Digiday

Marketers are faithfully obsessed with the shiny new thing when it comes to their brand activations. So it’s no surprise that in year two of having generative AI at their disposal, marketers have rushed to use it in their advertising. But so far, consumers aren’t as enamored with generative AI created ads as marketers have been.

The ability to work remotely was the most requested workplace accommodation last year, according to a survey from AbsenceSoft, a platform for leave of absence and accommodations management, which included responses from 2,400 HR leaders and employees.

Publishers that want to experiment with using generative AI technology to build products and features like creating chatbots and analyzing data have to evaluate which large language models best fit the bill. And it turns out that one of the biggest factors in these evaluations is how easy it is to integrate an LLM into their companies’ tech systems — such as different product suites and content management platforms — according to conversations with three publishing execs. That often means choosing the LLMs owned by companies with which they already have enterprise technology or content licensing agreements.

The Financial Times’s months-old AI-powered paywall has helped improve key subscription business metrics, such as average revenue per user and lifetime value, according to Fiona Spooner, Managing Director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group. But it hasn’t led to more readers converting into subscribers. In fact, the conversion rate dropped 10% since the paywall has rolled out in the past year, according to Spooner. However, she’s not concerned.

The concept of ad curation may appear to be a nebulous one. Still, in the contemporary phase of the $750 billion digital advertising industry’s maturation, it has come to represent control: who owns the relationship, and who can command margin? And with consolidation expected to represent much of the mergers and acquisitions in the space during 2025, the importance of this term is ramping up, as new players enter the space and audience signals become more scarce.

The search advertising landscape is poised to undergo a seismic shift this year, driven by the rise of AI-powered search platforms like Perplexity AI and search ads on social platforms like TikTok. And those are just the platforms with confirmed ad units. Meanwhile, the industry has been whispering about search ads cropping up on Reddit and Amazon’s generative AI-powered chatbot Rufus. All of this while search kingpin Google grapples with the fallout from its search trial, in which the Justice Department has tasked Google with selling its Chrome web browser to create a more equal playing field for search competitors. Google, of course, is expected to appeal this case.

Consumers in 2025 will continue to demand highly relevant and engaging content, making product-driven ad placements and non-intrusive ads key trends. Sponsored by Zeropark.

Despite President Trump’s order this week that federal employees working from home get back to their desks, the battle over remote work is far from over. New data reveals a workplace revolution that’s still going strong in many sectors, even as some companies slam their office doors shut. And for HR managers navigating these waters, the latest research offers revealing insights into where the market is actually headed. The message from America’s workforce? Not so fast on those RTO mandates. In this piece by Tony Case, we speak to Laurence Evans of Reputation Leaders Ltd, John Lane of Landing Point, Rick Hermanns of HireQuest Inc., Sarah Bernard of Inclusively, Clark Lowe of O'Connor Company, Curtis Sparrer of Bospar, and Christian Dahl of BCD Travel.

IAB Tech Lab’s job basically boils down to taking digital advertising and media practices, products and toolsets and making them mass-production ready. And in 2025, the organization will be doing that at a larger scale and with an emphasis on connected TV advertising and moving programmatic ad practices out of the browser. This year IAB Tech Lab plans to release 31 new specifications or updates to existing specs, IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur was slated to announce during his keynote on Tuesday at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif. That’s an increase from the 23 spec updates the organization released in 2024. Story by Tim Peterson

While TikTok’s status in the U.S. still hangs in the balance, agencies are already shifting the way they recruit creators and develop strategies for their creator campaigns moving forward. Now even as marketers warily resume their influencer marketing spending, agencies feel pressured to put more emphasis on creators’ multi-platform presence and flexibility in their advertiser contracts. It will no longer be enough for creators to have a million followers on any single platform. In this piece by Antoinette S., we speak to Ria Madon of Superdigital, and Felipe M. + Stephanie Smith of United Talent Agency.