Key tech trends and their impact on advertising

As we enter another promising year, the world continues to evolve with the emergence of new technologies. The year 2024 introduced us to so many challenges and opportunities that made it a defining year for many new technologies shaping not just the advertising industry but also impacting the world at large in the year 2025 and beyond.

With that context, it becomes crucial for an agency to decide its strategic investments for the year, keeping an eye on trends that will give it an edge in the competitive environment by staying ahead of the curve to reap long-term benefits. It is easy to fall into the trap of choosing the technology just because it’s in vogue rather than first pinning down the problem and then arriving at the technology to solve it. With this guiding principle, I would like to dive into five key technology trends that fascinated me and my perspective on what should we expect of them in 2025.

Convergence in Conversation Commerce: There has been a radical change in how people are interacting with the world around them. With 5G being rolled out at a global scale and voice assistants embedded into everything, the world is turning out to be more conversational and visual to discover and engage with brands. In the transition from text, voice, and visual search, there would be a surge in richer content search and discovery with volumetric details, delivering audiences a more realistic and immersive experience. Hence, there may be a surge in demand for such assets across brands with limitations that exist in AI-generated 3D models. The impact of this would be seen in e-commerce platforms, search engines, multimodal live streams and even virtual worlds that have been dormant since 2023 when they were in the hype.

Spatial Computing: Audiences now experience near-real product interactions that blur the lines between the physical and digital worlds, allowing for enhanced storytelling and decision-making. Multiple advancements in the areas of AR, VR, and MR have played a pivotal role in advertising campaigns, evolving from social engagement and gamification to immersive brand experiences and utilities. One of the most recent offshoots of this is CGI-led OOH advertising. Executions of this from global and local brands may have taken over your social feed recently. The convergence of these technologies into various media avenues will likely see tangential growth, supported by advanced and affordable handheld, wearables, and smart home devices in 2025. I expect improvements in spatial mapping and object recognition technology to deliver contextual and hyper-personalized user experiences and advertising adapted to individual preferences.

AI in All: AI has transformed the world around us in more ways than we can imagine. We have observed a significant growth last year that continues into this year. It was last year when practical applications of AI, beyond labs and research papers, gained widespread attention. Besides various LLMs, generative AI models like ChatGpt4 and Midjourney garnered widespread attention, adoption and conversation over their usage. The surrounding topics of copyright, data privacy, and ethics made responsible AI a pressing topic. The scenario was not any different in advertising as any other field that AI touched. It brought multiple potential benefits in ad relevancy, efficiency and creativity. We saw brands use AI-generated video ads that were promoted, which until early 2024 was only for exploratory purposes and now shall extract real value. In 2025, anticipate diverse use cases of AI in audience analysis, predictive analytics, and multimodal interaction across content and ad formats.

Data Decentralization: “Data is a new oil“ was coined by mathematician Clive Humby in 2006. While this notion prevailed until concerns about responsible usage arose. To look at data as oil has led to every entity owning this resource so territorial that they have become invariably more vulnerable than valuable. Treating data as currency with rational value exchange between brands and consumers is becoming imperative. While the dream for a cookie-less world stalls for the time being the alliances and collaborations between agencies with contextual and behavioural data will deepen audience insights. We shall get a unified view of consumers and craft campaigns that are hyper-personalized and targeted across platforms. 2025 will see the deployment of AI, blockchain and other decentralized technologies in data sharing and storage that could empower users with greater control over their data, ensuring fair value exchange for their interactions and engagements. This shift will also transform content creation, promotion, distribution and delivery with utmost transparency and credibility.

Sustainable Advertising: Sustainable and purpose-led advertising gained momentum last year, using technologies to address social and cultural issues with real-world impact. The discussion shifted from agencies promoting sustainable products and practices to driving the change. Undoubtedly, the above-listed technologies will contribute to ideas promoting sustainability and purpose-driven advertising in 2025.
Along with it, I also eagerly look forward to the entire industry pledging to reduce environmental impact and integrate eco-friendly practices into advertising.

While we witness the outlined technologies and trends shaping the advertising industry the agencies will observe both opportunities and challenges on multiple fronts while adopting and exercising them. I believe embracing these will help us all navigate the evolving landscape, drive innovation and deliver exceptional results to our clients in the year 2025.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.