By Jeff Sue, GM of Mintegral Americas
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s always instructive to pause and think about what the next year might hold. Here’s my take on what we can expect to see in 2025.
AI Agents make their mark
I believe 2025 will be the year in which AI Agents start to make their mark in automating all sorts of processes, from app and games production and UA campaign development to answering sales and customer service inquiries.
Developers are already using tools like Replit to build apps and games quickly and more sustainably. XMP, a media-buying platform, also uses AI to automatically shift budget allocation in real-time to optimize the best-performing channels.
From my perspective, user acquisition (UA) managers will find interfacing with tools and marketing vendors that much easier. If a developer wants to try a new product out, instead of a lengthy sales cycle, an AI agent can take care of the process, matching the enquiring company’s requirements with the right products and capabilities right away. The ability for marketing teams to test new systems can be ready-made with AI agents.
The same principle applies to customer service. Chatbots are already in play, but AI Agents can go so much further, tailoring the response to the customer’s actual issue.
What does all this mean? Long-term, AI will reduce the number of people you need to create a billion-dollar company from, say 10,000 to 5,000 or even 500, as AI takes on the grunt work and people are freed up to work more strategically. This agentic future will be more efficient, meaning better margins, which is critical for any CEO.
Privacy rules
An increased focus on privacy will continue in 2025. Consumers are more aware of their rights about their data than ever before, and despite Google’s about-turn on deprecating third-party cookies, it’s estimated that around 40% of the open web is non-addressable via cookies, given the moves made by other browsers.
What will emerge to help advertisers target consumers in a privacy-centric way is the billion-dollar question – whether that’s some new form of anonymized identifier, or some form of contextual targeting that can replicate what advertisers have become used to. What is certain, however, is that everyone operating in the digital advertising space will need to keep privacy and compliance front and center when planning their 2025 campaigns.
Advertisers widen the net
Tied up with enhanced privacy regulations that make it harder for advertisers to reach their audiences, we will see advertisers experimenting with new channels to find them in 2025. Connected TV will continue to find a place on more media plans, reflecting the fact that consumers spend less and less time watching linear broadcast TV, and more and more time with streaming services.
We are also seeing e-commerce advertisers starting to advertise in-app, in mobile games. This type of advertiser has previously shied away from in-app because the CPMs are too high. If a Match 3 game is advertising within another Match 3 game, or a Casino game within another Casino game, you could be looking at a CPM of $50, maybe even $100. This is a price e-commerce advertisers have traditionally not been prepared to pay, because they can find the same people elsewhere for much less. But this is becoming harder, and at the same time, in-app inventory is being made available on a cost-per-outcome basis, reducing the risk for the advertiser, who may well be willing to pay $20 for an outcome of the consumer downloading their app and making their first purchase.
Acquisitions ramp up
The last couple of years in ad tech have been quiet in M&A terms. There’s been a lack of confidence which has depressed valuations to the point where there’s been no real incentive for startup founders to sell. But things are changing. According to data from Luma Partners via Axios, Q3 2024 deal volume was up 118% year-over-year.
In August, Outbrain acquired Teads for $1 billion, while the last few weeks of 2024 saw Omnicom announce a deal to acquire Interpublic for $13.5 billion, in a move that will create the world’s biggest ad agency. We also saw LoopMe, a DSP, acquiring ChartBoost as a way to access their own supply and avoid the “Exchange Tax” of 20-30% that DSPs in this position typically face.
It feels like there is more confidence in ad tech now and I expect to see more IPOs and more acquisitions in 2025 – an SDK platform acquiring a company that focuses on mobile web, or a mobile SDK network acquiring a CTV platform, or vice versa. It just feels like the climate is better, the industry is in a much better place, and there are some great opportunities out there.
Creativity takes center stage
The creative has always been a key part of any advertising campaign, and given the direction of travel for targeting, it will become even more important in 2025. Because if advertisers are forced to resort to more generalized targeting, then it becomes even more important to focus on good creative and storytelling to explain why anyone needs their app.
Traditionally, producing good creative relied on three things – time, talent and tools. AI solves for all of these. The latest generation of AI-generated creative is pretty incredible, and even if there’s often something about it that’s not perfect, it still works because it’s new and different, something no one’s ever seen before. It’s also highly scalable. With AI, it’s quick and easy to produce, 10, 50, or even 100 variations on the same theme, then test them to see which works best. AI-generated creative will be huge in 2025.
Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2025!
