From the great cookie turn-around to brand safety concerns and a rush towards CTV, it’s been another year of high-speed developments in the world of adtech. The illuma team reflects on what’s to come in 2025.

Success will depend on balancing privacy, performance, and omnichannel insights

As we head into 2025, Google’s changed stance on 3rd-party cookie deprecation keeps the industry in flux, driving advertisers to continue looking to adopt privacy-first alternatives like alternative IDs, contextual signals, cohort-based measurement, and panel insights to bridge attribution gaps and uncover behavioural insights.

Connected TV (CTV) will take centre stage, advancing cross-screen attribution and unified measurement to align linear TV and digital. Retail media networks will also dominate attribution conversations, enabling closed-loop measurement through robust first-party data.

Combined with advances in cross-channel measurement and renewed focus on incrementality, advertisers will face ongoing pressure to measure what matters and prove media’s business impact. So in 2025, success will depend on balancing privacy, performance, and omnichannel insights to achieve true media effectiveness.

Thanks to AI tools, optimising and scaling outcomes will become more of an exact science

Media planning and in-campaign adjustments can still rely on a certain amount of assumption, but advanced AI tools will improve this, allowing buyers to capitalise on the environments that do work for them.

As a result, optimising and scaling outcomes will become more of an exact science in the year ahead.

The big winners here will be brands who are vying for attention in competitive spaces, such as airlines, banking and retail. This approach will open up all sorts of possibilities around expanding delivery, measuring the value of supply partners and modelling behaviours of existing customers. Because of this, we may see a change in the media planning process itself and the organisational structures behind them.

Predictive analytics and AI are going to be invaluable for leveraging known audiences in 2025

This year we’ve seen a huge drive for brands to consolidate their first-party data, and explore new ways to target, expand-upon and creatively reach these valuable audiences whilst remaining data compliant. We expect this to continue. 

In particular, predictive analytics and AI based tech is going to be invaluable for leveraging these audiences and diversifying campaign reach. We’ve already seen innovations in this area from key players on the DSP, adtech and publisher side, and we think it’s likely there will be more exciting innovation in the first-party targeting space in 2025.

Publishers will be re-evaluating vendors who leave them in the dark about how their inventory is monetised

As we look to the year ahead, publishers’ focus will remain on ways to understand the value of their editorial and paths to unlock buyer dollars to sustain long-term growth.

This focus shines light on the crucial need for a real-time, scalable, full ecosystem, and most importantly, transparent solutions that increase the value of each page.

In the new year, publishers will be re-evaluating vendors who leave them in the dark about how their inventory is monetised in the market. Then aligning themselves with partners who understand nuance, intent, emotion, tone, sentiment, and engagement across their inventory, and are dedicated to delivering ads on content that aligns to the brand’s needs.

2025 strategies must be centred around supporting quality journalism and an open, ad funded internet.

CTV will become a more transparent and integrated ecosystem in the year ahead

If predictions are correct, CTV audience numbers will overtake linear TV in 2025.

This will leave the industry racing to unite a fragmented marketplace which currently lacks any standarised naming conventions, and where connecting inventory to supply-side platforms (SSPs) is less than straightforward.

Despite these challenges, CTV will become a more transparent and integrated ecosystem in the year ahead. New players have emerged, who will help to grow the ecosystem, and programmatic teams will manage larger CTV media budgets which will allow for more effective cross-platform targeting.

Advertisers will realise that keyword blocklists have reduced reach and defunded quality journalism for too long

In 2025 we will see a more thoughtful, balanced approach to brand suitability in efforts to maximise the effectiveness of media spend.

Close examination of existing brand safety tactics will show how keyword blocklists have reduced qualified reach, while simultaneously defunding quality journalism, for too long.

In conjunction, we will see a demand for transparency from adtech vendors and native, in-platform blocking solutions into how that tech is classifying content to achieve a brand’s suitability strategy. Advertisers who move away from old methods towards tech that can actually help them to achieve their brand suitability goals will be the clear winners.

Brands can be more thoughtful now in their approach to cookie alternatives. Smarter and more advanced solutions will win out

This is the first year since 2019 where we aren’t talking or wondering about what Google is going to do next.

Brands will be able to really focus on building their first-party data pools while also searching out the best new ways to reach their audiences.

Cookies are still going away but no one is under the gun anymore and brands can be more thoughtful in their approach to alternatives. We will see smarter and more advanced solutions win out.

AI will continue to revolutionise contextual accuracy and brand safety

AI developments will continue to revolutionise contextual accuracy and brand safety in programmatic advertising.

Superior categorisation of publisher content will ensure ads are placed in appropriate, high-quality contexts, to protect brand reputation and maximise performance.  

These applications of AI will help strengthen trust between publishers and advertisers, ensuring brand safety is prioritised while maintaining accuracy and adaptability in a dynamic digital ecosystem.