📓 The Creativ Brief: 2025 Trends in Media, Marketing, and Tech
DEI Dies. Consolidation and Indie Agencies. Cable and Streaming Split. More Antitrust. Transmedia. AI Advances. And much more!
Welcome to 2025. Today, we predict the biggest trends in media, marketing, and technology in the new year as well as recap what we got right from 2024. Let’s dive in.
Hold Cos Lose to Independent Agencies and Big Tech. Global ad agency holding companies continue to bleed. IPG and Omnicom announced their merger last week to make the biggest advertising agency holding company in the world with revenues exceeding $25 billion annually. Meta makes that revenue in two months. Google in one.
Meanwhile, more and more independent agencies have emerged offering brands lower cost, broader offerings, and more innovative solutions. The double whammy of independent agencies and big tech’s media distribution dominance has forced holding companies’ to merge to realize cost savings. This won’t stop the bleeding. We predict independent agencies and big tech will continue to take market share from legacy hold cos.
Media Companies Split Streaming from Cable. The traditional cable bundle has all but unraveled with live sports contracts expiring and going to streaming services. WarnerBros Discovery announced a restructure to split its traditional TV and streaming divisions on December 12th. Comcast announced it’s spinning their cable division off in 2025.
We actually predicted this in our 2024 trends report from last year (prediction 5)! Expect other media conglomerates like Disney and Fox to follow suit in 2025.
The legacy media assets still command impressive cashflows. They’ll be sold to PE firms for a discount which will collect cashflow payments until they die. The leaner digital TV led companies will command higher multiples and become de facto TV.
More Antitrust on Big Tech. Google has lost 3 consecutive antitrust cases. Expect more lawsuits against big tech as their market power continues to be put on display. We could see a novel company like Apple or Nvidia face antitrust scrutiny. A stat for consideration, big tech companies now receive more than 50% of all advertising dollars. That’s .50 cents of every ad dollar going to just three firms, Google, Meta, and Amazon. Antitrust will be good for our industry.
Transmedia Emerges as 2025's Buzzword. The entertainment industry and media will finally recognize that video games are the dominant entertainment form. They’ve already surpassed movies, TV, and music combined in terms of revenue.
This realization has brought out old concept in new clothes, transmedia. Transmedia, the porting of intellectual property (IP) from one medium to another, will dominate how media companies and creators think of content moving forward. Video game characters are becoming great TV and movies. Literary and movie characters have become great video games. I’m predicting this is the buzzword we’re all tired of at the end of 2025.
DEI Initiatives Die with a Whimper. Last year’s layoffs included thousands of employees dedicated to DEI efforts. These groups of employees were cost centers for businesses and not tied to revenue, making them one of the first groups to receive layoffs.
My cynical mind thinks major corporations didn’t care about diversity in the first place. If they did, they would have employed diverse professions in actual positions of authority, not create DEI offices to virtue signal their commitment to social good. There’s promising stats that companies are still hiring diverse talent, but don’t expect corporate America to be as vocal with a Trump administration sworn to dismantle DEI efforts.
AI Media and Marketing Tech Advances. Our own firm is reinventing market research using LLMs to pull and cluster massive quantities of online opinion data. Despite the hyperbolic rhetoric in 2024 of generalized AI, more and more practical applications of AI will appear in 2025.
Some of these transformative AI products will be completing illustrations between key frames in animation, applications for faster and more intricate VFX, other research solutions to process mass data like ours, creative production such as multiple aspect ratio creation from a core asset, code generation to fix or fill in missing code, and, ironically, AI to discern if an image or video has been produced by a human or machine.
Trends we got right from 2024:
Have you heard of the Metaverse at all this year? Didn’t think so. We predicted this term would die in 2024 along with the venture backed companies that designed it.
Still working hybrid? You bet. We said businesses would concede and give up getting people back 5 days in the office. The majority of white collar professionals continue to work hybrid hours. The most common is 3 days a week.
We predicted 2024 would continue to bash big tech with antitrust lawsuits. We were correct. They continue into 2025.
And finally, are you watching or listening to more foreign made shows? We predicted that too. Foreign shows have more novel story lines, the global media industries are maturing especially in Korea, India, and Nigeria, and foreign productions are cheaper to produce than in America making them prime licensing material. Squid Games 2 anyone?
Damn we’re good!
3 Stories Dominating Media and Tech Headlines
The lawsuit claimed that Siri was inadvertently activated, leading to the recording and sharing of private conversations with third parties, such as advertisers.
Why it matters: This settlement highlights the increasing scrutiny on tech companies regarding user privacy, emphasizing the need for transparent data collection practices in the media and technology sectors.
The 2024 domestic box office saw a slight decline, generating around $8.75 billion in ticket sales—down over 3% from 2023—due to delays caused by the 2023 Hollywood strikes. Despite setbacks, standout performances came from family films, with "Inside Out 2" becoming the year's highest-grossing movie and the most successful animated film ever.
Why it matters: Studios have realized that porting media from one medium to another is the way forward. They are investing more into video games and less into traditional movie making.
In 2024, Nvidia's market capitalization surged by over $2 trillion, reaching $3.28 trillion, driven by the growing demand for AI-focused chips.This growth positioned Nvidia as the second most valuable company globally, just behind Apple, which maintained a valuation near $4 trillion.
Why it matters: The rapid rise of AI has become a driving force in the tech sector, reshaping market dynamics and influencing investment strategies. Many B2B consumers of microprocessors are developing their own chips as they’ve seen Nvidia’s fortunes rise.
Stat of the Week - Netflix Draws Large Viewership for Christmas day NFL Games
Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games set viewership records, with the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Pittsburgh Steelers drawing 30.0 million Global AMA and the Baltimore Ravens vs. Houston Texans attracting 31.3 million Global AMA.
These games averaged 26.5 million U.S. viewers and ranked No. 1 and No. 2 on Netflix’s Global Top 10 for the week, highlighting their worldwide appeal across 218 countries and territories.
This demonstrates the growing convergence of sports and streaming platforms, opening new opportunities for advertisers to reach massive, engaged audiences through digital-first distribution channels.
One Fun Thing - Pop Tart Activations
Pop Tarts continues its unhinged mascot sacrifice. For 2024, fans voted on a new mascot flavor: Cinnamon Roll, Hot Fudge Sundae, or Wild Berry, with Cinnamon Roll winning. The Iowa State Cyclones toasted the mascot after their victory. The 2024 trophy, a functional toaster created with GE Appliances, brought together sports and snack culture, while these creative activations continue to fuel media buzz and brand engagement.