AI has emerged as a central focus in digital marketing
AI is no longer a test case in marketing, it’s the main operating system. Brands that previously experimented with AI in silos are now scaling its use across core campaign functions. We’re seeing AI redefine creative development, automate time-consuming processes like copy generation and media planning, and provide real-time data analysis that improves campaign accuracy and performance. This is about rebuilding how marketing works from the ground up using machine intelligence.
The shift is measurable. In Mediaocean’s H2 2025 Market Report, 75% of marketers stated AI is now a strategic priority. That’s not a trend, it’s a signal. It tells you where your competitors are heading and where the standard for marketing success is being set. Today, if you’re not actively aligning your marketing team with AI capabilities, you’re not standing still; you’re falling behind.
This adoption lets teams move from guessing to knowing. Predictive models replace assumptions. Content variation at scale improves audience targeting without overstretching creative resources. And with tools evolving fast, the companies leading this shift aren’t just executing campaigns better, they’re learning from them exponentially faster.
For senior leaders, owning this transformation means pushing budgets into intelligent automation, hiring people who understand both domains, tech and marketing, and making sure the AI models being used have access to high-integrity data.
If your marketing organization is still asking whether AI is ready for prime time, the question is outdated. It’s already operating the show.
Identity-based solutions have become critical in response to the decline of cookies
The end of cookie-based tracking isn’t something to react to, it’s already in motion. And it’s driving a broader shift in how brands establish and maintain customer identity. Performance marketing can’t function without targeting. Identity is how that targeting survives cookie deprecation.
In today’s market, strong identity solutions rely on a blend of first-party data (from your own channels), third-party partnerships, and probabilistic modeling, which uses signals like device type, region, or behavior patterns to infer user attributes. This allows marketers to personalize experiences while moving closer to privacy-friendly practices.
The Mediaocean report makes it clear: identity is now foundational. Rising privacy regulations and fragmented user journeys across platforms demand a sharper focus here. The good news? This improves quality. When users authenticate more directly, via subscriptions or logged-in states, you also get cleaner audience data. That’s better for performance and easier to defend under consumer privacy laws.
For executives, the takeaway is strategic. Investing in identity means investing in precision. It’s about getting the mechanics right, building scalable pipelines to ingest data from varied platforms, standardizing identifiers across ecosystems, and using that intelligence not only for targeting, but also for measuring ROI end-to-end across campaigns.
Most importantly, identity work is long-term infrastructure. It doesn’t change with every platform update or privacy policy revision. It lets you take control of your customer relationships, rather than renting access through intermediaries.
So if your digital strategy still leans heavily on cookie-based systems, you’re running on a tech stack that’s already dated. The time to migrate isn’t next year, it’s now.
Connected TV (CTV) is emerging as a major recipient of renewed ad spend
CTV isn’t optional anymore, it’s where audiences are, and more importantly, where marketers can finally achieve targeted reach at scale. With the streaming ecosystem growing in both user base and content volume, marketers now have access to inventory that rivals traditional TV, but with the added precision of digital targeting.
The shift in ad spend is already happening. Mediaocean’s H2 2025 Market Report confirms that CTV is receiving the largest share of budget reallocations among marketers. This isn’t based on hype, it’s driven by measurable improvements in targeting efficiency and return on investment. Better broadcaster data, robust identity graphs, and platform-level metrics mean brands can now track performance at a user level, not just impressions.
Campaign delivery has moved beyond mass exposure. Marketers are now using CTV platforms to test messaging variations, optimize creative in real time, and link ad exposure to specific user actions. These capabilities weren’t viable with linear television or even early streaming formats. Now they are. And marketers are using them to build precision-first campaigns that demonstrate direct business impact.
For executives, this means CTV isn’t just a line item on a media plan, it’s a core area where marketing, data, and content must intersect. Decision-makers should expect their teams to build out CTV capabilities with the same seriousness as they treat performance marketing. That includes working with trusted tech partners, building native creative for streaming formats, and ensuring that measurement standards are baked into campaign planning from the outset.
The window for testing is closing. CTV has moved into mainstream execution. If your team isn’t already shifting spend and building around it, you’re behind the curve.
Cultural and political sensitivities are reshaping brand messaging
Marketing now intersects more visibly with culture and public discourse. That shift isn’t theoretical, it’s operational. Brands are facing increasing pressure to speak, respond, or adapt based on unfolding social, political, and economic conditions. What you say, or choose not to say, can directly impact brand trust and customer retention.
Executives need to know that personalization is no longer only about digital touchpoints or behavioral data. Messaging has to show awareness, of different communities, different perspectives, and current events. That doesn’t mean every brand must take a stand on every issue, but it does mean your campaigns must reflect the broader environment they launch into.
According to the Mediaocean report, marketers are actively prioritizing nuanced messaging. The demand for speed here is also increasing. You can’t run creative that was finalized weeks ago if a new development shifts public sentiment. Rapid response mechanisms, tight feedback loops, and approved communication frameworks are now essential.
For business leaders, the best approach is structural. Empower teams to operate with guidelines, not static playbooks. Build escalation paths that allow messaging to be evaluated and revised quickly. And ensure diversity within decision-making groups, not just in demographics but in viewpoints, so that campaigns reflect the full spectrum of the audience you’re trying to engage.
Markets are more volatile. Conversations evolve faster. Your brand voice must remain aligned with values, yet adaptable to the moment. It’s not about chasing trends, it’s about staying grounded while remaining responsive. That’s what creates trust.
The rise of AI is driving a notable decline in traditional search advertising spend
Search advertising is declining, 22% down from H1, according to Mediaocean’s H2 2025 Market Report, and that drop hasn’t happened randomly. AI is starting to replace how users find information. Instead of seeing ten blue links on a results page, users are increasingly trusting AI-generated answers. This is fundamentally changing how marketers think about SEO and paid search.
Traditional search optimization focused heavily on keywords, backlinks, and bidding strategies. That’s not enough anymore. AI-based interfaces don’t display results in the same way, and users don’t interact with them using the same queries. Marketers are now tasked with optimizing content to surface well in AI-driven environments, which rewards coherent, structured content over mechanical keyword placement.
And this shift doesn’t stop at content. Technical architecture matters more now, too. For instance, server-side JavaScript rendering is becoming essential to ensure that AI crawlers, especially those that don’t index client-rendered pages, can understand and prioritize your content. These tasks often fall outside traditional marketing capabilities, requiring engineering support and deeper collaboration with development teams.
For executives, this means redefining how your teams approach visibility. If your growth still depends heavily on conventional search performance, you need to rethink both spend and structure. Reallocating budget into areas that increase brand presence within AI interfaces, or enable smarter content and technical optimization, will put you ahead of this curve instead of playing catch-up later.
This trend is not speculative; it’s happening now. The payoff will come from proactive adaptation, not from trying to protect legacy search spend that’s already underperforming.
Overall marketing budgets remain stable, with funds being reallocated from traditional tactics to emerging channels
Despite declining investment in legacy tactics, like traditional search ads, overall marketing budgets are holding steady. That’s a sign of strategic intent, not uncertainty. Brands aren’t cutting spend; they’re redirecting it toward platforms and technologies where growth metrics show higher returns. Mediaocean highlights this transition, with AI tools, CTV, and identity-driven strategies seeing rising budget share.
Marketers are becoming more selective. The focus is shifting from volume to impact, channels that support advanced targeting, smarter creative deployment, and responsive optimization now earn the investment. This realignment isn’t a temporary adjustment. It reflects deeper operational learning: legacy methods don’t sustain competitive advantage when audience behavior and platform mechanics dramatically change.
Executives should pay close attention to where their teams are placing bets. Are they pre-loading their strategies toward fast-emerging areas? Are they adjusting their performance frameworks to measure impact in new environments like CTV or AI-optimized channels? Those are the questions that matter now.
Holding the same budget but distributing it more intelligently is a strong signal to the market. It shows control, intent, and a willingness to evolve with data, while keeping spend tied to outcomes, not just tradition.
This isn’t about spending more, it’s about spending smarter. And that’s where the most competitive marketing teams are already heading.
Unifying disparate data sources across multiple platforms remains a significant technological challenge
Data unification is still one of the most persistent roadblocks in marketing operations. Marketers are working across dozens of platforms, each with its own data structures, privacy controls, and update cycles. As campaign execution becomes faster and more complex, connecting performance insights across these tools is becoming harder, not easier.
The core of the issue is that data aggregation technologies lag behind the pace of channel innovation. New platforms and tactics emerge fast, but the infrastructure that brings all metrics into a consistent, functional view takes longer to define, build, and deploy. This creates decision gaps. Without an integrated data layer, marketers can’t accurately assess what’s performing, what needs to scale, or what to shut down.
For executives, this isn’t just a technical inconvenience, it’s a strategic risk. Disconnected data limits your ability to move decisively. It undermines performance insight, slows down experimentation, and complicates attribution. And the longer these systems remain fragmented, the harder it becomes to establish a credible, single source of marketing truth.
Solving this means investing in backend systems that can scale with edge platforms. It requires collaboration between marketing, IT, and analytics teams to standardize taxonomy, normalize data models, and maintain enforced governance. Tools alone won’t solve it, you need the internal structures to ensure consistency over time.
This is a long-term infrastructure challenge. But delaying progress here will impact every other part of your marketing strategy, from segmentation to measurement to optimization. Unification isn’t just an operational goal. It’s foundational.
Expert insights highlight the need for resilience and integrated technological strategies in marketing
The only constant in digital marketing right now is change. Consumer behavior, technology platforms, privacy regulations, and campaign channels are evolving at the same time. And they’re not slowing down. Industry experts agree, success depends on how well you integrate technology, creative execution, and data into a single, coherent marketing system.
Arron Goldman, CMO at Mediaocean, makes it clear: AI, CTV, and multi-ID strategies have moved from experimental to essential. The companies pulling ahead are those aligning their teams and tools across tech, creative, and performance. It’s not about adding more tools, it’s about orchestrating what you’ve already invested in to operate as one system.
Karsten Weide, Principal and Chief Analyst at W Media Research, highlights what that looks like in practice, marketers adapting through “a blend of resilience and reinvention.” That means having the ability to adjust without delay and rebuild systems when needed. Reinvention doesn’t mean chaos. It means intentional system upgrades in response to new realities.
For C-suite leaders, this calls for sharper alignment across leadership functions. The IT, product, and marketing organizations must be in sync to respond to rapid shifts, whether platform updates or behavioral changes. Integration must be structured and ongoing, not reactive or fragmented.
The teams that will lead the next phase of growth won’t be the ones doing more, they’ll be the ones running smarter, with systems built to flex and scale as needed. This kind of capability doesn’t emerge by chance. It’s a result of focused investment and disciplined execution.
Recap
The marketing playbook has changed, and not slowly. AI isn’t something to watch; it’s something to integrate. Cookies aren’t disappearing someday, they’re already unreliable. Identity, precision, and platform agility are now non-negotiable. Meanwhile, CTV, once considered experimental, is proving it can deliver both reach and results.
None of this is about adding more tools. It’s about aligning systems that scale, operate fast, and adapt in real time. The leadership move now is clarity, knowing what to cut, where to invest, and which signals to trust. That’s where advantage is built.
You don’t need more disruption. You need tighter integration and cleaner execution. Marketing is shifting from volume to performance, and from process to outcome. The organizations that win will be the ones that see change early, move with it, and align people, tech, and data without hesitation.
