2025 Predictions

It’s that time of year again, when the ad industry takes to LinkedIn to predict a wider range of futures than just campaign performance.?

If recent years have taught us anything (particularly 2024), it’s the folly of thinking we know what’s coming. Nonetheless, here are four of my predictions for what will be the talk of the industry in 2025.

1: The Great Data Convergence

Data fragmentation is coming to an end.

A wave of consolidation will unify Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), clean rooms, identity resolution tools, and enrichment systems. Standalone data solutions will either adapt, merge, or disappear.

Watch Snowflake closely in the coming year, as it stands to be a frontrunner in this streamlined but not stripped-down data ecosystem, where clearer attribution and measurement tied to uplifts in concrete business metrics will bring much-needed clarity to post-cookie performance tracking.

2: The SSP-DSP Tug-of-War

2025 will be a turning point in the evolving relationship between SSPs and DSPs as both sides try to circumvent the other.

SSPs will bet on closer ties to publishers and their first-party data, while DSPs will be pushed to embrace curated supply paths, with both sides extolling the benefits of a leaner and more relevant bidding environment.

Who’ll come out on top? My guess is we’ll see buyers prioritise SSPs that can deliver transparent and data-rich inventory over the broader, less targeted options of pureplay DSPs.?

Either way, “firehose” targeting won’t survive the SPO push which was big this year, and will be even bigger next.

3: A Very Different Google

Love them or loathe them, will we see a very different Google from today towards the end of 2025?

The potential spin-off of its ad tech operations — or even the entirety of Chrome — will see a scramble for alternatives that will make cookie disruption feel like a drop in the ocean in comparison.

Will this usher in an explosion of independent ad servers or will The Trade Desk swoop in to capture unmoored market share?

And while the search and AI wings of Google will keep it at the highest echelons of big tech, both present fiercer competition today than the company has faced in many years, and it will only heat up in 2025 — especially if ChatGPT can muscle in as the “front page of the internet”.?

4: The Curation Cure-All

Since cookies were first put on the chopping block, media owners have been repositioning their first-party data assets. With curation, their hard work will pay off.

Dissatisfaction with open programmatic markets is no longer the sole domain of publishers and has sunk deep into agencies and brands who are rightly questioning why so few of their ad dollars (or pounds for my UK friends) seem to reach working media.

Momentum for programmatic curation as a way of refining spend has picked up through 2024 and will reach a fever pitch in 2025. This will be especially apparent in CTV trading, where SSPs will capture the attention of a new breed of performance-focused buyers entering the market by promoting their direct inventory access.

And a mini prediction: I’ll waste too much time arguing with people who say curation is just a rebrand of ad networks. :)

Whether my predictions right on the money or set to go bust? I think I’ve played it relatively safe this year, but let me know if you see a different future. If I’m feeling brave, I’ll revisit this post this time next year and tally up my wins and losses.

However 2025 shakes out, I hope it’s prosperous for us all!