Month: January 2025

The Disney-Fubo deal fosters many more questions about Disney’s long-term streaming sports strategy and pay TV intentions.

Production company R+C has rebranded as creative agency Brass and hired former McCann and 360i creative leader Pierre Lipton as chief creative officer. By expanding as an agency, Brass aims to work directly with clients to affect strategy and the creative process from the beginning, CEO Sean Gately told ADWEEK. Whereas some agencies have opened…

A staycation can be a relaxing and affordable way to recover from the stress of holiday travel, but it’s a recipe for disappointment in an unhinged ad for Bloomin’ Brands restaurant chain Outback Steakhouse. Created by agency Mischief @ No Fixed Address, the 30-second spot begins as a fairly conventional promotion for the chain’s latest…

After another year of rapid AI development and experimentation, tech and marketing experts think 2025 could help move adoption beyond the testing phase.

The factors in play come from multiple fronts. Tech companies are expanding access to AI content creation, agencies are working on ways to improve workflows for various tools, and enterprise-focused companies are looking for more ways to drive better performance with specific applications. Meanwhile, tech companies are rushing to deploy new ways for companies and consumers to use AI agents.

While there are plenty of topics to follow in the coming year, here are five things industry experts think will happen with AI in 2025 — not to mention all the news from Las Vegas this week during CES. (Read more in our 2024 AI news timeline and how platforms are evolving with AI content and ads.)

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No one doubts that 2025 is going to be a fasten-your-seatbelt kind of year.

A new (but also not-so-new) president known to shake up norms, an expected deregulatory environment, but one that generally discourages pro-social initiatives and generative AI adapting and getting more powerful with each new iteration — the latest buzzword being “agentic” AI. 

So what’s in store for the media agency world? A lot, it would seem. For one, the mid-December news that Omnicom moved to acquire Interpublic Group has observers and analysts thinking it’s bound to set off a wave of acquisition and consolidation among the other agency holding companies — at least most of them. Scenarios usually involve WPP, which has been the largest global holdco, or Havas, which has just spun out from parent Vivendi, making it a much easier acquisition target now. 

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Ads that target AI agents rather than humans might sound like something ripped from the pages of sci-fi, but it’s a concept that’s gaining traction among marketers thanks to recent musings by Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. On the “Marketing Against The Grain” podcast, he painted a picture of a future where  “user never sees an ad. Unlike Google, the different merchants are not competing for users’ attention. They’re competing for the AI agents’ attention”.

Naturally, Srinivas’ comments have unleashed a torrent of hot takes. Somewhere in the swirl of opinions, a few recurring arguments emerge — both for and against this seemingly far-fetched, yet not entirely implausible, vision.

Cases for ads served to AI agents

It provides a cleaner user experience
People are over the endless deluge of ads — especially the ones that miss the mark entirety. But if AI agents became the new target for advertisers, the constant stream of ads could disappear from view altogether. The result? A cleaner, ad-free user experience, letting consumers enjoy the web and their platforms without the usual interruptions.

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This edition of Digiday’s daily CES Briefing examines how brands and agencies are seeing a need to change payment structures to account for AI tools handling some agency work, what marketing and media execs may have missed on the CES show floor and how Disney’s tech showcase reflects real-time bidding finally being fast enough for live sports.

Agency compensation models in the AI era

A change to how clients pay agencies seems inevitable in the AI era. How the agency compensation model should change, though, is anyone’s guess. But it has very much been a topic of discussion during CES this week.

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TikTok’s new ultimatum — shutdown in the U.S. or get a lifeline from the Supreme Court — is the latest plot twist in a whirlwind month that’s left markets in a tailspin. With the app’s future hanging by a thread, marketers are navigating murky waters, scrambling to make sense of what it all means for their plans.

Late last month, Chris (not his real name) fired off an email to his TikTok rep. As the go-to guy for managing client ad spend at his agency, he needed clarity ahead of a critical moment for the app, the looming federal deadline that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok — or face a U.S. ban. The response he got wasn’t just telling, it was practically a confession. TikTok reps were offering make-goods to advertisers locking in ad inventory through the end of the second quarter.

For the first time since whispers of a ban began six years ago, TikTok seemed to be bracing for the possibility that its American swan song might not be far off.

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Over the past two weeks, a growing cohort of digital creators has spoken out against the Honey browser extension for swapping creators’ affiliate marketing links with its own. Beyond their stolen affiliate revenue, however, creators are criticizing — and suing — Honey because they believe it has hurt their ability to sign future brand partnerships.

The controversy kicked off on Dec. 21, 2024, when the YouTuber MegaLag released a video essay claiming how Honey, a PayPal-owned browser extension, makes money by replacing creators’ affiliate marketing links with its own, thus gleaning a share of affiliate revenue that would otherwise go to the creators themselves. A Honey representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Since December, the Honey scandal has become something of a cause célèbre within the YouTube community, in part due to the fact that prominent creators such as James “MrBeast” Donaldson and Marques “MKBHD” Brownlee had previously promoted the service in sponsored videos. On Jan. 2, legal YouTubers such as Devin “LegalEagle” Stone initiated a class-action lawsuit against the company.

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KXAN reporter Ryan Chandler is joining NBC News as a Texas-based correspondent. Chandler is the Austin Texas Capitol Correspondent for the Austin, Texas Nexstar owned NBC affiliate. “Follow your dreams, kids: this week I am so grateful to join @nbcnews as a correspondent – based in Texas and reporting nationwide @todayshow @nbcnightlynews @nbcnewsnow @msnbc,” Chandler…