Digital marketing trends we’re watching in 2025

Well 2024 was a fun ride, right? About this time last year I predicted some digital marketing trends with a whole lot more uncertainty than usual, because it was pretty difficult to predict how emerging AI tools, and a shifting regulatory landscape would complicate our marketing ecosystem.

As I expected, 2024 was an incredibly volatile year in both Search and Paid Advertising. Well, the dust has started to settle, at least enough to see where we are headed, and I am ready to share the trends you should pay attention to for your 2025 marketing planning. So here we go!

Ok I know these posts are way too long to hold your full attention, so here is the summarized version of what you should pay attention to in 2025:

• Understand how AI is changing the way people find information online. Make sure your business is well positioned to adapt to those changes. Your 2025 digital marketing strategy needs to be agile and adaptable to emerging opportunities.
• By this time next year, content will be discovered and consumed in vastly different ways than 5 years ago. The rise of multimodal search, AI overviews, and universal assistants mean you must produce a diverse array of content (webpages, video, podcasts, images) that addresses customer needs at every stage of their buying journey.
• Every business needs to understand how privacy regulations in your jurisdiction impact how you collect and use user data for marketing personalization. Regulation is growing alongside a greater demand for personalized advertising. Balancing privacy and marketing personalization should be an important focus for 2025.
• Understand that digital advertising platforms have significantly increased in complexity in the past few years. I have been running digital advertising campaigns for more than 10 years now, and I say with confidence that digital advertising is the most complex it has ever been. Having an experienced PPC account manager running your campaigns will be critical to success in 2025.
• Be prepared to adapt to an unpredictable market. In most parts of the world 2025 is expected to bring further economic slowdown, which means a decrease in demand. Combined with uncertainty about the future of platforms like TikTok and Google Ads (the DOJ wants to break up Google and get rid of TikTok), you are going to need to be agile with your advertising planning in 2025.

If you don’t already have a trusted digital marketing team that is ready to take on these challenges, let’s talk. Foundery provides consulting and full-service digital marketing to complement your marketing team.

AI and Search: The Future of Discovery

In 2025, AI is already embedded in many of the products you use online. It is making search smarter, more intuitive, and more personal. Here are some things to focus on to maximize your search visibility this year:

Stand Out in a More Crowded Search Result

Search engine result pages (SERPs) are becoming increasingly saturated, making it harder for brands to stand out. Most informational searches now include an AI overview, People Also Ask, and often a gallery of videos or images related to the topic. And soon there will be ads there too. With all these added features, the traditional search results are now pushed halfway down the page. This makes it increasingly difficult to be visible with a webpage alone.

If you are watching closely, you have probably seen organic traffic declines to pages that once performed very well. As AI overviews capture your content and display it right in the search results, this will naturally lead to a decline in website traffic. But all is not lost, because most overviews now cite their sources, giving your brand some additional visibility in the SERP.

In 2025, combat crowded search results by creating multimodal content. Your content strategy should include thought-leadership content, video, images, infographics, and podcasts. Focusing on entity-building and EEAT will be essential for appearing in AI overviews.

Be Found…. Elsewhere.

ChatGPT and other AI-based apps/integrations are slowly making their way to the average user’s phone. The adoption of ChatGPT and other conversational AI tools such as Llama (Meta) Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google) and Grok (X) are changing the way people discover information. And emerging players like Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Search are looking to replace Google Search altogether.

The greater adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) enhanced by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) are reshaping how content is discovered and consumed. The good news is that it appears that websites with a solid SEO foundation, and a content strategy that has been focused on entity-building and EEAT seem to appear readily in generative replies. We have many clients getting website traffic referrals from ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Emerging in 2025 will be the expanding use of agentic solutions such as customized AI assistants and the universal assistants such as Project Astra (Google), Co-Pilot (Microsoft) and Apple Intelligence. It is early to predict how these solutions may change how people find information, but it is certain they will bring change.

Although this is a rapidly evolving space, I think that a continued focus on creating content that addresses your clients’ questions and needs is the most effective way to future-proof your content strategy. Essentially, keep up with your good SEO practices. No matter what technology is involved; to really stand out, you will also need to be a subject-matter authority in the topic you want to be found for. In my opinion, your best bet is an entity-based approach. You can read more about how to do this here, but the basics are to use schema, brand mentions or digital PR, high-quality content, and natural linking strategies to enhance your footprint online. Hopefully you started doing this before now, but if not, get started!

There were so many tools, campaign types, integrations, and platform redesigns in 2024 that it would be an extraordinarily long article to discuss them all. Just know that A LOT of big and small things changed in all the advertising platforms in 2024, as they integrated AI and found new ways to profit off advertisers.

The result, likely unintended, is that the digital advertising ecosystem is more complex than ever, requiring a higher level of expertise and attention to detail than ever before. It is overwhelmingly easy to waste your advertising dollars on these platforms. AI tools are creating some great efficiencies and new opportunities, but they can also quickly erode your brand identity if your ad campaigns are not carefully constructed and closely monitored.

Google Ads

It was an absolutely wild ride in Google Ads this year. The new platform is challenging to navigate and easy to make errors, but we are adapting to our new realities as we adjust to the constantly updating campaign types, adjustments to how match types work, and a myriad of bugs and reporting issues. To stay on-top of Google Ads in 2025 you will need to keep your ear to the ground for platform updates and closely monitor your campaign performance or hire a professional who can do this for you.

PMAX

One of the things we will be doing more of in 2025 is taking another deep look at PMAX. While we didn’t find early success with this new campaign format, as AI becomes more integrated in the product, and the reporting and segmentation features improve, we expect PMAX to be a powerful channel for generating awareness and reach in 2025.

Say Goodbye to Manual CPC bidding

Google is one step closer to eliminating manual PPC management with the announced phase out of “enhanced CPC” bidding. This model allowed advertisers to leverage some of the advantages of machine learning, while still giving manual control of bidding to the advertiser. Enhanced CPC bidding will be officially removed in March 2025, leaving advertisers the option of full manual CPC (for now) or an automated bidding model.

If you are still running ECPC, we recommend you start testing Maximize Conversions or Maximize Clicks now, so you have a good idea of what is going to work best for you when ECPC is phased out this Spring.

YouTube and DemandGen get Married

If you have tried to setup a YouTube campaign lately, you may have noticed it looks a bit different. Google is merging the DemandGen and YouTube campaign types. This seems to depend on the bidding model you select for your campaign, so make sure you plan accordingly and carefully review your campaign settings. You can read more about this update here.

Match Types are Meaningless

If you spend as much time in your ad account as we do, you might have noticed that your matched search terms report has gone a bit wild mid-way through the year. While you can still use the three standard match types in your account (exact, phrase and broad), they no longer mean the same things they once did. This topic is really too technical to get into here, but if you are looking at a performance decline, check that “Search Terms” report and review what queries your keywords are actually triggering your ads on. The integration of AI into the search query matching algorithm has worked really well in some industries, but it seems to be must less effective in niche verticals.

If you are spending a significant amount of your marketing dollars on Google Ads in 2025, make sure you have an experienced PPC team or trusted agency partner to monitor these changes closely.

Meta continues to be a highly effective platform to drive brand awareness, engagement, and action for B2C verticals. Just like Google Ads, Meta has gone through multiple platform transformations and has integrated a number of new AI tools into their systems this past year.

Advantage+ has a few disadvantages

Advantage+ is Meta’s AI advertising integration with their ads platform. It adds AI-driven automation to audience targeting, creative optimization, and placements across the Meta ecosystem (Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, etc.).

We have experimented with Advantage+ and are not readily applying it to most of our campaigns. This is primarily due to issues with transparency and lack of control. We have not seen much added value in adding Advantage+ into audience targeting or campaign automation.

While there are some attractive features to adapt ad creative in real-time and adjust creative dynamically depending on the placements, there is also a real concern for maintaining brand standards and quality control.

We will continue to experiment with the Advantage+ tools to find new ways to leverage them to our advantage this year. If you are running Meta ads in-house, watch carefully during your campaign setups, as Advantage+ is often automatically applied to new campaign builds.

TikTok

What to say about TikTok? Well, we have seen some impressive cost-efficient brand awareness generated by TikTok this year, but the platform remains difficult to tie to any real ROI.

If you have short-form video produced for other platforms (and you should), it is probably worth a test on TikTok this year, especially if you are targeting people under 30. An influencer-approach to advertising is more effective that traditional adverting on short-form video platforms, so carefully consider your audience when putting resources into creative development of video.

This discussion may be moot soon, as there is a chance TikTok will be banned in the US in the coming weeks, and Canada is likely to follow suit if that happens. If you are using TikTok, download your audience configurations and campaign data now, so you can build similar campaigns for YouTube and Instagram.

Digital advertising in 2025 requires subject-area experts. Make sure your team has the training and TIME needed to focus their attention on campaign development and performance. If you are struggling to find the right talent for your internal team, partner with us. We can work as an extension of your marketing team and provide the specific expertise you need to execute effective digital ad campaigns this year.

Ok, I have been talking about this for years now. But marketing personalization in 2025 is key to success, while privacy regulation is at direct odds with crafting personalized approaches. This is where you need to involve all stakeholders from your company and be sure you have a solid data collection and privacy policy to guide your marketing team. With this in place, your marketing approach can get the balance of personalization and privacy right.

Cookies & First-Party Data

While Google ultimately decided not to phase out third-party cookies this year, it is still growing increasingly difficult to freely, and legally, collect user data online. As usual, make sure your marketing approach builds in opportunities to collect first-party data, and be sure to leverage your existing first-party data however you can, to build better campaign audiences.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics is emerging as a powerful tool for anticipating customer needs and crafting tailored experiences. It may help some marketing teams overcome limitations on using user data. If you are a GA4 user, and your website generates enough user data, there are lots of new features to explore here.

As businesses have an increased focus on privacy-first strategies, they will demand transparency and ethical data practices from their marketing teams. The brands that successfully navigate this balance will build stronger, more trustworthy relationships with their audiences.

Economic slowdowns present challenges, but they also offer opportunities for brands to stand out. In 2025, luxury marketers and other sectors will need to rethink their strategies, focusing on authenticity and maintaining their marketing investments even in uncertain times.

Storytelling and value-driven campaigns will be critical in connecting with consumers on a deeper level. By emphasizing purpose and building genuine connections, businesses can strengthen their market position, even in an economic downturn.

Agility in both marketing budget and marking strategy will likely be required in 2025, to rapidly adapt to the changing economic conditions.

Blockchain for Marketing

Blockchain technology is gaining traction in marketing, offering transparency and security in everything from ad spend tracking to digital asset ownership. Tokenized loyalty programs and decentralized ad networks are just a few ways blockchain is enabling innovative marketing solutions. This is an emerging space in marketing which is worth keeping an eye on.

The DOJ may break up Google. Meta and Apple are in trouble too.

Google’s ongoing antitrust battle with the DOJ could have far reaching impacts on their advertising and search products. Regularly Apple, Meta and Google are being served additional lawsuits in other jurisdictions accusing them of anti-competitive practices. Marketers should pay close attention to developments here. We recommend having a diversified marketing strategies to mitigate risks associated with single platforms.

Ads in new places

In early 2025, Meta will introduce advertising placements on Threads, its text-based social platform. The retail media landscape is also expected to have significant growth in ad placement opportunities, as major retail networks such as Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect and Target Roundel continue to expand their networks. Meanwhile you can now run search ads on TikTok, with additional new ad formats also announced, including shoppable livestream ads and augmented reality ads.

Other platforms you can test in 2025 include:

• Streaming and CTV platforms such at Netflix, Amazon, Roku, and Disney+
  As steaming services introduce more ad-supported user tiers, there is more ad inventory available to advertisers.
• Gaming platforms
  Advertising options are available on both Xbox and PlayStation networks. There is also game-level advertising available in popular games such as Roblox and Fortnite
• Online communities
  Reddit ads continue to be a good option to reach a highly niche audience. Discord and Quora also offer advertising options for high-intent audiences.
• Podcasts
  Audio platforms offer several innovative hyper-targeted advertising opportunities. If you have a very specific audience to reach, explore Spotify Ads, Apple Podcasts or Audible.

Renewed interest in your organic social channels

With shifting algorithm changes in the past few years, we were less focused on organic social media, but in 2025 it will be a greater focus for us. As entity-building and digital PR become more important for organic online visibility, and arguably visibility in LLM apps, it is probably a good time to audit your social media efforts and look for opportunities to improve your brand awareness and digital PR using this channel.

As a starting point, make sure you have a presence on all the channels that make sense for your business (that would be the channels where your customers are). Then make sure you are producing creative that can be easily adapted and posted across your social network.

If you have an opportunity to connect with an influencer, explore the possibilities. While influencer marketing is growing in popularity, it remains difficult to measure ROI, so be cautious in over-investing without testing the process and measuring the return first.

There are many AI-enabled tools available now to make social media posting more efficient and less time consuming. So, if you haven’t considered social media in a while, its time to take another look.

Short form-video

This is not new. It was here last year and the year before. I know developing the processes to create compelling short-form video is time consuming and expensive, but it is really necessary to get in front of your audiences in 2025, especially if they’re under 40.

Last year I predicted that 2024 would be a roller coaster ride, and it was. While 2025 looks a bit clearer, I think you will need to embrace your inner-Gumby to stay ahead this year (is that reference too old?). Success in 2025 is going to require adaptability, expertise and an agile marketing approach.

We are here to help make sure your team is up to the challenge! If you have any thoughts or questions, find me on LinkedIn or reach out to us.