Digital marketing methods are adapting alongside emerging and developing technologies, according to Mediaocean’s H2 Market Report for 2025, with methods and tech considered experimental earlier this year becoming established strings to marketers’ bows.
The survey is based on the responses of over 500 marketing professionals the company contacted, and is the eighth publication from Mediaocean in its bi-annual research series.
The biggest and most powerful trends in the industry in the last six months, Mediaocean says, are AI, CTV, and identity, with nearly three-quarters of marketers surveyed citing AI as a priority. Current uses for the technology focus on creative, copywriting, media planning, data analysis, and campaign optimisation.
Identity remains a core pillar for marketers, driven in part by the apparent decline of cookie use, plus an uptick in media channels available to campaigns. Pinning down elusive customer profiles tends to entail a mixture of first- and third-party data, and “probalistic approaches,” the survey’s results show.
As part of activities that increase the focus on personalisation, cultural and political sensitivities were held to be increasingly important by the marketers who responded to Mediaocean. Brands are becoming aware that their communications intersect increasingly with political and advocacy issues, needing more detailed and nuanced messaging to reach diverse audiences, messages that need to change rapidly according to events.
As companies examine and allocate their budgets, Connected TV (CTV) looks set to benefit the most from marketers’ spending. CTV is the placing of ads on streaming platforms, and thanks to both the multiplicity of providers and better user identification metrics from broadcasters, companies can now focus more on precise targeting and individual ad performance, rather than a ‘spray and pray’ approach that concentrates merely on reach.
Privacy concerns have slipped down in the list of what marketers consider important, with the survey suggesting that marketers may be “deprioritising compliance-specific initiatives in favour of more proactive, identity-based solutions.”
Search advertising spending has fallen by 22% from H1, Mediaocean says, as AI results continue to replace ‘traditional’ SERP pages, with marketers now undertaking broader optimisation than pure-play keyword and incoming link activities – traditionally the cornerstones of SEO.
Optimising content for AI can be highly technical, with processes required that fall outside the remit of marketing function: moving JavaScript rendering to server-side, rather than in-browser, means re-coding online platforms, for example.
Despite the drop in search advertising budgets, overall marketing spend seems to be holding up, Mediaocean says, with companies reallocating funds from search to different channels and methods.
W Media Research’s principal and chief analyst, Karsten Weide, says “marketers are meeting change with a blend of resilience and reinvention.” Arron Goldman of Mediaocean say technologies and methods like AI, CTV and multi-ID strategies have moved beyond an experimental stage for marketers, and predicts that success in marketing later this year will be dependent on “how well brands align their technology, data, and creative.”
One primary technological challenge in digital marketing continues to be the unification of data sources from disparate platforms, an issue which is both technical and time-based – technologies and channel popularity change quickly compared to the speed at which data aggregation tech can be built and put into production.
Mediaocean is holding a webinar on July 29 to discuss its H2 Market Report, with input from IAB, Weide, and Lafayette Media.
(Image source: “Mistakes were made: evolution (HMM!)” by lindakowen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)
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