Paid Media Trends 2025

Digital marketing particularly paid advertising across search and social media is more unpredictable and exciting than ever. With advancements in AI, evolving platform features, and shifts in consumer behaviour, marketers are navigating a rapidly changing environment.

In this blog, you'll uncover the platforms positioned to dominate in 2025, the tools and features reshaping paid social and search, and strategies to future-proof your campaigns. Whether you’re exploring Reddit’s untapped potential, adapting to Meta’s new ad formats, or preparing for Google’s AI-driven changes, there’s plenty of actionable insights to help you make more informed marketing decisions this year.

Paid Social Trends 2025

Social Media Platform Popularity

In 2025, understanding where your audience spends their time is more important than ever. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn continue to dominate, but each serves distinct audience demographics and purposes:

• Instagram and Facebook: Popular for visual storytelling and community engagement across most age groups.
• TikTok: A hotspot for Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok is evolving as a platform for short-form video content and in-app shopping experiences.
• LinkedIn: Growing in importance for B2B marketers, especially for short-form video content.
• Threads: Rumoured to launch ad opportunities in 2025, potentially becoming a strong competitor to X (formerly Twitter).

As you can see from the image above, the popularity of social media platforms varies significantly by generation.

Instagram leads among Gen Z, with 91% of users active on the platform followed closely by TikTok (86%), while Millennials prefer Facebook (87%) and Instagram (86%). Gen X also shows strong engagement on Facebook (92%) and Instagram (78%), highlighting their community-focused interests. Baby Boomers primarily use Facebook (91%) but show lower adoption rates for platforms like TikTok (38%) and Threads (10%). TikTok remains a key player for younger audiences, with 86% of Gen Z and 73% of Millennials using the platform, compared to just 54% of Gen X.

Understanding these generational preferences is essential for targeting the right audiences effectively.

Customer Journey Tracking Across Google and Meta Ads

Purchase with Google

As we know, customer journeys are not just as simple as click on an ad on Facebook, then visiting a website, and making purchase. Instead, users take a more considered approach, they may do some research, and they may then eventually land on your website through other marketing channels, eventually making a purchase.

Now whilst pixels and tracking might help us attribute conversions back to Meta or Google, it can be a little more difficult to identify exactly what that journey looked like – especially if they did not click on a Meta Ad. Often falling short in capturing the full complexity of these non-linear journeys.

Getting deeper insights into how users complete non-direct sales journeys.

For example, in the image shown above, we can see on row 4 there were 13 purchases attributed back to Meta, however two of these purchases happened via Google as the last-click source despite the user having viewed a Meta ad one day prior.

This highlights the importance of cross-platform tracking and understanding the interplay between Meta and Google ads. By digging deeper into attribution data, marketers can better understand how channels complement each other and optimise campaigns to reflect actual user behaviour.

Meta’s New Features

Special Ad Categories and Data Sharing

Starting 2025, Meta is introducing new restrictions for certain categories of websites and apps using Meta Business Tools to ensure compliance with their teams. These changes aim to better manage data sharing and enforce categorisation of data sources.

Events Manager Data will categorise events from certain websites.

Meta will categorise data sources (websites/apps) based on topics such as

• Health & Wellness
• Financial Services (TBC)
• Politics

Advertisers in these sectors should prepare for partial or full limitations on data sharing and adjust their strategies accordingly. CAPI for these categories will also be affected.

Meta Sitelinks

Meta is rolling out Sitelinks, enabling advertisers to include multiple landing pages under a single ad - in a similar way to Google Ads Sitelinks.

Site links will appear as horizontally scrollable display labels under the main hero image or video.

This will help to highlight different categories, products, deals, sign-ups and other most visited landing pages from within one campaign.

Better Lead Generation on Meta

Previously, lead generation on Meta can produce mixed results – low quality leads, or even bot form fills have put a negative spin on Lead Gen on Meta as opposed to LinkedIn – where generally speaking, leads are a bit higher quality.

However, once this feature becomes available, leads from Meta will need to input a phone number to get a one-time code which will help to verify users, improve lead quality and reduce bot submissions.

Opportunities on Threads

It has been heavily rumoured that Ads will be coming to Threads in 2025. It has been said it will initially be offered to select advertisers in January, but it should become available for more advertisers throughout the year.

We will be keeping a close eye on the roll out for this – Meta will likely be releasing more details about ad formats and targeting options soon.

Utilising it might not be right for every brand – it’s worth evaluating whether the demographics on the platform will be right for your brand.

This will be a major competitor to advertising on X – and with more advertisers abandoning X for their advertising campaigns, Threads will be there to fill in the gaps for those brands targeting audiences who have shifted away from X.

There should be a consideration to plan budget in alongside other channels – there will need to be a lot of testing and experiments until a best practice becomes clear.

More Speech and Fewer Mistakes

Anyone who works in marketing saw the somewhat controversial news that was released straight by Mark Zuckerberg about the changes Meta will be making to free speech and removing third-party fact-checkers.

In case you missed it, here is the link to Meta's January 2025 update here.

There are 3 key takeaways from this news:

• Starting in the US, Meta is ending their third-party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes
• Meta will allow more free speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations
• Meta will take a more personalised approach to political content, so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can

Meta is looking to undo the “mission creep” that made their rules too restrictive and prone to over-enforcement. In other words, we are likely to see more content across meta.

Whilst this may not impact Ads too much, this will play a big part in our users in general interact with Meta as a platform. This could give way to a big shift in the user base in 2025.

Short-Form Video Dominance

Whilst TikTok does the Hokey Cokey in the US, the continued dominance of Short-form video is NOT going away.

Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn will all continue to rise in popularity for consuming short-form video content.

LinkedIn may be a surprising inclusion here – but B2B short form video is going to be big for 2025, and with a lot of our performance clients being B2B, this is going to be super important.

“Talking head” style videos are predicted to become more popular on LinkedIn, and this is going to have to be a content consideration for brands and businesses.

On other platforms, Meta have updated their attribution models to prioritise videos. The default setting is now 1-day engaged-view attribution – which tracks users who watched at least 10 seconds (or 97% if shorter) and then convert within a day. This highlights the importance that these platforms are placing on Video content.

In other words – investing in video for brands is no longer optional – it is essential.

Reddit is more than just a Meme Search Engine

Reddit just went through a data-sharing deal with Google which has made Reddit content more visible in search results. This change means brands can reach larger audiences by tapping into Reddit’s unique communities.

Over the past year, Reddit has seen a 46% increase in daily users and a 53% jump in weekly users.

More visibility of the platform means more users. Therefore, brands should consider Reddit as a platform for new ways to connect with engaged users.

AI Outlook

Almost all teams are using AI to some extent in their workflows – or they should be - and it’s emerged as a hero to in the battle against creative burnout. In 2025, it could be the key to finally unlocking highly specialised roles.

• 40% of UK marketing leaders say they will invest in new AI tools in 2025, while 59% will maximise the tools they already have. 96% agree that all marketers should know how to use AI in their work.
• 45% of social practitioners report feeling the same amount of creative fatigue as a year ago, while 42% report on feeling more. But over half (51%) are very confident AI can be a resource to help alleviate it.

AI can take admin tasks off our plate, but it’s not taking over. The skills that have been determined most important for 2025 offer a glimpse into how AI adoption will push teams to become more specialised - and why the need for human experts isn’t going away.

How UK marketing leaders say AI will impact social teams.

The skills UK practitioners and marketing leaders think are most important for 2025.

Paid Social in 2025 will likely be… Unpredictable

If there is one word we would use for social media in 2025 – it is Unpredictable!

This isn’t a bad thing – we just have to keep our wits about us. The landscape is going to be ever changing, and with the CEOs of the big dogs being even closer to American politics than ever, it’s certainly lining up to be a rollercoaster of a year.

There could be new platforms, fewer platforms, more data, less data, free speech, bans, and everything else in between, so strap in!

That said, as long as we remain flexible, prepared, and smart, then there is no reason we cannot navigate Paid Social over the next year successfully and gain some fantastic results.

Paid Search Trends 2025

AI in Paid Search

Google Ads will be making huge strides towards its use of AI within Paid Search marketing in 2025, with the three key areas of focus being:

• Evolution of search behaviour beyond keywords toward multimodal experiences across images, videos, and text
• AI-powered creative tools for marketers: automating ad creation while adhering to brand guidelines
• Enhanced measurement capabilities: providing deeper insights into campaign performance

This all falls into their plans to scale Gemini, the company’s AI platform, amid increasing competition and regulatory challenges.

Google will therefore look to enhance its core advertising products:

• Performance Max
• Demand Gen
• Search capabilities will be powered by Google AI while maintaining user privacy standards

Whilst nothing concrete has been announced, there is a lot of chatter around how Google will enhance Search capabilities, and one theme seems to be the removal of Phrase Match and reliance on AI-powered Broad Match and Exact Match only.

Performance Max (PMAX) Updates

Brand Guidelines in Performance Max (PMAX)

While it is not available in all accounts yet, PMAX will soon allow us to include Brand Guidelines to tell Google what fonts and colours to use when it applies those extra elements around ads.

PMAX campaigns will offer improved brand control, allowing marketers to specify fonts, colours, and other design elements.

The Gift of Insight

When PMAX and Demand Gen were first released, we lost almost all stats that go with it apart from impressions, clicks and conversions.

Google are slowly bringing back more insights into these campaign types – allowing us to see more creative performance breakdowns, auction insights, affinity audiences and placements.

More audience affinity and creative insights on PMAX and Demand Gen.

Third-Party Cookies: The Ongoing Saga

So, Google made us all think Third-party Cookies were going away, everyone is panicking. Then they did the biggest U-turn in history – aside from the repeal of corn laws in 1846 – and told us they weren’t going away. Probably….

We’re still none the wiser as to whether they are going away or not. Regardless, marketers will need to make use of all the data they can get their hands on – whether that is by building better CRM systems, leveraging customer data (first party or third party), or just deep-diving into keyword and search behaviour.

We should be investing as much of our time in 2025 into implementing the bridges that Google have put in place to help us when/if third-party cookies do go – offline conversion tracking, enhanced conversions, conversion API etc.

Different types of customer data:

• Zero-party data: Data a consumer freely gives to or shares with a business or organisation.
• First-party data: Data collected by a business when a consumer engages with the brand.
• Second-party data: Consumer data shared by a trusted source that you have permission to use.
• Third-party data: Aggregated data collected from various source.

Diversification Beyond Google

Google could well be broken up from having the ‘monopoly’ over the search industry in 2025.

Therefore, it is going to be more important than ever for marketers to diversify their marketing mixes even further in the next year, in preparation for when such a time comes that Google isn’t the only way.

We are already seeing more search features appearing on the likes of ChatGPT and TikTok (ban pending?) – and so more and more users will be moving to other “sources of truth” over time.

2025 Trend Key Takeaways

Paid Social Key Takeaways

• Platform marketing mix: Keep using a mix of social media platforms – re-open the door to platforms such as Reddit
• Identify target audiences: Understand where your target demographic is spending their time – new Ad opportunities on threads could help to reach these audiences.
• Tools and features: Utilise more of the new tools and features within platforms – especially Meta
• Adopting AI: Adopt AI to help with efficiencies – not to let it do the full job for us.

Paid Search Key Takeaways

• Search Diversification: Keeping tabs on where users start searching more – TikTok, ChatGPT, YouTube etc
• Insight, tracking and data: Squeezing as much insight from within the platform as possible while it is available – Cookies and tracking may change this eventually!
• Tools and features: Make the most of the new features in the tactics that are being pushed
• Feeding AI: AI will drive new tactic performance – but we need to keep feeding it the right information

Conclusion

The paid media landscape in 2025 is poised for significant changes, driven by advancements in AI, evolving platform dynamics, and shifting consumer behaviours. By staying flexible and informed, marketers can navigate these trends successfully, delivering outstanding results for their brands and clients.

To learn more about how we can help your brand stay ahead of these trends, contact us today. Let’s make 2025 your most successful year yet!