Five Forces That Could Further Roil the Ad Industry in 2025
I’ve always been a big booster of the ad industry—its role in funding free speech (i.e., media outlets) and its multiplier effect on GDP by driving sales. For decades, I’ve encouraged young people to pursue great careers in this field.
Lately, I’m not so sure. It would be nice to start the new year with an upbeat post, but this is what’s on my mind instead.
Last year saw Google and Meta, the two biggest media companies, shrink their ad-related workforces, while layoffs have become numbingly common among traditional media, agencies, and many digital platforms.
Some of this reflects over-hiring during the ad bubble of 2021, but there are macro trends—AI, programmatic buying, and higher interest rates pushing profitability—that aren’t going away anytime soon.
As we enter 2025, here are five events and trends that could spell continued challenges for professionals in the field.
1. Omnicom / IPG Merger
And then there were five. Of the biggest agency holding companies—Publicis, Dentsu, WPP, Havas, Omnicom, and IPG—only Publicis is thriving. When adjusted for inflation, the collective spending of these media-buying groups on advertising has shrunk since 2017, even as Fortune 1000 revenues have grown significantly relative to inflation.
Why the disconnect? Advertising is supposedly more efficient now, driving more sales for less money, but that seems an overly optimistic explanation. More likely, it’s due to brands in-housing budgets, shifting dollars to boutique agencies for niches like retail media and podcasting, and the downward pricing pressure of programmatic exchanges.
One thing you can count on from this kind of consolidation is job cuts.
2. TikTok’s Peril
President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the January 19 deadline for banning TikTok, but his whimsies don’t inspire job security.
TikTok’s U.S. staff is surprisingly small—under 10,000—but highly efficient. If those employees hit the job market suddenly, it could flood an already competitive field with more A-listers on the heels of all those laid-off Google and Meta experts.
Beyond that, TikTok plays a unique role in the ad ecosystem, supporting hundreds of thousands of creators and millions of niche advertisers. Its closure would ripple across the economy.
3. TV Networks on the Chopping Block
Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery are moving several networks into new business units to make their core companies more attractive to investors. Paramount is reportedly considering similar moves.
With Netflix, Amazon, and Apple spending heavily on hit shows, movies, and live sports, the pressure on traditional networks to maintain ad share is intense.
4. Pharmaceutical Advertising Under Threat
President Trump’s pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wants to ban prescription drug ads on TV. Few other countries allow such ads. Legal challenges may prevent the ban. But anything seems possible these days. And, they did it to Big Tobacco, so there is a kind of precedent.
Pharma is one of the biggest ad categories after CPG, particularly for linear TV. Losing it would be a near-extinction event for some major media companies.
5. The Rise of AI-Driven ROI
To me, the most worrying trend is advertisers trusting platforms like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ to spend ad dollars “efficiently” through black-box algorithms.
Say it out loud: “The biggest media companies will use secret formulas to spend my ad money most wisely.” That doesn’t sound fishy to you?
It’s like the sheep appointing the wolves their legal guardians.
The giveaway that this is a scam is they don’t even allow a backdoor for fair testing, such as an option to run geo experiments on top of the algos to independently confirm the so-called performance or advantage. No “trust, but verify”—only “trust us.”
Of course, it's no coincidence that the rise of this kind of auto-magic, self-reported ROI comes after years of agencies and smaller media companies cutting their own research departments to near zero.
But, aside from all that, Happy New Year! I’d love to hear comments about what I got wrong here and what silver linings I should be focusing on instead.
Meanwhile, if you want to figure out what’s really working in the mix, give us a call.