Media Changes We Anticipate in 2025
The new year brings new challenges, and one of those challenges for the advertising and media buying business is anticipating changes to how we do our jobs, both in the day to day, and in long-term planning. We can never truly predict what the future will bring. Those of us of a certain age wouldn’t have predicted that nearly everyone would get their news from a phone they carry around in their pockets every day. Technology will always evolve and upend how we do business, yet many of the principles of our work remain the same. Here are a few of the changes we anticipate.
AI will create chaos
AI in Google search and Chat GPT has made life easier for some, but it has also presented a slew of problems. AI search is notoriously inaccurate. Those who rely on AI results in Google often need to redo their work later. Generative AI used to create text and images brings up a lot of legal and ethical considerations around copyright, since generative AI tool currently continues to use copyright-protected work. AI is controversial, and the tech companies are determined to push it out on every platform, but professionals should proceed with caution.
Social media will be turned upside down
We began the year with a 12-hour TikTok ban. So, while the app is now back in use, it may still be banned later this year.
Meta has gone through some midlife growing pains. At one time, Facebook was meant to go through a transformation in which people would attend meetings on Facebook as avatars of themselves. The public never bought into it, so that iteration of social media has gone away for now, and the same may yet happen for Facebook’s AI initiatives.
Twitter/X hemorrhaged users in the last year and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. It may still be a good platform for certain brands, but the platform carries a lot of political stigma and many advertisers have left for good. BlueSky is the platform most likely to replace it. However, the BlueSky ecosystem is not friendly to advertising. So, it’s a tough place for brands at this point.
LinkedIn may be the most stable social media platform at this time, even if it’s the least flashy. Perhaps its focus on business professionals and the job market is what helps its stability.
Traditional media isn’t going anywhere in 2025
The death of traditional media has long been predicted, but traditions don’t go down easily. With the rise of streaming in the last few years, it looked as if traditional radio and television might indeed be replaced. But growth has slowed, and most streamers haven’t been profitable. Traditional television and radio continue to be great resources for ad buying and may see an upsurge in 2025.
Even the streaming world is reverting to a model similar to traditional over the air and cable television. Ad-supported streamers such as Tubi have become more popular than ever, and streamers such as Hulu, Max, and Netflix now have advertising-driven models. This trend of back to ad-driven media is expected to continue.
Check back in 2026
Come back to this blog in a year and see how our predictions fared. The one prediction we can make with absolute certainty is big things will happen that none of us predicted!