integrate User-Generated Content into their paid media advertising strategies. And this trend will likely grow in the near future as more consumers actively create and share stories about their favorite brands and products.

The emerging trends in personalized advertising reflect the growing desire for interconnectedness. With ever-increasing anxiety and disconnection plaguing many modern consumers, advertising as a form of communication and storytelling can play a role in inspiring hope and positivity. Brands that build positive, interconnected narratives about consumers’ day-to-day lives in advertising will also drive consumers’ decision-making towards their product, especially if they consider those brands as addressing common social issues about self-identity and self-discovery. Thus, personalized ads that manage to evoke positive emotions are likely to encourage more purchases in both the short- and long-term. As such, more brands may start collaborating with consumers to create personalized narratives as a shared effort towards positivity and disconnectedness in an increasingly disconnected world.

Personalization and Targeting

Paid media – and the digital advertising space more broadly – has been elevating the aspect of personalization in digital ad experiences for some time, and experts predict that this trend is only going to escalate. Personalization has created so much value for customers and companies that it’s hard to overstate its importance. Compared to more general digital ad campaigns, personalized ad campaigns have achieved five to eight times the ROI on ad spend and have driven 10 to 30 percent more sales of targeted products.

The expectation from consumers today is that brands understand them, and personalization has been shown to vastly improve user experience and, in turn, brand loyalty. Digital advertising is one of the most effective ways to personalize customer experiences online, but in order to effectively personalize ad experiences at scale, marketers need to leverage advanced targeting capabilities through paid media formats offered on various advertising platforms. Because paid media allows marketers to choose who sees the ads when and where, it’s easier to create a more relevant advertising experience that resonates with consumers and leads to conversions or e-commerce purchases.

A significant percentage of consumers have requested that brands publish more engaging or relevant content, and many have shown that personalized content increases their purchase intent. Using customer data to inform marketing efforts can help marketers create that relevance through targeting. Both first- and third-party audiences can be used for personalization and targeting these users in paid media campaigns. First-party audiences can be provided by marketers themselves through first-party data sources.

Mobile-First Consumption

Mobile Devices are becoming and will continue to become the dominant medium for social media consumption. Limiting ourselves to Instagram, it is estimated that mobile devices account for around 91% of Instagram’s ad impressions and 83% of revenue. These percentages are only going to get bigger and advertisers will need to make sure they’re taking the small screen into account. Mobile content consumption is growing at a rapid pace and is likely to get a lot bigger in the years to come, and marketers should be shifting their strategy toward creating mobile-first content through mobile-first platforms. The style of content that performs the best on these platforms relies heavily on gesture-driven experiences such as swiping and tapping. Right now, there’s a very low cost to entry for marketers looking to capture the attention of their audience on these newer platforms. There’s also a big opportunity when it comes to reallocating money from one platform to another, as there are going to be a lot of advertisers who refuse to spend ad dollars on certain platforms.

Social Media Advertising Trends

Social media advertising has become an important tool for marketers due to the growth of social media platforms in popularity and use. In recent years, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat have vastly increased businesses’ budgets. Marketers see large return on investments and resources are shifting from traditional advertising methods into digital. It is forecasted that a significant amount will be spent on paid social in 2025. There are a few future social media advertising trends to watch out for in the upcoming years.

The first trend to watch is the continued growth of video content. Short video content is already extremely popular on social media platforms. Video remains the most popular type of content to be shared on social media, with a large percentage of people stating they have shared a video in the last 30 days. With the growth of TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, short-form video is becoming more and more popular. Marketers can experiment with short, impactful ads on these platforms to create interest for a larger video. TikTok ads have shown great potential as they have an engagement rate of 17%, therefore they are able to reach a large audience. The second trend to look out for is the change in influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a form of social media advertising where businesses partner with popular content creators to promote their products and services. Influencers are typically paid to promote the business’s services through their social media pages. Because of the pandemic, many people began spending time on these platforms, which increased their popularity. Industries such as fashion, sports, and lifestyle began heavily investing in influencer marketing. By 2023, it was expected that the influencer marketing industry would be worth over a significant amount.

Influencer Marketing Evolution

While influencer marketing is hardly a new practice, 2025 may bring it the recognition it deserves. The latest reports show marketers are expected to spend up to $6.16 billion on influencer marketing this year alone, a staggering increase compared to $1.7 billion in spending in 2016. For some years now, both the potential of influencer marketing and the need for brands to run influencer campaigns in a more sustainable, honorable manner are being recognized. The campaigns that look to make a quick buck for a brand and humiliate an influencer for the sole purpose of brand exposure have become fewer and further between. The influencers who thrive differ from other social media users and content creators in that they have lived and survived the highs and lows of their industry niche. They are experts at building connections and providing value to their followers. They tend to act as gatekeepers to those territories. Brands that work with these key opinion leaders can leverage their audiences and trust to co-promote their products or services. In return, influencers appreciate working with a brand that values their expertise beyond providing a working product, plus paying for the promotion of a branded campaign. The influencer has built a relationship with their audience, a connection that’s often trusted more than family and friends. Changing the way brand collaborations work won’t result in every social media post becoming an advertisement. Instead, they become a new type of strategic partnership, curated by professionals and implemented with both audiences in mind.

Short-Form Video Content

Brands eager to connect with consumers will need to pay close attention to the ways in which digital platforms are addressing the younger generations. Advertising through short-form video will soon be the most potent paid media strategy available, especially for customer generations Z and alpha. These audiences are more than 260 million strong in the United States and are already influencing, or will soon influence, all aspects of media consumption, including movies, TV, video games, and content on social platforms. Today’s entertainment landscape is rich, and the immersive experiences offered by gaming and streaming platforms cannot be ignored. Advertising, however, needs to break the mold and do more than simply interrupt ongoing narratives.

The younger generations prefer video that is authentic, unscripted, humorous, and relatable. In other words, video that is less polished and filtered than traditional ads. They want to see new products in action and learn more about the lifestyles of the brands they choose to support. The demand for brand transparency will push more brands to kick off innovative partnerships, support causes, and take social responsibility for their actions. User-generated content is here to stay. A real focus on social issues in both organic and paid content development will be crucial for brands. One in four said that if a brand they love supports a social cause or issue, they are more likely to buy from them at that time or in the future. And over half want brands to do a better job of addressing social issues in content.

Search Engine Marketing Innovations

Regardless of the rise of different digital entertainment formats, search engine advertising is still a major player in the online advertising ecosystem. It is estimated that about half of the company budgets for digital advertising go for it. So no matter what, it is necessary to continue to adapt and improve the formats available. Some of the advancements to look forward to in the next few years are in the fields of voice search, visual search, programmatic advertising, machine-learning-driven bidding models, privacy, and data, among others.

Consumers increasingly seek a frictionless user experience across all touchpoints. The voice search market keeps growing based on this premise, with 2025 reported as the target year for the expected 4.6 billion digital voice assistants in operation around the world. Voice search optimization must be on the roadmap because of these figures and because the tendency for consumers to speak their queries out loud rather than type them in is creating a real shift in user behavior. Marketers will probably have to come up with new strategies to adapt their content for the voice.

Visual searches are expected to go through similar developments, based on the increase in innovative visual search capabilities. As these gain traction, it could become common practice to search using pictures in addition to traditional search engines, thus leading to general updates across the board in available capabilities.

Voice Search Optimization

Voice search is no longer just a futuristic concept; it is here, now, and growing. If your company isn’t actively strategizing for voice search to help customers find your products and services, you need to rethink your current marketing strategy.

A significant portion of the online global population is using voice search on mobile. It is an easy way for users to get information without even touching their devices. Smart speakers are predicted to be in more than 50% of households by 2022. More customers are turning to voice search for simple searches like, “What is the weather today?” and “What is the best pizza place near me?” Yet all of these small, simple, local searches can lead to a big opportunity for marketers to attract new customers.

As your potential customers are searching for information, they are often looking for things that can be found on a company’s website, such as product feature comparisons, location and company hours, employee contact information, or blog posts written to provide expert answers to specific questions. This makes SEO for voice search difficult: How can you guarantee your company will be featured in the voice search answer? There are many types of content that can be extracted in a voice search result. To increase your chances of being chosen for a voice search reply, make sure you are implementing good SEO across your whole website.

Visual Search Capabilities

Visual search is a technology that allows users to search for information using images or videos instead of text-based queries. It is designed to facilitate the user’s search for more specific or complex objects or topics, from specific-looking products to precise architectural styles to certain animals or plants. Traditional text-based search engines can have difficulty disambiguating certain topics based solely on text, where the same word or phrase can represent vastly different topics. Visual search utilizes the visual characteristics of images — such as color, shape, and layout — to provide accurate recommendations. This allows users to find products more efficiently and quickly by using photo or video triggers, such as when video creators or celebrities wear or use certain products.

One of the most effective applications of visual search to date is a tool that allows users to search for products visually using their smartphone cameras to take photos or videos of products. If the product is available online, additional links and descriptions of the product, the exact name of the product, other versions of the product, and related products are provided. In the most recent developments, this tool has been made available for the back cameras of devices, allowing additional capabilities for school children or other individuals using webcams to look for information on their surrounding environments, and thus visually search for particular objects or topics such as certain plants or animals. If product searches using this tool can be integrated with retail and e-commerce communicated capabilities in the future, visual search would impact many industries.

Programmatic Advertising Developments

Programmatic advertising is one of the digital marketing trends that has continuously grown. In recent years, it has matured and moved beyond display ads to also include video, digital out-of-home, and other channels. We expect to see streamlined advertising buying and execution as more channels adopt standardized methods. Thus, the predictions of significant advertising growth in 2025 means high demand for programmatic advertising.

Real-time bidding has existed for a long time, but the automation is still relatively nascent. Programmatic guarantees, where an advertiser buys specific media from a publisher at a set price but lets the publisher decide where to place it, has existed but in limited numbers. More creative solutions to automate planning, guarantees, and execution, and automating the reporting steps, are needed. The challenge is going to be figuring out ways to overcome concerns about brand safety and fraud.

The regulatory climate is also affecting programmatic advertising. In the short term, privacy updates have derailed mobile tracking, leading to an uptick in cost. Advertisers should watch the indicators for the longer-term effects of tracking regulation changes. Compliance concerns make it more urgent for marketers and vendors to address the cookie alternative and to have an actual cookie alternative that meets needs — and to have more awareness of privacy concerns. Direct relationships with publisher partners will increase in importance as vendors and marketers try to adapt to the changing landscape.

Real-Time Bidding Enhancements

In 2025, there will be more enhancements to RDP, or Real-Time Bidding, which is a complex and ever-evolving method of purchasing digital media. Automated advertising changes have made it possible to buy almost any kind of advertising. This innovation has driven ad prices down and made the process easy while also allowing marketers to target very niche groups. In some areas, the process is so automated that it is no longer in the hands of marketers but instead set up by algorithms to buy the best ads at the lowest prices during every micro-second of the buying cycle, which can in some fringes be every second of the day. This is what machine learning does. What is important to remember is that for all its ability to make decisions without people, marketing is still marketing. These algorithms need humans to set up an overall plan and goal. In addition, in 2025, there will be continued improvements of the algorithms that help marketers make decisions about how much and when to invest. Pricing of the ad as well as profitability of the investment decisions will be enhanced and made much more accurate. The need for control, target-setting and accountability is paramount in business, and the enhancements with RDB will remain within a marketing framework, not the reverse. Making Hi-Lo pricing of these ads will become mainstream, allowing marketers to capture and convert prospects during the lower times of their purchase cycles. Making predictions about customers as well as ads will become more embedded into the technology of RDB but the final decisions will continue to rest with marketers.

Data Privacy and Compliance

With the increased use of the internet and related tools, the range of personal data available for ad targeting has not only grown, but advertisers are working harder than ever to gather as much info as possible for the purpose of targeting specific customer groups. As with many such things, the more advanced tools become, the more important it is to ensure that they are used ethically. A significant subsection of consumers regard the use of personal data by brands to be unethical, and some of the most prominent advertising innovations of the past few years have suddenly been outlawed by governing bodies. The most famous of these instances is legislation mandating transparency and consent from users in exchange for targeted advertising. Failure to comply with regulations can result in massive fines, as many major companies have discovered.

In recent years, global regulatory and legislative developments concerning consumer privacy have transformed the digital landscape. A scarcity of consumer data has placed new limits on brands’ targeting capabilities, making it tougher to ensure that ads reach the right audiences. The deprecation of third-party cookies on browsers has posed a significant challenge for paid media advertisers, as cookies provided the principal means of targeted online advertising. The changes have affected how advertisers allocate their budgets across channels, what attribution models they rely on, and how they measure campaign performance—especially for campaigns that lead to purchases on brand sites. As regulations continue to change, marketers must be flexible and frequently optimize campaigns based on the latest compliance guidelines. Also, with the ever-growing number of digital privacy laws on a state and federal level, staying ahead of compliance is no longer just a matter of avoiding fines.

Content Marketing Integration

Paid media is not an isolated communication channel, and brand marketers know this. This understanding of content marketing, however, goes one step further: with consumers being more demanding than ever in terms of quality, creativity and consistency, we’d say it’s inevitable for both branches to integrate. Consumers want more than basic information, no matter where they spend their time and what type of content they’re consuming. Companies must dive into storytelling, or, to put it in a more casual way, they should treat consumers like a good friend would: with great, fun, interesting and relevant content — whether the purpose is to inform, entertain or sell something.

The synergy between paid media and content marketing translates into native advertising as well as partnerships with content creators, which should be as authentic as possible and provoke either an emotional response or provide useful content for a certain audience. Why? Because this is what consumers crave for. This is the type of content that sticks and, in the case of cleverly placed branded content, helps consumers to connect with a brand while being entertained or learning something new.

Native Advertising Strategies

Native advertising has become a vital part of many brands’ paid media spending recently. Paid search and social media ads are important for customer acquisition, and now growing competition is coming back from dedicated content that not only attracts but builds an audience over time. Going into 2025 brands will pay attention to the strategies and types of content to make the most of native.

Generate content and support in other formats — While links to articles and other landing pages are important, you can also promote branded podcasts or videos in your native advertising placements. These different content formats can help you create more impactful campaigns and intersect with the interests of your target audience. Publishing same or similar content on your site is a good idea too, as it helps build topical authority with search engines.

Highlight UGC — Using UGC or user-generated content in other formats is another great strategy to make your native ads feel more authentic. Since these ads show up in users’ feeds, having them feel like they came from real users instead of brands helps build trust. You can also use UGC in your other paid advertising strategies, like production and presentation of your social media ads, and connect with formats.

User-Generated Content

A trend that is becoming increasingly more accessible to businesses of all sizes is user-generated content. The resurgence of this trend is primarily because Gen Z prefers it, and they will be in charge of most purchasing decisions by 2025. People are growing fatigued by shiny advertisement tropes—it’s time for brands to be real and engage with consumers honestly. UGC shows authenticity, something people crave in 2025.

UGC can take the form of images or videos showcased on a brand’s site or the brand’s social media platforms. The content can also be repurposed for paid media, such as ads. Companies can make asking for user-generated content a part of their customer experience. A proportion of customers already post reviews when they receive their order. Brands can encourage customers to share their other experiences too, perhaps following a certain template, or using fonts and colors associated with the brand. The company can spot someone on social media who has posted something memorable, or funny, and ask if they’d share it with the brand officially giving the brand permission to share it. This method works incredibly well for smaller brands who are still in the heavy build-up phase, when brand awareness is the goal.

The UGC can be reposted onto the company’s or creators’ story (or both), and by doing this, they’re giving a shoutout to the creator, but also helping their personal brand, an essential aspect of do-it-yourself content. Effectively, they’re creating a virtual friendship with their followers, showing that nothing is more important than nurturing their bond. If a creator is sharing UGC, it means they have loyal fans who are doing the work for them—why wouldn’t they want to nurture that relationship as well?

Measurement and Analytics

Measurement and analytics represent challenging but necessary pieces of the final puzzle. With the advent of various channels and technologies with differing functionalities and goals, the ability to track the success of each campaign or channel has become increasingly difficult. Marketers continue to rely on cookie-based tracking and last-click attribution models to report results from tier 1 paid channels, despite recent challenges and impending changes. But campaign measurement has been a consistent bone of contention: marketing teams have grown frustrated because they see only a small slice of results, but company executives expect a full report.

The result is constant experimentation: last-click attribution models versus multi-channel versus mixed media versus whatever alternative you find – on both sides. How we measure and analyze marketing and advertising results will surely undergo another transformation soon. It can’t happen fast enough. Marketers rely on increasingly complex data modeling with huge dimensions in order to arrive at results they can show observers. And while that makes for good marketing ops, it can also raise more questions than it answers. For a multitude of reasons – first-party data strategy limitations; over-reliance on a few key channel, audience, and media partners; ad spend arbitrage; measurement, attribution, and reporting limitations – omnichannel spend modeling is getting more and more complex. Among other reasons, that will only increase the study of how to allocate spend both during annual planning and in a rolling quarterly basis. Increasingly complex dimension-based tools will prove increasingly difficult to manage – and forecast from.

Attribution Models

Attribution models are the rules a business chooses to determine the conversion path credit for every conversion, which enables marketers to analyze that data and make informed decisions about future marketing investments. In its most basic form, attribution gives marketers insight into how many conversions were driven by paid media efforts, whether it was PPC, display, social, or other initiatives, and how much revenue resulted from that investment. But there are multiple factors that influence attribution results – what attribution model a business uses, what time lag the model uses to give credit for a conversion, and whether the report is on last-click or last-date/interaction data.

Marketing attribution, however, is more tedious than most marketing experts would like to admit. These models are not simple to set up. It’s nearly impossible to set up everything correctly — for example, pulling in accurate sales data, matching sales with the proper marketing path, making sure that the data is clean, then matching the data to the attribution model. And every business is unique. Everything from the typical life cycles of customers, to the use of offline marketing and variable commission rates make every business a special case. In addition to challenges like missing data, multi-device tracking, cross-channel measurement, and attribution windowing, many marketers still find mobile attribution incompletely answered by many of the available solutions. All of these challenges make getting correct attribution both time-consuming to set up, and with severe consequences when done incorrectly.

Performance Metrics

Understanding what keywords are most relevant for your audience is only half the journey. Knowing how these various keywords convert is critical to a successful campaign. Display ads, for instance, have the lowest conversion rates of any type of media but they aren’t really built for conversion. They are designed to create brand awareness and act as a support mechanism for campaigns that seek only to drive action.

There is little doubt that leads generated through paid search will be the most qualified leads, most likely to convert and are the longest in the funnel. But the challenge lies in content. As the struggle against disinformation continues, legitimate news sites will have their content supported, which, unfortunately for advertisers, are likely also to have higher cost per clicks than less trustworthy sites. Investing in display ads that can retarget those who have visited your landing pages and are qualifying for product suitability is still a sound practice. These purchasers or lookalikes are an easy way to drive down conversion costs, supporting ad buy.

Challenges and Risks in Paid Media

As traditional ads become increasingly difficult to ignore or outright block, marketers are faced with the challenge of standing out in a crowded and hyper-saturated environment. It’s been two decades since the digital ad boom began, and we are now in a post-ad era of sorts. Despite the continued growth of total ad revenue, much of that growth is coming from paid social media, which is now really just a share of voice in a very big pool.

And people are aware of it as they scroll. Consumers are the most informal of informal influencers, swiping and posting about their own experiences on social. And they are demanding authenticity, conversation, and connection and signaling their ad fatigue louder and louder. 2025 is shaping up to be a year that could finally be disruptive to the digital marketing industry as we know it. Five years into society’s breakneck-speed evolution into great digital dependence, younger generations of consumers are now demanding new experiences and a better balance between the online and offline worlds. Marketplaces are helping digital marketers pivot back to the basics of demand generation or so-called “pull” marketing.

When ads disrupt their experience, brands risk losing customers for life. Pioneering brands are beginning to recognize the win-win and partner with user-generated content to create authentic ads that resonate with their audience. In 2025, giving customers what they want (or, rather, no longer want) will not only be necessary for ad relevance — it might be necessary for brand relevance. With such movements as public calls to self-regulation and the rise of privacy protection tools, marketers will be faced with new challenges in even a seemingly perfect data ecosystem.

Ad Fatigue and Banner Blindness

Digital advertising has been around for decades. The fact that so many ads are constantly competing for our attention in every single browser tab, app, sidebar, and social feed explains why—when there’s little experience to compare this with—we often tire of them so quickly. Ad fatigue is when a user sees the same advertisement too many times. Because this process is so rapid in today’s online world, it can happen in a matter of days or weeks, even if the ad itself changes every few days. Then there’s banner blindness, which is an actual behavioral phenomenon where a user becomes exceptionally skilled at ignoring advertisements altogether, and only stares at the portions of the screen they know have always been free of ad placements. For advertisers, this means people will be drawn into a campaign and suddenly “switch off” from it, but both of these things are difficult to track for the advertiser. It’s certainly a problem if your advertising is not bringing you visibility and conversions.

For marketers, ad fatigue and banner blindness could have dire consequences, particularly in longer-term campaigns, where specific and targeted messaging is the focus intended to lead to small incremental conversions that build into a greater impact. In these situations, it’s hard to provide variety without straying from the tone of voice, visual identity, or the overarching theme/story of the campaign. In 2025, we expect the effects of global economic conditions and the quick-access habits of future social users to compound these issues and create an even more pronounced impact on consumer interaction with advertising online.

Regulatory Changes

As we dive deeper into the digital age, the conversation surrounding data privacy has quickly moved to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Laws have already put restrictions in place on how advertisers can utilize information, especially when it comes to targeting children. These regulations are only expected to grow stricter in the coming years to protect consumers from manipulation, discrimination, and breaches of privacy. Lawmakers still have much work to do in curbing Big Tech’s monopoly power, especially when it comes to data privacy legislation. Simply put, what we are seeing today is an attempt to protect consumers from the harms associated with Big Tech’s monopolistic practices.

As increasing numbers of consumers awaken to the dangers of unregulated collection of vast amounts of personal information, they are demanding accountability from Big Tech companies. Responding to this need, lawmakers are pushing for laws aimed at forcing these companies to be more transparent about what information is collected, how that information is used, and how privacy concerns are typically dismissed as “harms.” These laws also seek to protect consumers from feeling that surveillance will be used against them as they navigate various advertising platforms – a concern stemming from every system that has relied upon individual user-based data. Finally, the ultimate goal is that users will feel free to access advertising platforms without being inundated with targeted advertising content that invariably relies upon a chilling collection of data.

Future Predictions for Paid Media

Continuing our deep dive into the future of paid media, our research has revealed some important predictions. These include a greater focus on sustainability in advertising, the use of blockchain to protect users from fraudulent ad activity, and a focus on user-generated content. There also seems to be a general sense that both some expert opinions and successful case studies can help influence brands and organizations when changing their media and marketing strategies. Sustainability in Advertising The first is the advertising industry has to embrace sustainability, not only in terms of budget but also resources. Many people are experiencing ad fatigue, or banner blindness, so it is vital for brands to convey messages that are relevant and resonate with consumers. There are a number of advertising channels that can potentially convey a brand’s sustainability philosophy, tell compelling stories, and drive results. Not using all of a brand’s marketing dollars on paid media alone is a good place to start. Using a combination of digital ads, programmatic and connected TV ads, as well as content marketing and organic social media can foster a message that is engaging. The Role of Blockchain Blockchain has been a hot topic for a few years now. In terms of paid media, blockchain can help build transparency around advertising. Blockchain technology can potentially help users detect and block ad fraud or any fraudulent physical and virtual ad activity while ensuring that brands and organizations get accurate metrics on ad delivery and consumers. For brands that do decide to venture into the realm of paid media again, they must be mindful that the authenticity of users is protected and not compromised. It’s possible that more brands will choose to use user-generated content, as more paid media decisions are made, to keep consumers engaged and ensure authenticity.

Sustainability in Advertising

Sustainable advertising – delivering communications that have a positive impact on the environment and society, and ensuring that the production, delivery and impact of advertising is done in a way that is positive or net neutral – is becoming more important to every company and brand. Why? Because customers increasingly love brands that embody their social values, such as authenticity, honesty and environmentalism. Research has consistently shown that around two thirds of consumers indicate they are willing to pay more for products from socially responsible companies. Failing to be a responsible brand can damage reputations while the pressure from shareholders to prioritize purpose over profit is visibly growing. In 2022, an announcement was made to remove ads from climate change documentaries, but certain brands have proved that it is possible to produce entertaining ads that make a positive impact. Focusing on communications that actually help topics such as inclusion, climate change and data privacy can create heartfelt relationships with viewers, customers or audiences.

Moving towards sustainability means going beyond CSR compliance. Thankfully there are many tools out there to help companies with this shift. The existing projects could definitely help brands to assess their partnerships with media companies, in order to gain insight into the carbon emissions contributed by advertising campaigns and then provide advice on how to mitigate the impact with green alternatives. Sharing guidelines with partners such as media buyers, creative agencies and production companies during the creative process could also mitigate the footprint. Talking about “green” is one thing, but what will the creative actually look like?

The Role of Blockchain

Blockchain technology is often linked to cryptocurrency, but its decentralized ledger powers operations across multiple different sectors today. One of these areas is digital advertising, and more specifically, the validation of transparency and authenticity in the ad supply chain. Businesses can securely log digital transactions into the blockchain, which offers a tamper-proof record accessible to participating stakeholders at any time. In an industry plagued by fraudulent activities like ad scams and bot provisioning, the precise tracking of ad spend is invaluable. Blockchain implementation in digital advertising allows marketers to see what they are paying for and how that breaks down all the way down to the publisher. As 2025 approaches, a growing number of advertisers are working with blockchain experts to create a more transparent ad supply chain, while also establishing trust with their customers through the use of decentralized technology, such as for community-controlled brand activations.

Case Studies of Successful Campaigns

Paid media is an essential integral of marketing today as consumers require constant engagement from brands on many different channels. Social media influences much of consumer behavior, challenging many brands’ source of advertising. In this digital, consumer-driven world, how can you stay resonant? Paid media marketing solutions are built to get your brand noticed on the right platforms in front of the right people at the right time. You shouldn’t just take our word for it, check out how these brands have achieved their goals with paid media marketing.

A leading home goods manufacturer expanded their target market, increased conversions, and achieved a 20% increase in return on ad spend through dynamic catalog ads on social media. With catalog advertising, retailers can promote inventory in real-time at scale with the images that are already being used on e-commerce sites. Nearly half of all orders on the eCommerce site were generated through social, and lasting partnerships were created through targeted marketing. One of the leaders in search engine marketing perfected their product by carefully analyzing their different ads and campaigns and abandoning the ads and formats that were underperforming.

A major commercial brand partnered with a news aggregation site to pioneer branded keyword search advertising and received a significant return on their investment. They were able to precisely target in-market customers by using both positive and negative keywords within selected categories. By reaching a very specific audience on their desired key terms just after clickers had expressed their search interest, they achieved their desired brand-building outcome and gained preference over the competition. They continuously grew brand equity as word-of-mouth grew for more than a decade. Adding all these trends in consolidation will one day have you gaining measurable, time-bound attributes for the rest of your life.

Expert Opinions and Interviews

Bringing in perspectives from industry experts on the future of paid media is crucial to validating the predictions and creating a more well-rounded piece. We all have our opinions, but people out there executing, making predictions, and experiencing the results to back them up. While one source might not get credit on the title, including a credited quote and opinions will help elevate the authenticity and trust of the predictions.

Add expert opinions supporting and opposing the predictions. Even if you disagree or view something as a possible stretch, share it. Have conversations with contacts who are interested in your topic, and record their podcasts, videos, talks, or even quotes. It helped connect the writer with the topics.

“Please note that while it’s a good idea to add opinions of well-respected industry players, just adding their comments or opinions to the predictions won’t cut it. You need to structure this with explanation and background and present it in a unique way. Otherwise, your readers can find this information scattered across the internet, perhaps even easier.” What would be the point of creating a new version of something that already exists?

Conclusion

Paid media remains a crucial marketing strategy for brands. Digital and traditional advertising channels enhance brand awareness and engage customers and prospects. While paid media in 2023 is recognized by measurement systems as marginally effective and expensive, with many companies cutting back on spending to counteract the economic downturn, new technological innovations, changing customer expectations, and turbulent geopolitical situations make it more important than ever to understand the shifts in the future. To be successful in paid media in 2025, brands must deliver an exceptional user experience customers desire. This means making life easier for them. Gone are the days when brands force users to search for a solution to their problems. Native ad technologies and user-generated content make it easy for customers to engage. And when campaigns shift to emphasize mobile platforms, users can discover and purchase without delay. The decision has already been made for them. Success will depend on effective measurement systems that analyze and manage campaigns. In summary, the future of paid media promises to be very different. Technological sophistication and customer demand dictate changes to current approaches. By 2025, established practices will be combined or opted out of completely. What will remain and for how long are the questions. Paid media is coming of age. It will continue to be, for at least the near future, a critical component to corporate marketing strategies. The rapid pace of change, however, makes it essential for marketers to stay on top of current trends. The future is only weeks away. Be prepared.