Top 2025 Marketing Trends in Review

Something felt different about marketing in 2025.

Ads were easier to ignore, recommendations felt more personal, and people became quicker to decide what was worth their time—and what wasn’t.

Behind the scenes, brands were quietly reworking how they connect with audiences, moving away from flashy tactics and toward simpler, smarter systems built around trust and relevance.

What emerged was a new marketing reality shaped by trust, relevance, and proof—not hype.

Here are the five trends that shaped U.S. marketing in 2025:

• How brands applied them

• How consumers responded

1. AI as Marketing Infrastructure, Not “a Feature”

In 2025, AI stopped being positioned as a novelty and instead became the operating layer behind marketing decisions, from creative optimization to media allocation and lifecycle messaging.

In Practice: 

Retailers like Walmart and Target used AI to localize messaging by region, store, and inventory status. Tech platforms such as Adobe, Salesforce, and HubSpot embedded predictive modeling directly into marketing workflows, allowing teams to move faster with fewer resources.

DoorDash leveraged Google’s AI-powered Demand Gen tool, which boosted its conversion rate by 15 times and improved cost per action efficiency by 50% compared with previous campaigns.

Search Interest:

Google search interest for terms like “AI marketing,” “AI tools for marketing,” and “generative AI advertising” remained consistently high throughout 2025, with spikes tied to major platform updates. The U.S. showed some of the strongest relative interest globally, suggesting not just curiosity, but active adoption.

Consumer Reaction: 

Consumers appreciated relevance and speed but remained wary of over-personalization. According to Kantar, when it comes to consumers:

• ~50% report enjoying AI-generated visuals in ads, more than half continue to feel uneasy and distrustful of AI-generated ads.

• More than 60% of consumers worry that generative AI could lead to fake or misleading advertisements, highlighting a substantial trust gap between marketers and the public.

What Is Clear:

AI is welcome when it reduces friction, not when it feels intrusive.

2. Retail Media Networks (RMN) Moved to the Center of the Funnel

Retail media was no longer optional in 2025, it was a must have. As third-party cookies fade, brands followed first-party data straight into retailer ecosystems. Amazon's dominance in the retail media space is undeniable, with ad-supported tiers in Amazon CTV driving ad revenue growth by 19% in Q3 2024.

In Practice:

• CPG brands shifted meaningful budget into Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, and Target Roundel, using these platforms not only for conversion, but for awareness via video, CTV, and audio formats. Retailers, in turn, increasingly behaved like media companies.

• The expected growth for RMNs is $28.9 billion in just two years.

• By 2030, they’ll command 50% of total ad spend,” says Andy Murray, Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi X.

Search Interest: 

Searches for “retail media networks,” “Amazon Ads,” and “Walmart Connect” showed steady growth in the U.S., even if they never broke into consumer “Year in Search” lists. That’s telling as retail media was high-intent and professional, not hype-driven.

Consumer Reaction: 

Most consumers barely registered retail media as advertising. Inside a shopping environment, promoted products felt like discovery and provided transparency and relevance were maintained.

What Is Clear:

By 2030, when RMNs approach 50% of ad spend, brands that don’t master retail ecosystems will lose distribution leverage.

3. Creator-Led Marketing Replaced Influencer Campaigns

The creator economy matured in 2025. Brands that succeeded moved beyond one-off influencer posts toward long-term creator partnerships that shaped voice, culture, and content vs simply paid distribution.

What’s more, about ~50% half of consumers make purchases at least 1X a month because of influencer content (Sprout Social) and that’s reflected in the spend in the category in the U.S. where influencer marketing spending will surpass $10 billion in 2025 according to eMarketer.

In Practice:

Brands like Duolingo, Nike, and Liquid Death leaned into creators as collaborators, not just distribution channels. Creator-generated content routinely outperformed studio creative when repurposed as paid media. Unlike brands that rely only on celebrities to push products, Nike uses a layered influencer marketing funnel that mirrors the customer journey. It works from top to bottom—macro to micro to everyday user—and touches every stage of brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty.

Search Interest: 

Searches for “creator economy,” “creator marketing,” and “influencer marketing” remained elevated in the U.S., correlating with record creator ad spend. Interest skewed heavily toward North America and the UK, where creator monetization is most mature.

Consumer Reaction: 

Trust flowed toward people, not brands. Consumers could immediately spot over-scripted integrations and rewarded creators who shared honest experiences—even when those included drawbacks.

What Is Clear: 

Creators will increasingly function as brand extensions, not media placements.

4. Connected TV: Performance Media Darling

CTV crossed a psychological threshold in 2025. It was no longer framed as “the new TV,” but as measurable, performance-capable media with direct advertisement beyond agency models. CTV ad spending in the US will near $46 billion in 2028 and surpass linear TV ad spending for the first time (eMarketer).

In Practice:

• Ecommerce, fintech, automotive, and entertainment brands used CTV alongside QR codes, retargeting, and dynamic creative to drive action—not just awareness. Linear TV continued to lose share as streaming-first plans became the default.

• DirecTV Elect uses AI to analyze millions of signals from Large Language Model (LLM) responses, news, social media, donation patterns and recent voting behaviors to help political campaigns know where to focus, what to say, and ultimately, who to reach via CTV.

• Roku (39%) and Amazon (30%) control 69% of CTV device market share, locking advertisers into their ecosystems. 

(Source: eMarketer)

Search Interest: 

Searches for “CTV advertising,” “connected TV ads,” and “streaming TV advertising” showed stronger relative interest in the U.S., Canada, and Australia—markets with the highest streaming penetration.

Consumer Reaction: 

Consumers accepted ads as the trade-off for streaming, but attention was fragile. Shorter, higher-quality, story-driven ads performed better. Repetition and low-effort repurposing did not.

What is Clear:

CTV delivered TV-level reach with digital-level targeting—something uniquely powerful in the U.S. market.

5. Brand Purpose Shifted from Messaging to Proof

Consumers became more sceptical of surface-level purpose messaging. Brands that won in 2025 demonstrated values through actions, partnerships, and product decisions. 

In practice:

• Brands like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s continued to integrate values into operations and partnerships—not just campaigns:

  • Patagonia continued to lead by embedding environmental commitments directly into its business model, not just marketing. A key objective is for its globally owned and operated facilities to be powered by 100% renewable electricity. By the end of its 2025 fiscal year, Patagonia reports reaching 98% renewable electricity usage and is now focused on addressing the final 2%.

Search Interest: 

Searches for “brand purpose,” “sustainability marketing,” and “brand trust” remained strongest in the U.S. and Western Europe, reflecting both interest and skepticism. People were researching claims, not accepting them at face value.

Consumer Reaction: 

Purpose without proof was ignored—or worse, distrusted. Specificity and consistency mattered more than scale.

What is Clear:

In a polarized U.S. environment, authenticity and follow-through mattered more than positioning.

What’s Next: Diverging Paths

“As part of its study, Kantar asked marketers their investment plans for 2026 across ad channels, revealing discrepancies between what consumers want and where marketers are planning their campaigns.

Over 50% of marketers plan to boost budgets for podcasts, video streaming, and other targeted digital channels—at odds with the consumer preference for OOH, sponsorships, and online publications.

However, certain demographics differ in their perception of advertising channels. Hispanic (Latine) consumers stand out for their strong receptivity to Online Video and Social Media Stories—over half are open to ads on these platforms, far exceeding the general population.

In contrast, they (Latine) are considerably less responsive to Influencer Content and Music Streaming ads, signaling a clear preference for digital formats that feel engaging and direct.”

Key Learnings from 2025 Marketing Trends

What we learned:

2025 marked a shift away from “shiny object” experimentation toward operationalized, performance-driven marketing. With tighter budgets and fractured attention, brands that built repeatable systems outperformed those chasing novelty.

Why it matters:

Efficiency, scalability, and accountability became non-negotiable. Marketing maturity, not creative flash, was the competitive advantage.

Signal:

In 2026, brands without integrated marketing systems (AI, data, media, measurement) will struggle to compete on both cost and impact.

1. AI Delivered Value—but Trust Became the Constraint: AI proved its value as marketing infrastructure, driving speed, relevance, and efficiency (e.g., DoorDash’s 15× conversion lift). However, consumer trust lagged behind adoption.

   
   

2. Retail Media Boom: Retail Media Networks (RMNs) moved from optional to essential as cookies faded and first-party data became king. Amazon’s dominance and the projected $28.9B RMN growth, signals a structural shift. By 2030, when RMNs approach 50% of ad spend, brands that don’t master retail ecosystems will lose distribution leverage.

   
   

3. Creators Outperformed Influencers—Because Trust Is Human: The creator economy matured. Brands that shifted from one-off influencer posts to long-term creator partnerships gained cultural relevance and performance lift. In 2026, creators will increasingly function as brand extensions, not media placements.

   
   

4. CTV Crossed from Awareness to Performance: Connected TV became a performance channel, not just a branding one. With CTV spend set to surpass linear TV, advertisers embraced QR codes, retargeting, and AI-driven targeting. In 2026, creative quality and frequency control will matter as much as targeting.

   
   

5. Brand Purpose Required Proof, Not Positioning: Consumers became deeply sceptical of surface-level purpose messaging. Brands that won embedded values into operations, partnerships, and measurable outcomes. Purpose without metrics will increasingly erode trust rather than build it.