As we move towards 2025, the pace of innovation across the media and ad tech industries is accelerating. From artificial intelligence to CTV, these innovations present both opportunities and challenges. 

Emerging technologies such as generative AI are reshaping content creation and personalisation, while advancements in privacy-first solutions are redefining trust and transparency.

We asked the industry what key innovations they think are set to shape 2025 and beyond…

Programmatic will be driven by innovations prioritising automation, control, and reliability

As we enter 2025, programmatic advertising will be driven by innovations that prioritise automation, control, and reliability. AI and machine learning are reshaping the landscape, allowing publishers to automate revenue generation and reduce reliance on manual processes. This shift minimises the technical risks of human error, ensuring that ad stacks are as reliable and compliant as possible.

The focus will increasingly be on maintaining control over ad setups' technical and legal integrity. Publishers are looking for solutions that let them deploy changes confidently, avoid production incidents, and protect user experience by safeguarding web performance and Core Web Vitals. By embracing these advancements, the industry is creating a future where publishers can optimise monetisation while reducing operational complexity and technical uncertainty.

Asmaâ Bentahar, CMO, Pubstack

The industry will move towards AI-enabled curation

In 2025 we’ll see the move towards AI-enabled curation. Supply-side curation isn't new – but it has evolved from simple website lists and other inventory-led curation solutions. Traditional inventory curation still happens today, providing a tool for securing brand-safe inventory at an efficient cost. But more recently, advanced data-driven curation has provided capabilities that allow buyers to leverage audience, behavioural, and retail data to efficiently reach qualified consumers at scale and enhance advertising effectiveness. 

Using machine learning and deep neural networks, AI-enabled curation will also identify and package the media placements that perform best against an advertiser’s chosen goal, improving outcomes. This will be especially valuable in competitive sectors with high customer acquisition costs; for example, automotive, pharmaceuticals, and consumer tech, where buyers can struggle to identify audiences at scale in environments that drive campaign performance.

Matt Sattel, Chief Revenue Officer, OpenX

Generative AI will redefine creative possibilities on an unprecedented scale

Undoubtedly, AI continues to make massive waves into 2025. Its impact on operational efficiency and execution will push the boundaries of what’s possible, redefining every aspect of the industry as we know it.

That said, it is gen AI – the game-changing, eccentric cousin of AI – that is poised to take centre stage in 2025, redefining creative possibilities on an unprecedented scale. The real test for the industry will be distinguishing between those merely jumping on the gen AI bandwagon and those driving true innovation – leveraging gen AI to deliver authentic value and originality for clients and consumers.

At Invibes, we’re leading the charge in harnessing gen AI to elevate our clients’ campaigns through hyper-personalisation. In today’s saturated digital world, quality often gets lost in the noise. Personalised experiences go beyond capturing attention – they inspire deeper resonance, more meaningful engagement, and foster genuine connections between brands and their consumers – an affinity that will define successful brands in the future.

Caroline Lidington, General Director UK & APAC, Invibes Advertising

AI will bring more personalised recommendations and interactive content experiences to CTV

In 2025, we’ll see more digital technologies employed on connected TV. This will drive viewers to watch and interact with content and ads in new ways, which will ultimately help improve efficiencies and measurable business outcomes on the medium. For streamers and publishers, AI will bring more personalised recommendations and interactive content experiences to CTV like we’ve seen drive success on other platforms such as web and mobile. For CTV advertisers, deep contextual data will provide greater insight into viewer emotions and how people react to content, allowing for more precise ad placement and messaging.

Ron Gutman, CEO, Wurl

The financial implications of the AI revolution are staggering

The landscape of programmatic advertising has been significantly disrupted by the advent of artificial intelligence. This shift is hardly surprising given the sweeping transformations AI-driven tools and workflows are bringing to virtually every industry. In marketing, AI tools have become indispensable, revolutionising everything from content creation and audience targeting to advanced analytics.

The financial implications of this AI-driven evolution are staggering. Global revenues for AI tools used in marketing are projected to surge by an estimated USD$80bn (£63bn) between 2023 and 2027. Meanwhile, AI-powered ad spending is expected to skyrocket, reaching a remarkable USD$1.3tn (£817bn) within the next years. These extraordinary figures highlight the extensive integration of AI tools into nearly programmatic advertising platforms, underscoring the profound and far-reaching impact of AI on the marketing and advertising sectors. For sure, 2025 will be the year of IA engagement growth: more AI creatives, targeting, measurement and improvement of better customer connections.

Maksym Kovalenko, CEO, adWMG

AI will continue to revolutionise campaign delivery and servicing

As the main driver of current innovation in the ad tech space, AI will continue to revolutionise campaign delivery and servicing over the next year. However, we should expect creative AI applications to take a little longer to mature. 

Increasing focus on CTV optimisation and spend will reinforce the importance of real-time data, as part of the broader trend around ‘brandformance’. Gaming and app environments will also be targets for brands, with more moving into this space as traditional CPI performance decelerates; mobile will keep leading the way in this transition. 

Elsewhere in the ecosystem, commerce media will expand and innovate in 2025, bringing new data sets that enhance measurement, targeting, and optimisation capabilities.

Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder, LoopMe

Smarter measurement will shape 2025 and beyond

In 2025, advertisers will increasingly adopt new measurements, including attention, carbon, creative effectiveness, and look to innovate on traditional measurements like Brand Safety and MMM, to evaluate their digital campaigns.

Attention-based measurement will play a key role as brands link page-level and human-level signals to outcomes. 

We also anticipate progress in industry guidelines led by IAB and MRC initiatives. These will encourage broader adoption by fostering trust, transparency, and rigour, creating a foundation for consistent and reliable practices across the industry.

The combination of these guidelines and advancements in measurement will fundamentally reshape how brands approach their strategies. As demand grows for smarter metrics, attention will emerge as a key driver of efficiency and effectiveness, with an influence that will extend far beyond 2025.

Fabien Magalon, CEO, xpln.ai

End-to-end solutions will become essential for optimising performance and monetisation

CTV advertising will continue to grow for at least the next 3 years. With consumer preferences favouring on-demand content and connected viewing experiences, the erosion of traditional broadcast and cable television will accelerate, creating a battle for survival through M&A and consolidation. Streaming-first platforms like Netflix and Hulu continue to grow, while CTV ad platforms capture redirected ad spend.

However, smaller broadcasters and agencies tied to linear TV struggle to stay afloat. This reshaping of the video ecosystem positions premium content owners, CTV platforms, and ad tech companies as key players in a high-stakes power struggle for dominance. Cable spinoffs will create new opportunities for legacy media companies to invest into streaming video without overhang. As streaming consumption soars, end-to-end solutions that combine content delivery, ad serving, and data insights will become essential for optimising performance and monetisation.

Mike Caprio, SVP SM, Global, JWP Connatix

AI will advance sustainability

In 2025, AI innovations will revolutionise media efficiency and quality, driving significant advancements with sustainability as a key benefit. AI-powered optimizations will enhance how media is targeted, delivered, and optimized, ensuring that every impression is meaningful and impactful. By reducing waste in the digital supply chain, these tools will eliminate redundant ad placements and inefficient paths, resulting in superior campaign performance and ROI. Simultaneously, these improvements in efficiency will naturally align with sustainability goals. By streamlining data transfer and reducing unnecessary ad traffic, carbon emissions from cloud infrastructure will decrease, making the media ecosystem more environmentally friendly. This dual focus on maximising media quality while minimising environmental impact will define the next wave of innovation, setting new standards for responsible and effective digital marketing.

Guillaume Grimbert, CEO, Greenbids 

AI will influence everything

Rather than in just one area we'll see AI as a layer across everything, making savings and opening up ways of generating value. Predictable but inevitable! Both CTV and retail media have had plenty of hype in 24 and I think we'll get nice incremental innovations next year to help adoption of those channels. As social grows I'm surprised it's taken so long for social shopping to kick off and I think this will explode in 25. Personalisation at scale has struggled to find it's place but in conjunction with the value of targeting niche audiences I predict this will get it's time in the sun in 25. Finally, and closer to DAIVID, 25 is the year we'll look past attention and understand specifically what the creative inside the unit is doing to sales. This'll reflect the bigger conversation about media and creative working more closely than it has.

Barney Worfolk-Smith, Chief Growth Officer, Daivid