2025 is going to be a pivotal year in brand, media, and digital marketing. Here are some our CEO’s unhinged predictions and thoughts!
2025 Predictions in Brand, Media and Digital Marketing.
🔍 Knowledge consumption change: Search
All the AI assistants, Grok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others, have now search capabilities, and they are a far better experience doing knowledge searches and research. It won’t replace “traditional“ Search such as Google Search because when you need to find a business, services near you, a restaurant, and others, Google Search is still and will continue to be more relevant because it allows a searcher to explore, which is the opposite experience of AI Assistants. Products like Google Maps will increase their importance for now for the same reasons. As AI products progress and Google Search gets siloed into a niche, don’t expect the end of Google or Google Search relevancy to drop. On the opposite. The best way to understand this is to look at LinkedIn and its advertising costs. A niche platform is relevant and… more costly. The only remaining question is what happens to product searches and product listings. I also think that for now, they will still be very relevant and a space that I see Google clearly investing in for the same principle: exploring. Think of Pinterest.
👀 Decline in visibility: Branding
With changes in digital marketing channels such as the above, the rise of AI assistants, and more, your brand is going to lose unprecedented visibility. Your e-commerce in 2025 will be more at risk than ever before if you don’t invest in brand. Not saying you should go on billboards or TV, which will definitely become further relevant, but you should really consider investing early in brand building with top-of-funnel strategies. Or even sonic branding, and many other branding opportunities.
💬 Text & voice, visuals: Video & Offline Media
The world is moving quickly into human-like natural interactions due to AI: text, voice. This will continue, but there is a missing piece: visuals. To be recognised and top-of-mind, brands will need to invest further into video formats, video content, and offline media. These will start to dominate and should be a key focus.
📺 Connected TV
Put it simply, and calling it what it really is, video advertising, connected TV enables today’s brands with way better targeting capabilities than, say, Meta. Meta is and was so scrutinised over the decades that it is now a lacking platform. A rising trend YoY, video advertising will further be fuelled by consumers jumping into lower-tier subscription plans from Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and more. Netflix’s 4K no-ads tier is currently at £19/mo as they force prices up to move viewers with ad-supported subscriptions as these are more profitable through advertising.
💼 Bonus: workforce ripped apart, focus on human creativity and ingenuity.
No, you won’t lose your job. The transition will take years, but I don’t dare estimate. There is a rat race in AI. OpenAI, during their 12 days of Christmas product releases, showed us ChatGPT o3, which is statistically far better at tasks such as writing code (take the word of devs panicking on Reddit threads), solving math’s hardest problems, medical diagnosis, content writing, and the list goes on. Google’s Sundar said 25% of all companies’ code is already written by AI… early 2024. This is 1 year after code assistants (copilots) became wildly available. Imagine a year later and into next year with exponential growth of these platforms. What will not replace is human creativity and ingenuity. This will take longer. You won’t lose your job, but your New Year resolution should be figuring out what to do with your career in 5-10 years’ time and how to best position yourself for the future.
Written by Ricardo Seixas.
