5 Things Advertisers Should Stop Doing in 2025 to Succeed in Programmatic

In the high-stakes world of programmatic advertising, clinging to outdated practices is tantamount to setting money on fire. Despite the rapid evolution of technology and consumer expectations, many advertisers stubbornly hold onto strategies that are not just ineffective but actively harmful to their campaigns.?

From ignoring privacy regulations to underutilizing innovations, these missteps are the invisible anchors dragging down performance. It’s time to confront these pain points head-on and make the necessary pivots for success in 2025.

1. Relying Solely on CPM Metrics

CPM (Cost Per Mille), which measures the cost per thousand impressions, has long been a standard metric in advertising. While it provides a snapshot of how many times an ad is displayed, relying solely on CPM is becoming increasingly shortsighted in 2025.?

CPM focuses on volume rather than value, which can lead to misleading conclusions about campaign performance. Simply put, a high number of impressions doesn’t guarantee meaningful engagement or conversions.

Practical Steps to Move Beyond CPM:

1. Focus on Outcome-Based Metrics.

• Conversions: Track the number of users who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading an app.
• ROAS: Calculate the revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising to ensure the campaign is profitable.
• CLV: Estimate the total revenue expected from a customer over their lifetime to measure long-term campaign success.

2. Implement Multi-Touch Attribution Models.

Move away from last-click attribution, which credits the last touchpoint before conversion, and adopt multi-touch attribution models. These models provide insights into all touchpoints along the customer journey, helping to identify which interactions were most influential in driving conversions.

3. Engagement Metrics.

Track engagement metrics like click-through rates (CTR), time spent on page, and bounce rates to better understand how users interact with your ads and landing pages.

2. Ignoring Data Privacy Regulations

The enforcement of data privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and emerging laws across the globe has redefined the digital advertising landscape. These laws require advertisers to obtain explicit consent for data collection and provide users with greater control over their personal information.?

Despite these mandates, many advertisers continue to rely on outdated methods like third-party cookies, which are rapidly becoming obsolete due to browser changes and regulatory pressures. The failure to adapt to these shifts not only increases the risk of legal penalties but also erodes consumer trust, which is critical in today’s privacy-conscious environment.

By adopting these technologies, advertisers can continue to leverage data-driven strategies without violating privacy regulations, maintaining both compliance and competitive edge:

1. First-Party Data Collection. Shifting to first-party data means collecting data directly from users through interactions on owned platforms, such as websites or apps. This requires integrating Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that unify data from various touchpoints to create a single customer view. This data is more reliable and privacy-compliant since it comes directly from user interactions with consent.
2. Differential Privacy. This technique ensures that individual data points cannot be identified within a dataset. It adds statistical noise to the data, allowing insights to be extracted without compromising individual privacy. Advertisers can implement differential privacy in their analytics pipelines to comply with privacy laws while still gaining actionable insights.
3. Privacy Sandbox Initiatives. Google’s Privacy Sandbox aims to create privacy-preserving APIs that allow advertisers to perform key functions like ad targeting and conversion tracking without third-party cookies. Technologies such as Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) or its successor Topics API, aim to group users based on interests while preserving anonymity.

3. Overloading Campaigns with Generic Creatives

Generic, one-size-fits-all creatives are quickly becoming a relic of the past. Consumers expect ads that speak directly to their needs, preferences, and behaviors. Overloading your campaigns with bland, uninspired content risks alienating your audience, leading to lower engagement, wasted ad spend, and ultimately, diminished ROI.

Generic creatives fail to capture the attention of diverse audience segments, resulting in poor engagement rates and minimal conversion. As consumers are exposed to more personalized experiences across digital platforms, they have come to expect the same level of relevance from advertisements.

Practical Steps to Improve Creative Personalization:

1. Segment Your Audience. Start by breaking down your audience into segments based on demographic, geographic, behavioral, or psychographic data. The more specific the segmentation, the better you can tailor your creatives to meet their expectations.
2. Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO). Implement DCO technology to automatically generate personalized ad variations in real-time. This approach allows you to dynamically adjust elements like images, text, or call-to-action based on user data, maximizing relevance and engagement.
3. A/B Testing at Scale. Regularly test different versions of your ads to see what resonates best with each audience segment. Use the results to refine your creatives continuously.
4. Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC). Incorporate UGC in your campaigns to create authentic, relatable ads that reflect real user experiences. UGC often performs better because it’s perceived as more trustworthy and engaging.
5. AI-Powered Creative Analysis Tools. Utilize AI tools that can analyze vast amounts of creative data to predict which ad variations will perform best. These tools can provide insights on elements such as color schemes, imagery, text length, and layout, allowing for real-time optimization and removal of underperforming creatives.
6. Interactive and Engaging Formats. Use interactive ad formats like quizzes, polls, or augmented reality (AR) to engage users actively. These formats create a more memorable ad experience and encourage higher interaction rates.

By implementing these strategies, you can ensure your ads are not only seen but also resonate with your audience, driving better engagement and conversion rates.

4. Underutilizing Programmatic TV

Connected TV (CTV) is rapidly becoming the future of television advertising, yet many advertisers are still anchored to traditional TV buying strategies. This reluctance to embrace CTV means missing out on several key advantages that can drastically enhance campaign performance.

Unlike traditional TV, CTV allows advertisers to deploy data-driven targeting to reach specific audience segments based on demographics, interests, and viewing habits. By not fully leveraging CTV, advertisers are wasting opportunities to connect with highly relevant audiences, leading to broader, less effective campaigns.

• Loss of Real-Time Analytics. CTV provides robust real-time analytics, giving advertisers insights into completion rates, engagement levels, and viewer behaviors. Ignoring these capabilities means losing the ability to optimize campaigns in real time, potentially leaving significant performance improvements on the table.
• Reduced Engagement Opportunities. CTV supports interactive ad formats, such as clickable ads and on-screen surveys, offering higher viewer engagement. Underutilizing these interactive elements means missing chances to foster deeper connections with viewers, which can drive brand loyalty and conversions.
• Inefficient Budget Allocation. CTV often provides a better cost-to-impact ratio by targeting more relevant audiences, thereby reducing wasted ad spend. Continuing to rely on traditional TV buys results in less precise targeting and higher costs without proportional returns.

Leverage addressable TV within the CTV ecosystem to serve different ads to different households watching the same program, enhancing relevance and ensuring that every ad dollar is well-spent.

5. Neglecting Contextual Targeting

As consumers grow more privacy-conscious, contextual targeting is regaining importance. This strategy aligns ads with the content on the page, providing a privacy-friendly alternative to traditional audience-based targeting.

Over-reliance on audience data can alienate users concerned about privacy, and it may fail to capture the full engagement potential that contextually relevant ads can offer.

Practical Steps to Utilize Contextual Targeting:

1. Content Alignment.

Place ads on pages that match the theme or topic of the advertised product or service. For instance, a travel agency could target articles about vacation destinations.

2. Dynamic Ad Creatives.

Use dynamic creative optimization to tailor ad content to the context, further increasing relevance and engagement.

3. Privacy Compliance.

By not relying on personal data, contextual targeting naturally aligns with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, reducing compliance risks.

Employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to analyze the content of the web pages deeply. These tools can understand the sentiment and tone of the content, ensuring that your ads not only match the topic but also resonate with the emotional context of the page, enhancing their effectiveness.

New Trends in Programmatic Advertising for 2025

1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. AI and ML are transforming every aspect of programmatic advertising, from audience segmentation to real-time bidding. Advertisers must harness these technologies to stay competitive.?

Use AI-driven predictive analytics to forecast ad performance and adjust strategies in real-time, reducing wasted spend and maximizing ROI.?

2. Sustainability and Green Advertising. With environmental concerns on the rise, sustainable advertising practices are becoming a differentiator. Programmatic platforms are now incorporating carbon offset tools.

Partner with ad exchanges that prioritize green servers and offer carbon-neutral campaign options.?

3. 5G and Edge Computing. The rollout of 5G and edge computing capabilities is enabling faster data processing and more responsive ad serving, especially in mobile and connected TV environments.

Leverage edge computing to minimize latency and deliver high-quality, interactive ad experiences that adapt in real-time to user behavior.?

Conclusion

As we navigate through 2025, advertisers must shed outdated strategies to embrace the innovative tactics that programmatic advertising demands. By focusing on privacy, personalization, advanced metrics, and new mediums like programmatic TV, advertisers can stay ahead of the curve. Remember, the only constant is change.