2025 trend: AI-powered media buying will take an even bigger share of media sales

Strong returns for both publishers and advertisers guarantee growth. AI-powered performance advertising products, such as Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and Google’s Performance Max, have helped large advertising platforms weather the lost ad revenues from privacy-related signal loss.

An August EMARKETER survey found that nearly 60% of US ad buyers had used or planned to use one of these products. Advertisers appreciate the improved performance they offer, while large publishers can use them to clear more of their inventory. As a result, these tools will be more widely used in 2025—even as brands complain about a lack of transparency that leaves them with little control and few learnings.

New AI-powered media buying tools proliferated in 2024. Google’s Performance Max was the first to launch in November 2021, followed by Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns in 2022 and Microsoft’s Performance Max in 2023. Their success spurred a gaggle of new products to launch this year, including Amazon’s and Pinterest’s own versions, both called Performance+. In October 2024 alone, Pinterest’s Performance+ product, LinkedIn Accelerate, and TikTok’s Smart+ formally launched. All of these offerings comprehensively automate targeting, creative, and optimization.

Buyers on the open web also have automated buying options. Taboola’s Maximize Conversions, Criteo’s Commerce Max, and The Trade Desk’s Koa use AI to automate many aspects of targeting, bidding, and creative optimization—but they offer ad buyers the final say in completing transactions. Both walled garden and open web platforms also offer genAI-powered creative optimization tools that work in tandem with the buying platforms.

Predictions

• Snap will finally release an automated performance tool. Despite a strong Q3 2024, Snap has lagged behind its social network competitors when it comes to advertising growth. An AI-powered buying offering could help them regain momentum in their advertising business.
• Walled garden platforms will gesture toward more transparency. The platforms have responded to ad buyer grumbling with a few features, such as Google Performance Max’s negative keyword targeting. They’ll add more controls and measurement tools to their AI products in 2025, but these changes will be minor.

Read the full report, Advertising Trends to Watch in 2025.