Programmatic Advertising Trends to Know For 2025

Connected television (CTV) has stood out as the black sheep of the programmatic family for a while, featuring the lowest total ad spend and the trickiest audience tracking of all mediums. Early rumblings in the industry and consumer habits have convinced Genius Monkey for some time that CTV is a slumbering giant, waiting for the right moment to awaken and take the digital ad industry by storm. That day is quickly approaching, and it’s time for advertisers to take note.

The holiday season is undoubtedly the biggest time of consumer spending in the entire year. If you play your marketing cards right, you’re likely to experience an influx of new customers buying from you for the first time. For all the revenue the holiday season creates, those new customers are the true prize that can help your business grow – if you can convince them to stick around. Plenty of articles will tell you how to optimize your marketing to get as many customers as possible during the holidays; today we’re looking at what you can do AFTER the season to retain their business and further build your customer base.

Google has found itself in hot water this year, and the punches keep coming. Hundreds of entities have lined up to sue the tech giant over the years, but a hit finally landed when a federal judge ruled Google a monopoly in September of this year. Further lawsuits have followed, and advertisers await with baited breath to see what comes of all this. Let’s do a quick check-in on the two major cases the Department of Justice has filed against Google and Alphabet.

MFA, or “Made For Advertising”, is the boogeyman of digital advertising, scooping up some $20 billion of wasted ad spend on bot sites, unviewable ads, or ad farms. The Association of National Advertisers reports that buyers have been spending less on MFA overall in the last few years, but it’s been on the rise in recent months. We all know MFA sites when we see them; so why are they so hard to circumvent?

Halloween is upon us, a time for dressing up, eating candy, and celebrating the darker side of pop culture. While all in good fun, there are more things on the horizon for advertisers than ghouls and goblins: we’ve got a Presidential Election about to hit directly followed by Black Friday and the holiday craze. There’s a lot going on and a lot to keep track of in the world of digital marketing; let’s avoid the end-of-year scaries and talk about what to keep in mind for these big events coming up at the end of this year.

Advertisers rightfully view the end-of-year holidays as the biggest shopping time of the year; the 2023 season turned in a staggering $964.4 billion spent. Focus on it too much, however, and you just might miss other opportunities where consumers are happy to open their wallet. Genius Monkey data shows that personalizing ads around current events increases click-through rates by 35%! Let’s take a look at the other big shopping days through the year and the best strategies for making them work for you!

Only a few weeks after being officially labeled a monopoly by the U.S. government, Google finds themselves in court once again for more antitrust accusations. The Department of Justice and other States are still the plaintiffs, but instead of focusing on the “search” aspect of Google’s business, they’re now targeting Google’s hold on advertising technology. Let’s break down each side of the case and what advertisers stand to gain (or lose) from the outcome.

The Winter Holiday season is easily the biggest time of the year for advertisers and businesses alike. With thousands of other companies competing for space in your target audience’s brain, what can you do to stand out from the crowd and attract those holiday dollars? Thanks to years of experience and a recent report from our partner Experian, Genius Monkey has the tools your business needs to thrive this season.

Industry staples like display, video, and OTT have been in place for some years, but there’s a looming shadow on the horizon; a massive media powerhouse that has only begun to dip its toes into everything digital advertising has to offer: gaming. No longer a niche medium, video games have gone mainstream and reach a worldwide audience of 3.32 billion players. A recent report from Comscore highlights just how large and diverse the gaming audience has become; it’s not just kids playing games these days.

Artificial intelligence occupies a weird place in modern culture. Simultaneously the harbinger of doom and a technological savior, some are worried it will kill every creative industry while others are happy at how easily it accomplishes menial tasks. AI is unlikely to go away anytime soon, so the best thing for advertisers to do is understand its potential for both good and bad, while looking at industry trends to see where this is all going.