With 2025 almost peeking through the horizon, we look ahead to the new year. As many of you know, the digital ecosystem is an ever-changing sea and the way to set sail in this business is to embrace those waves of change. So, what can we expect in the future? We’re no fortune tellers, but we do have a fantastic CSO who’s always ahead of the curve! Today, Refinery89’s Chief Strategy Officer, Robin de Wit, shares some of the programmatic advertising trends to watch out for in 2025 that are going to keep transforming the industry as we know it.
Increased use of AI and Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Everyone’s favorite topics in the past few years and they are not going anywhere. In fact, they are just going to keep gaining users since they play such an important role in today’s way of working. According to a forecast presented by Statista, by 2025 378.8 million people will be AI tools users. This number is expected to increase even more by 2030 reaching up to 729.11 million users.
AI is becoming a very powerful tool for content creation, ad optimization, and creative design improvement. Publishers nowadays are including systems like ChatGPT in their daily lives for performing a variety of tasks and even as a search engine source. Options for advanced and user-friendly analytical tools like PowerBi, Hotjar or SimilarWeb are also becoming relevant tools for performing market studies, evaluating metrics, and improving strategies more efficiently.
First-party data is the new gold
Google has been communicating that at some point in the foreseeable future, users are going to have to opt-in to allow cookies in their browser. But wait a minute! What does this mean for everyone in the programmatic advertising industry? It means that, with third-party cookies being limited, there is an impending need to find an alternative to third-party data for advertising.
With Google Chrome’s cookie policy following similar actions taken by Firefox and Safari, this update is having everyone on the edge. The striders of the digital ecosystem are on a hunt for alternatives for third-party data and it seems that a switch to first-party data is the way to go.
What third-party data alternatives are there?
Use Contextual Targeting
Methods like contextual targeting to generate high quality first-party data are going to continue gaining more relevance as an option to third-party data. As we explained in our article about R89’s Interest Driven Targeting Technology, contextual targeting is the strategy of placing ads on a website based on the context and sentiment of its content. It’s a great alternative not only because it complies with regulations, but also because it’s way less invasive for users and serves engaging ads related to the content they are consuming in that moment.
Move to Private Market Place and Direct deals
As we mentioned before, with third-party data being kicked out of the picture, first-party data is becoming extremely valuable. Now advertisers need to get their hands on this 1st party data somehow. Of course data can be resold via DMPs (data management platforms) but that would reduce its value. Therefore, it would make sense for private market places and direct deals to see a boost in relevancy as these are able to leverage the first-party data in directly.
Mergers and acquisitions
In previous years, we’ve witnessed some huge mergers, acquisitions, and investments in digital advertising, such as what we saw with Outbrain and Teads back in summer 2024. We can expect this trend to continue in 2025 with companies looking to consolidate their businesses, move into new areas of the ecosystem or strengthen their product offerings. Normally, these mergers are kept secret until they reveal the news via press release, so you bet the next big industry announcement is going to be a total surprise!
Green media initiatives and Supply Chain Optimization
Even though it is still a small trend we can expect to see increasing pressure on the industry to become more green through supply chain optimization.
In the programmatic ecosystem and with the rise of header bidding the number of connections between publishers, SSPs, DSPs and advertisers has grown exponentially over the past years. This is great for targeting the right audiences, getting the best prices, and optimizing website revenues but it comes at the cost of the environment. This very elaborate ecosystem requires processing power which means there is an increasing amount of CO2 emissions, even though it’s relatively small compared to other industries.
An initiative companies are taking part in to be more eco-friendly is through supply chain optimization by introducing best practices of reducing the supply chain and cutting out any unneeded calls in the chain. Less calls = less processing power = less CO2, easy. – comments Robin.
The challenge here is to identify which connections are needed and which ones can be cut. This is a project that requires the supervision of a very qualified specialist. Small publishers are unlikely to have the knowledge, data or time to actually do this. Also, their CO2 output is way smaller than a big publisher. It doesn’t make that much sense for now to dive into a project of this magnitude. For this reason, it will be the big publishers and Network/AdTech providers who will be able to take meaningful action on optimizing their supply chain.
Start 2025 strong
Artificial intelligence for improving efficiency, a big switch to first-party data as an alternative to third-party data, and supply chain optimization for a greener world are the keywords for what’s coming in the future of the programmatic advertising industry. Keep track of these foreseeable trends to keep refining your ad monetization strategy and be prepared for any challenges that might come in your way!
Ready to start off the new year on the right foot? Reach out to us at Refinery89 for the best ad monetization solutions to enhance your website’s results this 2025.
