[Dentsu] Media Trends 2025: AI is an effective tool in Moment Marketing, Small User Communities are promoted

Part I: Development Trends of AI in Marketing

Since ChatGPT appeared in November 2022, it can be said that artificial intelligence and especially Generative AI have created a revolution that has changed every corner of the Marketing industry.

#1. Use AI to Expand Customer Reach & Optimize Experience

Generative AI tools are now making the digital experience easier for users, while also helping brands reach a wider audience. For example, Reddit has tested AI to translate all of its site content into French, making branded content accessible to millions of new users. AI can also describe images for the visually impaired or convert text to audio for the hearing impaired.

This tool is also used by many brands to optimize the experience of their services and products. For example, language platform Duolingo uses Open AI’s GPT-4 to operate the Duolingo Max service, which provides a learning experience like sitting with a real tutor. Or Spotify also uses an AI DJ that can talk between songs to create a more lively music listening experience.

But there are still many potential concerns behind AI…

Besides the outstanding effects, there are still many conflicting opinions surrounding this technology. The biggest concern about AI is the difficulty in distinguishing between AI and human-generated content. In addition, AI also has a large impact on the environment because training and forming an AI requires huge amounts of energy and resources. Therefore, more economical AI solutions are gradually being developed in the near future.

In general, despite the mixed opinions, Generative AI will continue to penetrate deeper into the marketing field in the coming time. Not just simply creating marketing content or optimizing user experience, in 2025, more breakthrough applications of AI will appear focusing on a number of trends such as: Optimizing applications on mobile devices, listening devices, developing AI models that are methods to help create natural interactions through voice and some different forms of sensors.

#2.  AI Application Trends Connect Multi-Platform Media Value Chains

With the ability to create content, ideas and even plan communications, the 2025 communications trend will be greatly influenced by AI. Marketers around the world expect a series of new communications solutions supported by AI in the near future.

Over the past year, many marketers have experimented with Generative AI in their communications. However, this has mainly been done through proprietary AI tools developed by Meta and Google. Overall, these solutions have shown positive results, but they are still limited to specific platforms. So perhaps in 2025, brands will explore the potential of AI to connect the entire communications value chain, far beyond the current single-platform solutions.

Therefore, not only marketing trends, in the future, the trend of applying AI in communication will aim at some more general features such as: Building budget plans, Automatically exploiting data sources, Providing self-guessing information about potential customer segments, Making detailed communication plans, Performing automatic optimization of communication activities over time on communication channels,…

#3. Leverage AI to Enter the Micro-Moments of Consumers’ Lives

¼ of consumers worldwide expect AI to be integrated into most aspects of their lives within the next decade. And as AI becomes more and more embedded in people’s lives, it means brands have more opportunities to use AI to enter consumers’ micro-moments and form deeper relationships.

There are two simplest ways to apply AI to reach consumers’ small moments, including:

Reach users unexpectedly

81% of consumers believe that the best way for a brand to stand out and build their loyalty is to surprise them and delight them in unexpected ways . To do this, brands must carefully understand the customer journey and understand where they are going. From there, they can bring their content to customers at unexpected times, combining content personalization to win customers over. AI will be a powerful assistant in the process of monitoring and analyzing customer behavior.

Reaching Customer Micro-Moments Through AI-Integrated Messaging Apps

One of the easiest ways for brands to tap into consumers’ micro-moments is through messaging platforms, especially smartphone messaging. Here, AI helps brands automatically respond to multiple users’ requests at once, sending highly personalized messages to customers, thanks to the interactive training process with thousands of previous questions.

For example, Klarna’s AI assistant has handled 2.3 million conversations, accounting for two-thirds of customer service conversations, and is five times faster and more accurate than humans. The company estimates its assistant will improve profits by $40 million by 2024.

With the help of AI, messaging interactions between brands and consumers will become more and more optimized. Because AI can leverage the entire history of communication with customers to create interactions and provide truly personalized services to them.

In addition, AI can also be integrated with other forms of media, fine-tuning the brand’s message to match the customer’s behavior at each specific moment. For example, a personalized food advertising message sent to office workers in the afternoon when they are tired, or an advertisement about the movie that the user is watching at 9pm after a long day of work, they are tired and need to relax, etc. From there, develop larger Moment Marketing campaigns, helping brands capture the consumer’s moment.

Part II: Trends in Branding

#4. The power of niche groups and communities

Nowadays, you can find a specific community on almost any topic. From Reddit communities with special interests, to Netflix groups that love weird movies, there are many small, narrow-scale communities that have a very deep and loyal audience. Similar to Influencers, more and more KOLs and KOCs are developing their own specific content niches and attracting a very deep audience. Compared to large Influencers, these niche Influencers and communities have a much greater influence in driving purchases. This will probably change the perspective of brands in using Influencers in the near future.

Because of this trend, niche social media channels have been gaining more attention recently, such as: Reddit, Telegram, Pinterest, etc. For example, Google has partnered with Reddit to bring conversations from Reddit into its services. Reddit also recently introduced Reddit Pro, a suite of tools to improve a brand’s organic presence on the platform, allowing marketers to better understand the community before connecting with its most enthusiastic members.

#5. Streaming Platforms become Advertising Hotspots, especially for Sports Content

Sports are becoming the Focus of TV Advertising 

Live sports are considered the “king” of audience engagement. The most prominent example is the 2024 Super Bowl, which set a record for US television viewership for a single-channel broadcast.

Despite the proliferation of entertainment channels, sports remains a field that has great appeal to the general public, as well as a large fan base. Sporting events attract viewers at a specific time, creating peak viewing times. In addition, the breaks between sports matches are very suitable for advertising and exploiting the large number of sports fans watching the match.

As a result, many streaming platforms are willing to invest huge sums of money to sign long-term contracts to broadcast sports matches. For example, Amazon has signed 11-year multi-market agreements with the NBA and WNBA.

Expanding the “Ad-Supported” Subscription Package

To meet the needs of viewers and open up opportunities for brand advertising, “ad-supported” subscription packages have been deployed by many streaming platforms in recent years. According to Dentsu, popular platforms such as Max and Netflix have adopted this form and up to 40% of new subscribers choose them.

#6. Algorithms become an Important Part of Branding Strategy

Algorithms play a central role in campaigns today, helping brands reach the right audience. However, platforms are constantly tweaking algorithms to increase audience engagement, making it difficult for brands to tailor content accordingly.

• Using automated tools to optimize algorithms: Users move between dozens of media channels during the day, making it difficult for brands to manually select advertising audiences as before. Therefore, the current trend in algorithm optimization is to rely on automated tools to combine three factors: target reach, attract potential audiences and conversion, while expanding new customer segments that brands may miss.
• Algorithm optimization from the content creation step: Many brands consider algorithm optimization during the content creation process as unnecessary as when setting up an ad. However, nowadays, algorithm optimization needs to be started right when writing an ad, through improving the quality of the content, discovering content that is suitable for the platform’s algorithm, etc.

Part III: Development trends of advertising platforms

#7. From retailers to payment companies, everyone is entering the advertising market

Retailers today are trying to capture brand media budgets, diversifying their advertising formats and developing integrated conversion measurement tools throughout the purchase journey. Amazon has generated $50 billion in advertising revenue over the past four quarters, showing the appeal of retailers’ advertising.

Not far behind retailers, payment intermediaries like PayPal and Chase are also getting into the game, working to develop new advertising platforms that provide brands with valuable data on customer behavior, helping them reach customers more effectively.

The rise of these new forces is forcing brands in the industry to find new ways to improve their advertising capabilities. Incorporating deep customer behavior data to help target advertising more precisely.

#8. Brands are focusing more on the Advertising Supply Chain

With thousands of streams of information, content and advertising channels in a campaign, brands are increasingly choosing more seamless and trusted advertising supply chains. As a result, programmatic advertising now accounts for nearly 75% of digital media buying value globally and continues to grow.

According to Dentsu, in the coming time, advertising supply chains will focus on 3 trends:

• Add tracking metrics: Supply chains are moving toward developing more comprehensive, in-depth metrics. For example, adding eye-tracking technologies to better understand audience attention in different environments and contexts.
• Protecting brand media: Advertising supply chains are working to ensure greater transparency, provide more reputable advertising platforms, and help protect brands from media fraud.
• Opportunities for small but high-value advertising platforms: Currently, many brands only focus on large channels while ignoring smaller channels. Therefore, the media supply chain is trying to reduce this imbalance, opening up the potential for small advertising platforms with high social and cultural value.

Conclusion:

Dentsu’s report shows the growing influence of AI in the media industry, from optimizing user experience to moment marketing campaigns that help brands delve deeper into consumers’ micro-moments. In addition, the trend of using Influencers and exploiting user groups and communities has also changed, focusing on small but deeply connected communities.