We wont sugarcoat it: 2024 was a year (or, rather, several rollercoaster years smushed into 365 days). By now, you’ve probably had your fill with year-end “wrapped” lists (us too)—so we won’t force you to relive all that was 2024. Instead, let us look forward, to what we hope will be an annual tradition, and highlight our best guesstimate for popular digital advertising trends in 2025.
A TikTok Replacement Will Emerge (and it Won’t be Instagram)
Without a fairly drastic turn of events, TikTok will be banned in the US in January. Though we’re sure Zuckerbot and Meta leadership are salivating at the idea of being rid of their biggest competitor, don’t expect Instagram to permanently fill the void that TikTok is creating. While users will likely flock there post-ban to re-activate their Finstas, we expect an app not owned by Meta to eventually step up and claim a large share of TikTok’s former audience.
The rationale for our prediction is rather simple: people have lost faith in legacy media institutions post-Elon & Twitter, and while Meta certainly isn’t “legacy”, Zuck hasn’t won over many fans in the Gen Z crowd, either. In addition, Meta products have perennially lagged behind competitors in terms of rolling out new features—their baked-in audience from Facebook doesn’t last long once new options are introduced. Case in point: Threads, once seemingly the heir apparent to Twitter, is already losing ground (and momentum) to Bluesky, which has just surpassed 25M users. Meta may “borrow” some of Bluesky’s more popular features in future releases, but we don’t envision that Threads will ever see the kind of volume that Twitter once did.
While Bluesky does not yet offer advertising, that is likely to come in the next two quarters (and may look different than on other social networks).
Think that’s all for our digital advertising trends 2025 list that involve social? Think again, because…
Retail Advertising Will Become More Social
With every death, a rebirth. That is what we are predicting for retail advertising in 2025: the TikTok Shop model, across not only social networking websites, but retailers’ own sites as well.
”Social Selling” is big: nearly 60% of all TikTok users have made a purchase on the Shop, equating to more than a billion sales globally. Perhaps as enticing for retail advertisers is that nearly half of TikTok users report that the platform shapes their purchasing decisions, with 58% admitting to using the platform for purchase inspiration.
The idea of selling on social media certainly isn’t new; Instagram has long had product integration as part of its offering for businesses looking to push their wares on the platform. However, Meta’s approach to this has always been more passive (in the form of Marketplace and product ads); with the TikTok Shop, gamification and a “home shopping network”-esque elements have been incorporated into the mix, elevating the platform’s retail focus from a sideshow on a video-based network to an addictive main attraction.
Companies like Temu have already capitalized on this, themselves including gamification-based discounts and free items along with partnerships with such mobile time-wasters as FarmVille. Expect this to be parroted with retail companies here in the States, both on existing social networks and through the use of their own native apps.
Paid Search Budgets Will Undergo Some Reallocation
We’ve said it before and stand by it today: paid search is one of the most effective digital advertising strategies there is. Period.
With most of the paid search budget in this country traditionally allocated to Google (and as the largest search engine, rightfully so), SEM managers have had it fairly easy, budget-wise: 90% to Google, 10% to Bing (give or take a couple points either way), and call it a day.
Problem is, this isn’t the same Google Search most of us learned paid search on—it’s worse, in ways that these several reports try to define (all of those words being separate articles on the subject). Granted, Google Search still dominates; but as quality diminishes, so will trust in the product, forcing users to other platforms for finding answers.
As it stands now, Google isn’t even the top place people search for products (that would be Amazon), and has been losing ground to social searches on TikTok, Instagram, and its own YouTube platform (the three of which account for an estimated 8% of total search volume) for years. B2C advertising dollars will continue to follow the diversification trend in 2025.
Streaming Ad Budgets Will Skyrocket
We admit, this one is a little more obvious than the rest. Digital video advertising was projected to surpass linear (traditional) TV spend by this year (still waiting on the verdict); streaming or ConnectedTV in 2025. Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) is now the preferred method for watching television in the US, and advertisers are responding in kind.
The shift away from linear does present some interesting opportunities for local advertising; as CPMs on network and cable channels come down, small businesses and nonprofits—who possibly could not afford to advertise on local television in the past—can claim some of this high-impact awareness inventory. Local advertisers also enjoy better targeting and reporting options via ConnectedTV than with other high-impact channels, thereby reducing inefficiencies across digital and traditional advertising tactics.
So Much for a “Cookieless Future”…
For years, digital marketers have been subjected to the looming threat of a world without cookies—scripts that help us to serve tailored messaging and track performance. When Google pulled the plug on pulling the plug on cookies this year, the collective sigh of relief from the industry was palpable.
Not that we’re particularly fond of cookies, mind you: but nixing an industry standard without a new, accepted standard in place would have been an unmitigated disaster. Between identity graph, Universal ID, device ID, privacy sandbox, and at least a half-dozen other proposed cookie alternatives. at the time of writing, none are being utilized consistently across media platforms as cookies have. And until they are (which would require industry giants like Google and Meta to agree on something), cookies aren’t going anywhere.
Our Predictions for 2025 Digital Advertising Trends is Complete…
What our yours. Share your predictions for top digital advertising trends in 2025 with us on Bluesky and we just might include your prediction in a future Instagram post.
