Mid-year review: Is your digital marketing on track for 2025?

As we reach the mid-point of 2025, brands must assess their strategies against key trends and adapt them to ensure they remain competitive and relevant in the ever-evolving digital marketing space. Staying ahead of the curve is vital, so here we have compiled the main critical areas to evaluate for the remainder of the year.

Continued rise of AI agents and hyper-personalisation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving beyond content generation to autonomous actions, with AI agents carrying out more and more complex tasks. This means AI will increasingly drive tailored recommendations, chatbot interactions, and audience segmentation, creating a new norm of offering hyper-personalised experiences across the entire customer journey.

Is your brand on track?

Assess whether your current AI use extends beyond basic content creation. Areas like predictive customer behaviour or automated personalisation across different touchpoints could be an untapped opportunity. Consider if your current customer relationship management (CRM) and data systems are capable of feeding AI for deeper personalisation.

Recommendations

• Identify core customer journey stages where AI agents could streamline interactions or personalise content.
• Invest in the right AI tools for advanced analytics and customer insights, then integrate these AI capabilities into your CRM systems for smarter segmentation and more relevant communications.
• Ensure marketing teams are sufficiently trained and understand AI ethics and data privacy, giving you a solid foundation on which to build customer trust.

Privacy-first data strategies and first-party data.

Despite adjustments to third-party cookie timelines, the global regulatory environment for data privacy is tightening, and consumer expectations for transparency are growing. Marketers must maintain their focus on building robust first-party and zero-party data strategies to remain competitive.

Is your brand on track?

To remain competitive, brands must review their current data collection methods for compliance with regulations like GDPR and actively collect and use first-party data, through direct customer relationships, loyalty programmes, or direct purchase histories. Brands should also assess whether a reduction in reliance on third-party cookies for advertising and measurement might be necessary, as well as the use of server-side tracking.

Recommendations

• Conduct an audit of all current data collection and usage practices to confirm privacy compliance.
• Develop compelling reasons for your audience to willingly share first-party data, perhaps through exclusive content or bespoke experiences that generate interest.
• Put together a strong Consent Management Platform (CMP) and start investigating server-side tagging for more resilient data collection.
• Search Marketing and SEO can also be employed to obtain keyword data useful insights.

AI Overviews and Generative Search Optimisation (GSO)

Google’s AI Overviews are now widely available, fundamentally changing the search engine results page (SERP) by providing immediate, AI-generated answers. This often reduces direct clicks to websites for straightforward information, and means that your content might be harder to find.

Is your brand on track?

Brands should review their website content to determine its suitability for inclusion in AI Overviews. Think about whether you are creating content that directly answers complex questions with clear, authoritative information, demonstrating strong Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). It’s also possible to monitor your brand’s presence within these AI-generated responses.

Recommendations

• Structure your content with clear headings and concise summary paragraphs that AI models can readily process.
• Concentrate on showcasing E-E-A-T by highlighting author credentials and verifiable data.
• Aim to produce comprehensive content that thoroughly addresses a topic, and anticipates follow-up queries.
• Continuously monitor how your content appears in AI Overviews for your target search terms.

PPC (paid search and ads) increased automation and reduced advertiser control.

The paid advertising landscape is experiencing a push towards increasing automation across campaign structures, bid strategies, targeting, and creative generation.

Is your brand on track?

Determine if your paid campaign structures are optimised to provide automated solutions with strong signals, such as clear conversion goals and accurate first-party data feeds. Reflect on your teams’ use of automated bidding strategies, like Max Conversions or Target Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) and consider whether this could be more effective. Since managing automated campaigns strategically requires the proper training, deliberate if additional training might be a worthwhile investment to make sure your teams are thoroughly prepared.

Recommendations

• Realign your paid media teams to focus on strategic oversight and data analysis rather than granular manual optimisation.
• Ensure that high-quality, accurate first-party data feeds are integrated into your ad platforms.
• Conduct controlled tests with automated campaign types, providing platforms with clear objectives and sufficient data.
• Continue to monitor automated campaign performance from a strategic perspective.

Growth of video and visual ads

Video and visual ad formats continue to be dominant, with short-form video maintaining its popularity across platforms. The integration of direct purchase options within video ads is streamlining the customer journey, reducing the amount of steps needed to purchase an item or service.

Is your brand on track?

Reflect on your use of video in your paid advertising strategy across all relevant platforms and consider if this could be made a core component if it isn’t already.

As well as this, consider experimenting with interactive or shoppable video formats, and diversifying your creative assets to suit various platform specifications and audience engagement styles, particularly the short-form vertical video that is currently popular.

Recommendations

• Increase budget allocation for video ad formats across all appropriate platforms.
• Produce a variety of video assets, including short-form, longer-form, and interactive options, tailored for specific channels.
• Investigate shoppable video technologies and platform integrations to shorten the sales funnel.
• Regularly A/B test different visual ad creatives to understand audience preferences and campaign performance.

Social media marketing: authenticity and transparency over perfection

Consumers are becoming more selective about the brands they engage with and purchase from, prioritising genuine and transparent interactions over overly polished or disingenuous messaging. This heightened critical awareness means that a brand’s reputation and genuine interactions are more important than ever..

Is your brand on track?

Your brand’s social content should feel genuine and relatable to your audience. Research your influencer partnerships to see if they are clearly disclosed and based on authentic alignment with your brand values. Actively encourage and showcase employee-generated content, and ensure interactions with your audience on social media are responsive and transparent.

Recommendations

• Prioritise storytelling that reflects real brand values and customer experiences.
• Establish clear guidelines and vetting processes for influencer collaborations, focussing on genuine fit and transparent disclosure.
• Develop an internal programme to encourage and support employee-generated content.
• Train social media teams on transparent communication and authentic community engagement.

Social search and community content

Social media platforms are increasingly serving as search engines, particularly for younger audiences, and users are turning to online communities for authentic perspectives on the topics that matter to them.

Is your brand on track?

Assess your brand’s presence on social platforms where your target audience conducts searches. Assess your strategy for creating short-form, discoverable video content for these channels, and reflect on how active your participation is in relevant online communities where your industry or brand is discussed.

Recommendations

• Perform keyword research specifically for social platforms, such as TikTok.
• Develop a content strategy for short-form video that prioritises discoverability and uses platform-specific optimisation.
• Allocate resources for authentic community management and interaction within relevant online groups.
• Encourage user-generated content that can be easily searched and shared within social ecosystems.

Integrated social marketplaces and live shopping

Social commerce is becoming deeply integrated with broader eCommerce strategies, with platforms introducing more features for direct purchases within the social environment.

Is your brand on track?

Investigate direct selling features on relevant social platforms, such as Instagram Shop or Facebook Marketplace, and look at the possibility of experimenting with live shopping events. Assess whether your product catalogue seamlessly integrates with your social channels for a unified shopping experience.

Recommendations

• Research and activate direct commerce features on the social platforms most relevant to your audience.
• Plan and execute live shopping events, potentially utilising influencers or internal experts to host.
• Ensure your product feeds are current and correctly integrated for social commerce.
• Analyse the customer journey from social discovery to purchase, optimising for any points of friction.

Content marketing: AI’s dual role: Creation and personalisation.

AI is transforming content creation by enabling faster and more strategic production of high-quality material. Simultaneously, AI is crucial for delivering highly relevant, personalised content experiences at scale.

Is your brand on track?

Reflect on how effective using AI tools has been for content ideation, drafting, and repurposing content across channels. Use this analysis to consider if this could be optimised in areas such as using AI to personalise content delivery, such as website content or tailored email sequences. To make the most of this, you will also need a clear human oversight process in place for all AI-generated content to maintain quality, accuracy, and brand voice.

Recommendations

• Integrate AI writing assistants into your content workflow for initial drafts, brainstorming, and content repurposing.
• Implement AI-powered tools for content personalisation on your website and within email marketing.
• Establish a clear editorial process that ensures human review, fact-checking, and adherence to brand voice for all AI-assisted content.
• Train content teams on effective prompt engineering and AI tool usage.

Interactive and immersive content experiences

To combat decreasing attention spans, interactive and immersive content formats are becoming more mainstream, turning passive consumption into active engagement from consumers.

Is your brand on track?

Find out if you are regularly producing interactive content formats, such as quizzes, calculators, or polls, if you have experimented with Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) content where it could be relevant to your brand or products, and if you are moving beyond static text and images in your content strategy to cut through the noise and maintain attention.

Recommendations

• Allocate resources for creating interactive content types that align with your audience’s interests and business goals.
• Consider AR/VR experiences, particularly for product visualisation, virtual try-ons, or experiential brand storytelling.
• Use quizzes, polls, and interactive infographics to increase engagement rates.
• Monitor user interaction with interactive content to refine future efforts and understand what works best.

Conclusion

Optimising your digital marketing strategy for the remainder of the year, and into 2026, looks challenging, but it doesn’t have to be complex. Strategically allocating resources and investing in the right training for your teams, can set your brand up for success.

As well as streamlining the content creation process, AI can help to personalise your customers’ experience, give an early introduction to your content through AI Overview, and gain data about your target audience. Use those insights, as well as your own research, to tailor your marketing to consumer needs with more video-based and interactive content to keep attention and stand out from the crowd on relevant social media platforms.

Go beyond compliance and ensure transparency, not only for yourselves, but for any vetted influencers you may use in product launches or marketing campaigns. Using your company values as touchpoints, focus on storytelling and genuine connection with your customers, and encourage employee-generated content to appeal to an increasingly discerning audience looking for authenticity.

Align and integrate your content with the places your customers frequent. Keep your social media pages up to date and optimised, take advantage of the live shopping and social marketplace options to expand your reach and reduce friction to purchasing, and make sure that your platforms are transparent, relatable and responsive.

As digital marketing is constantly evolving, brands must rise to meet it. Focusing on the key trends outlined above, will give you a head start in adapting your strategy going forwards. Evaluate your current processes, policies, and approaches, and assess where things could be improved to align with the latest customer needs, available tools and resources, and relevant platforms.