Latest Marketing & Advertising News
WARC upgrades global ad market forecast to 8.9% growth for 2025
WARCâs Q4 2025 Global Ad Trends report raises its forecast, projecting global advertising spend will grow 8.9% to $1.19 trillion in 2025 and highlights concentration of incremental dollars in Big Tech platforms.
Retail media set to surge as AI shopping agents reshape holiday marketing
WARC and industry reporting say global retail media ad spend is acceleratingâforecast to hit $196.7 billion in 2026âas AI-powered shopping agents and tighter budgets push brands toward performance-driven retail channels.
Digital ad spending remains strong despite earlier single-digit forecasts
eMarketer analysis finds a stronger H2 2025 kept digital ad spending growth higher than earlier single-digit predictions, driven by platform resilience and seasonal demand.
Magnum names Publicis as global media agency with AI focus
The Magnum Ice Cream Company confirmed Publicis as its global media agency of record, with the brief emphasizing data-driven marketing and AI capabilities to guide media strategy.
AI and personalization dominate marketing trend lists for 2025
Multiple industry trend roundups list AI, hyper-personalization, short-form video, and evolving SEO/social-search as top priorities for marketers in 2025, reshaping creative production and targeting approaches.
Retailers and brands shift budgets to lower-funnel performance tactics
Brands are reallocating spend from broad awareness to search, shopping and retargeting, emphasizing real-time buying and frequent optimization amid volatile consumer demand.
Social commerce and âsocial-firstâ search reshape discovery and spending
Analysts report a continued rise in social-first discoveryâ41% of Gen Z now start product research on social appsâand social commerce is expected to exceed $1 trillion by end of 2025, forcing search and social strategies to converge.
Programmatic direct mail and âprint-meets-digitalâ gains in 2025
Marketing recaps note programmatic direct mail emerged as a standout channel in 2025, combining digital speed with physical impact and delivering measurable performance for certain campaigns.
Marketers call out overlooked strategies: sampling, authenticity, and UGC
CMO interviews highlight that simple tacticsâproduct sampling, embracing criticism, and leveraging user-generated contentâremain powerful amid heavy investment in new tech, with UGC driving higher trust and CTRs.
NBCUniversal readies crossâplatform ad innovations ahead of CES 2026
NBCUniversal announced first-to-market cross-platform ad formats and real-time measurement capabilities designed to unlock new audience opportunities and attribution ahead of CES 2026.
Performance marketing under pressure from noisy AI signals and disconnected tools
Industry research warns B2B performance marketing faces challenges from inflated signals, AI noise, and fragmented toolsets that can derail growth unless measurement and stack integration improve.
Email and omnichannel messaging remained strong through 2025 peak shopping season
Platform reports show email performance stayed robust in 2025 while marketers blended channels (MMS, WhatsApp, push) and saw mobile shopper growth during Black Friday, underscoring omnichannel messaging value.