Amp spotlight: Top ad trends to watch in 2025

The advertising industry in 2025 is not merely evolving—it’s transforming at a breakneck pace. With the convergence of AI-driven personalization, shifting consumer dynamics and unprecedented cultural fragmentation, brands are facing both monumental challenges and unparalleled opportunities. This year, the mantra is clear: Adapt or be left behind. “If 2023 was ‘Wow’ and 2024 was ‘How,’ 2025 will be ‘Now,’” said Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, parent company of Monks. “Agencies must work more closely with the platforms. Four of them account for 50% of all ad spend and five-sevenths of digital spend. Marketing life is becoming simpler, not more complex. With AI and its computing, energy and capital needs, these platforms will become even bigger. Agencies will increasingly be ‘validators’ of algorithmic solutions. Clients will increasingly need and demand independent advice.” “Several key advertising trends are set to shape the industry in the coming year,” added Sam Zises, CEO at [L]earned Media. “AI is revolutionizing advertising by enabling hyper-personalized content and predictive analytics. Brands and clients at all levels are leveraging AI to analyze consumer behavior, allowing for real-time, tailored advertising strategies.” Zises pointed out the shift away from traditional media, with digital platforms projected to account for 73% of total advertising revenue in the coming year, in addition to a shifting power structure across the industry. “The recent $13 billion merger between Omnicom and Interpublic Group [IPG] reflects a trend toward consolidation at the highest level, aiming to leverage scale for better technology investments and partnerships,” said Zises. “These three trends highlight the ongoing shift in the advertising landscape, driven by technological advancements, changing consumer behaviors, and a focus on efficiency and consolidation.” Ad Age recently spoke to more than 70 top ad executives for their hot takes on what the industry can expect in the year ahead. Studio 30 reached out to experts from the Amp community to share their key predictions for 2025 and how brands can position themselves for success. Read Ad Age’s 2025 predictions stories here Bold creative will win the day In 2025, advertising is going to be all about breaking through the noise. The old playbook of hard sells, product features and siloed performance marketing is starting to wear thin. People don’t want to be sold to—they want to be entertained. They crave connection, humor and authenticity over overt marketing pitches. It’s about crafting stories, memes or campaigns people want to engage with, or taking a more self-aware approach and doing the unexpected, like partnering with brands that would typically be considered irrelevant for your brand. For example, Duolingo’s ‘Duo on Ice’ campaign that partnered with SeatGeek to create an actual event page for a phony musical, or Liquid Death’s Pit Diaper that partnered with Depends to launch a faux leather diaper that sold out within 24 hours of its release. These campaigns prioritized cultural relevance over product descriptions, creating an almost cult-like following of true believers. The key to success in 2025 lies in this cultural alignment. Ads that entertain, provoke, or resonate emotionally will cut through the daily ad deluge. —Mitchell Fait, executive creative director, Gigasavvy While a politically polarized environment has been the norm for the past few years, in 2025, brands will be navigating a whole new level of cultural fragmentation. Brands are already having to shift strategies to connect with the unique demands of a fickle new generation of Gen Z consumers, and they face a cultural landscape marked by an emerging gender divide and the manosphere credited with shaping a fraught election’s outcome. In such a risk-averse and splintered environment, expect brands to lean into humor or weirdness more than ever. If you can make someone laugh, you’ve broken through and achieved today’s marketing holy grail: attention. Humor and weirdness aren’t weighed down by the heavy baggage of overtly purpose-driven campaigns. You’re providing a vibe, not a statement. Expect more vibes in 2025. —Liz Aviles, senior VP of strategy, Amp Agency The best performing brands don’t leave creativity to ads. Every marketing decision, from how to define your market to tactical social ideas, is an opportunity for ingenuity and imagination. While the pressures of efficiency will continue, 2025 will be a tipping point for broad-thinking generalists and craft experts to resist the temptations of off-the-shelf ideas to focus on creating novel solutions. Marketers and agencies will increasingly be world-builders. If the best creative in the last year has taught me anything about the U.S. market, it’s that making something real is often more compelling to consumers than making an ad. In 2025, we’ll see more brands create a partnership, a storefront, a limited-edition product, a moment—something weird, fun, IRL—and then shout about it, preferably in a wildly interesting ad. —Brendon Volpe, U.S. chief strategy officer, UM Worldwide In a world where Hollywood will be playing it safer than ever, and millions more people will be served ads in captive moments on streaming, the need for great, entertaining TV commercials will return. Additionally, we are all in on YouTube as a platform. It’s for more than just branded entertainment—it’s true IP development where the commercialization of that entertainment provides revenue streams for brands brave enough to lean in. —Josh Paialii, managing director and head of creative, The Many Using AI to strengthen—not squander—creativity I predict that in 2025 both brands and agencies who promote superficial and non-productive uses of AI will continue to feel a public backlash. This backlash will likely evolve into a movement, leading to the reduction of lazy, gimmicky AI marketing and a push toward more meaningful applications. We’ll see an explosion in the use of third-party providers, rather than agency-built AI platforms, that enable agencies to stack multiple AI tools and platforms to create unique, creative and continuous approaches to insights generation. We’ll see a focus on AI’s true benefits in analytics, media and enhancing search, rather than empty, concept-less ads. Please, no more vapid AI-generated Coke ads with zero concept, no more Apple AI ads that promise candidate promotions, and can Gemini go back to being a zodiac sign? Instead, AI will be marketed as an asset that boosts efficiency and amplifies human intelligence, not as a replacement for it. —Steve Connelly, president and copywriter, Connelly Partners We continually see Gen Z and younger consumers seeking authenticity in the brands they choose. Replacing insightful creativity and human touch is the fastest way to alienate a generation looking for connection. Do we need 730 different subject lines that still go to our spam folder? I think brands that overuse AI for speed and scale will overpay in a different currency: trust. AI is the largest transformational tool we have ever seen, but how we use the tool will be important. Are we empowering creativity or replacing it? I believe that as AI creations become more and more rampant, there will be a void of authenticity. As an agency, we want to invest in and train our teams to use these tools to unleash new creativity versus replacing our people and destroying a culture we have with our teams and our customers. —Jonathan Ogle, co-founder and principal, The Infinite Agency Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs In 2025, we are going to see more and more ‘creative generalists’ in the wake of AI. AI can do a good job at outperforming humans at very specific tasks, but being able to transfer your skills through a variety of mediums makes your ‘human ware’ that much more valuable. —Madison Rogers, creative strategist, Fuse Create AI is turning the most valuable commodity that humans have ever possessed—intelligence—into a utility. If you want more IQ points for a task, go to ChatGPT, Grok or Gemini. When intelligence itself becomes a utility, the biggest asset that humans still possess is going to be human connections. AI hasn’t figured that out yet. —Richard Jones, chief revenue officer, Wunderkind Between the looming TikTok ban, a new administration and generative AI infusing its way more directly into how we work, we are embarking on a year of change. Generative AI will evolve to search and offer advertisers new ways to tie into content. Brands will need to make sure that they have high-quality content online to feed the algorithms and not get left behind. Video is growing in that space and as it does, it offers advertisers a new way to seamlessly connect brand advertising and commerce marketing. As an industry, we are getting closer and closer to filling gaps across brand, customer experience and shopper, giving consumers a connected brand experience and a better way for CMOs to measure impact. —Audrey Melofchik, global chief brand experience officer, VML As we move toward a more inclusive approach where we center and celebrate the intersections of diversity, the future lies with enhanced personalization through the intentional use of AI, allowing brands to craft campaigns that can resonate more fluently with individual, intersecting cultural identities. This shift opens up incredible opportunities for business and brand growth. We’ll witness this transformation particularly take off in sectors like tech, gaming and healthcare, where grasping the diverse needs of consumers and employees will be key to thriving. —Bonnie Smith, senior VP, head of Vivi by Jack Morton The new ways of working The tools creatives use every day are evolving fast. The barriers between thinking and doing are dissolving. Creative teams now have unprecedented power to make their ideas real, right now, with less friction and more clarity. 2025 will be a pivotal shift that agencies are waking up to, where the tools and software aren’t just aids—they’re real-time collaborators. Removing friction between vision and execution will give creatives more ownership over how their ideas are expressed, sold, and ultimately how they come to life through the production process. The process shift in 2025 will be better for creatives, clients and production partners, who will all be able to rally around a truer expression of the creative vision, sooner. —Geoff Castillo, creative director, Arts & Letters Creative Co. The disruption within legacy media companies presents an opportunity for the resurgence of advertising-based media. The creation of new entities (“SpinCo”) will align business models appropriately, ensuring suitable profit margins that can bring stability, impactful content and opportunities for scaling. When executed strategically with accurate audience data and advanced technology, legacy media can emerge as strong competitors to tech giants who have ventured into ad-based media models. Think linear and streaming platforms, sports, local and social media. —Lisa Herdman, senior VP and executive director of strategic investments, media and national investment, RPA 2025 is the year of algorithmic love on social. In order to be successful, you need to be sure you are getting to know your platforms—play to their strengths, figure out what their users love and create content that hits the mark. Also, picture your audience like a bunch of friends: Everyone’s got their own thing, right? Some might be all about hilarious TikToks, while others are glued to YouTube tutorials. That’s why brands need to create different versions of their content. To become an algorithm whisperer in 2025, you’ll need more creative assets than you may think, but that’s how you get seen, get loved and get results on social. —Macaela VanderMost, founder and CEO, Newfangled Studios The commercial relationship between brands and their agencies will start shifting as it becomes more and more apparent that the time a person or team spends on work is no longer a good proxy for its value. Modern agencies will be working ever closer to real-time, driven by the demands of shorter time-to-market, always-on AI workflows and the need for measurable outcomes. Smart brands will want to pay for that agility and impact beyond an hourly rate, embracing value-driven partnerships that emphasize results over antiquated time-based models. —Wesley ter Haar, co-founder, Monks In 2025, we’ll see a fundamental shift as brands realize their audiences are deeply engaged in specialized digital spaces—whether that’s industry newsletters or topic-specific podcasts from creators they love. The most successful brands will be those who recognize that while traditional paid advertising remains important, the real multiplier effect comes from strategic earned media placements in these emerging channels. Brands that can effectively pair their paid media with strategic earned placements in these non-traditional spaces will see significantly better returns than those still fixated solely on legacy media coverage. This year will be about mastering this delicate balance and educating our clients on why meeting audiences in their preferred spaces—not just the most prestigious ones—drives real business results. —Karla Khodanian, director of strategic communications, Big Communications Tapping into authenticity and connection In a time where we’ve never been lonelier yet more connected, 2025 is shaping up to be a turning point in our social recession, one where we rebuild what matters most: connectivity through authenticity and intention. We’re witnessing the rise of niche digital ecosystems, third spaces and fandoms stepping into their power like never before. From the spotlight surrounding the New York Liberty mascot Ellie the Elephant (aka Big Ellie) to platforms like Timeleft and Thursday’s dating app that promise to foster more genuine real-world connection, these micro-communities, fueled by a shared passion, are rewriting the rules of influence. It’s not about controlling the narrative anymore, it’s about co-creating it with communities, micro-fandoms and hyper-niche creators who are shaping culture from the ground up. This year won’t be about going bigger, but diving deeper. —Mykala Daniel, senior creative strategist, On Board Experiential Imagine a world where a brand’s employees aren’t just nameless cogs but the faces, voices and personalities driving its story. The rise of employee-generated content (EGC) is no longer a one-off experiment or cop-out strategy. From a chain restaurant cashier dancing on Instagram to the IT team lip-syncing through a product update on LinkedIn, these moments are relatable, human and, most importantly, shareable. As brands reprioritize owned content in 2025—think newsletters, podcasts, livestreams—employees will be central to their success. This shift won’t eliminate the need for agency expertise; few employees have the right mix of talent and resourced time to match the pressure and expectations of this shift. There will still be critical demand for an insights-based strategy, creative oversight, talent management and syndication to help companies adopt and adapt. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, empowering employees to be brand characters isn’t just smart marketing; it’s your most underrated competitive advantage in 2025. —Greg Swan, senior partner, Finn Partners Leaving 2024, we wade through turbulence, uncertainly and more than a little regret. But I’m looking ahead to 2025 with renewed optimism. In 2024, I saw long-time clients shift conversations away from our diverse audiences, spitting vague excuses that ranged from budget turmoil to shaky metrics to unresolved ROI. That mindset absolutely cannot be the path forward in 2025. There is one ever-present and all-encompassing North Star, and that is profitability. If a brand cannot make honest connections with the largest U.S. populations (or global populations), they will, without a doubt, miss out on making more money. Period. —Marissa Nance, CEO and founder, Native Tongue Communications

Amp spotlight: Top ad trends to watch in 2025

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