Five predictions for 2025

1 Retail media nears maturity

Retail media is set to expand significantly in both breadth (as more providers offer media space) and depth (as providers increase the range of opportunities). We believe the market will achieve greater maturity, as industry standards are increasingly adopted and knowledge levels around the market improve.

Tighter privacy regulations are shifting advertiser focus towards first-party data, which will enable brands to optimise investments within retail media more effectively.

The next challenge will be to manage these walled gardens. Whilst each retailer can manage frequency within their own portfolio, cross-media measurement programs will become essential to prevent retail media from driving frequency at the expense of broader KPIs.

Retail media is growing up, but advertisers need to remember that just because it is more measurable does not mean it should become the only media channel on the schedule.

2 Balancing sustainability commitments with business realities

Many companies are facing accusations of backsliding on their sustainability commitments, but even those that remain committed to aligning their brands and businesses to a 1.5-degree pathway face a sizeable task to stay on course on sustainability in 2025.

What will be critical in the year ahead will be the ability of marketers to drive the internal behaviour change needed to integrate sustainability into brand strategy, to embrace innovation at a product, service and business model level and to shift internal mindsets. Put simply, marketers need to demonstrate that sustainability is a value driver not a cost in 2025.

Blending ‘cash and carbon’ will help bridge the ever-present tension between delivering for the business in the short term whilst addressing the long-term risks and opportunities that come from understanding the needs of a broader set of stakeholders.

3 A year of reckoning for food and alcohol marketing

Food and alcohol marketing have been in the regulatory crosshairs for two decades, but 2025 may be defining. Efforts to restrict food marketing, in particular, have gathered pace across Latin America, South-East Asia and Europe.

Next year’s UN High-Level Meeting will signal whether Member States globally still trust companies to self-regulate – or whether they feel it’s time for statutory regulation. An impending review of the European rules – the Audio-visual Media Services Directive – could see Europe-wide restrictions exported to the rest of the world.

More than ever, big food and alcohol brands must step up to show the progress they have made and build a convincing case for self- and co-regulatory to deliver on public health goals.

4 Tech will sharpen the focus on people and culture

Whilst WFA members may not all be as committed to generative AI as some sources would have you believe, the transformation is coming at a lightening pace and is underestimated by very few. Seen by many as being “bigger than the Internet”, the potential of generative AI has most organisations revisiting their transformation agendas.

As well as examining and elevating their team’s skills, companies will also increasingly review their own corporate cultures. In a recent CMO Forum benchmark, 100% of our respondents agreed that “having a strong marketing culture contributes to greater revenue”. Smart marketers know that focusing on your organisation’s culture will be good for your people and your business.

5 Back to fundamentals (again)

Over the past few years, we have seen marketing fundamentals, such as brand building, creeping back up members annual priorities. This is, in part, down to the changes we are witnessing with the rapid emergence of AI solutions for marketers. But as one WFA member, sharing at our CMO Forum in Toronto, pointed out: “So many of us are looking at the same GenAI tools that we’re all doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes.”

In a world where tech solutions threaten homogeneity and emerging ecommerce platforms risk commoditisation, the power of brands will be more important than ever. For many marketers who entered our industry as digital natives, these fundamental marketing skills are not as commonplace as for the previous generation. In 2025 there will need to be an emphasis on marketing capabilities to be additive in this exciting new landscape.