Predicting what will and won’t be popular throughout the year is a fool’s errand. Whatever you think will be the big thing may not be. Something you never could’ve predicted will probably be the biggest story of the year. And yet we do it anyway.

It’s a table setter for how we’re thinking about the year, what’s to come and what we expect to happen. When we inevitably look back on the previous year’s effort, there is often some truth and something missed that helps give us a sense of what’s changed.

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Several new ad networks joined the bevy of existing (and growing) retail media networks last year with new terminology to match: financial media networks, travel media networks and, as of just last month, the (allegedly) first real estate media network (Re/Max). Ah, 2024, the year that nearly every brand (well, every brand that hadn’t yet done so) realized the potential of an ad network. The thinking seems to go, if everyone else has one — and they’re getting the additional revenue from ad dollars — why shouldn’t my brand have one too?

Re/Max aside, the bulk of 2024 ad network debuts took place during the first half of the year (Chase, Revolut, United Airlines, Expedia, T-Mobile, Costco). The second half was quieter for new entrants (PayPal, Grubhub, Thrive Market), but many of the existing players beefed up their capabilities. Walmart finally finishing its Vizio acquisition was likely the biggest example of this. Could it be that all of the brands that were setting up their ad networks had already done so? Have we finally reached peak ad network?

“While the pace of new ad network launches has slowed, it is unlikely that we have fully reached ‘peak ad network,’” surmised Jim Misener, president of creative consultancy 50,000feet. “Instead, the market is likely entering a phase of consolidation and specialization.”

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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. Throughout 2024, the marketers who obviously used generative AI to make their ads (Toys R Us, Under Armour, Coca-Cola) or touted the possibilities of generative AI in their ads (like Google’s Olympics ad they pulled following backlash) had their ads panned by the general public, particularly the creative community. 

Despite that, the expectation is that marketers and agency execs will continue to (and likely increase) the use of generative AI in 2025. Marketers are regularly asking questions about how creative agencies are using generative AI and how they can integrate it into the creative process for their brands. Creative agency execs, for their part, believe that generative AI is simply a new tool that they’re going to continue to experiment with in various ways – though most don’t see their experiments going fully generative AI powered, at least not yet. 

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The polarization of the country has been in sharp focus for some time, especially the second half of the year. That polarization isn’t new: There’s been a brewing — some might say bubbling or even boiling — so-called culture war for years and it’s spewed far beyond the political realm to become a norm that marketers have to contend with for their brands. 

As consumers put brands’ advertising and marketing messages under a microscope, looking for any hint that a brand is making a statement one way or another in the culture war, in which everything is looked at through a political lens, marketers have to be keenly aware of how anything they put out in the world could be interpreted — or misinterpreted. It’s a consideration that marketers and agency execs are aware of with some more vigilant and more worried about potential backlash than others. Getting messaging right is more important than ever as consumers pay closer attention to brands and there is potential for backlash.

What do we mean by brands at the center of a culture war? Let’s recap some recent examples. Jaguar’s rebrand was dubbed “woke” by several publications and incurred ire from consumers that they were making a statement of some kind that their brand may not have intended. Volvo, meanwhile, was recently celebrated for what has been described as a “pro-family” ad with a spot that was typical bread-and-butter storytelling for the carmaker. Another ad from Apple was also dubbed as “pro-family” and celebrated. Again it was standard fare for advertisers.

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2024 feels like a year that can be split in two: In the first half we saw some expected marketing trends panning out in expected and unexpected ways (Google’s cookie confusion, retail media obsession and generative AI). In the second half, however, it feels like marketers were in the midst of a recalibration of culture, and everyone was trying to understand how to show up and where to show up and they had to do so with stranger than usual change.

A good way to sum up 2024 might be this: It was a year in which marketers (and everyone else) had to get comfortable with expecting the unexpected.

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Omnicom’s proposed plan to acquire Interpublic Group, revealed at the beginning of this week, has thrown the advertising business into disarray.

It’s also thrown a spanner in the works for marketers who are currently in the middle of agency reviews.

CMOs already have to weigh up agencies’ tech savvy, their media buying capabilities and, in some cases, their creative chops in order to judge which shop’s best for their brand. They’re tasked with tempting an agency to make their best (and best value) offer, while seeing through the dazzle of the pitches themselves.

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Monday’s news of the proposed plans to combine Omnicom and IPG has already revealed what will surely be the biggest advertising story heading into 2025 — although surprises do seem to happen often in this industry. While the deal’s official close is still a long way off and there may be regulatory hurdles to clear before the acquisition is complete, it’s still worth charting out who the winners and losers may be if all goes according to plan. Let’s dig in.

Winners

Omnicom and Omnicom leadership

Eleven years ago, when the Publicis/Omnicom deal fell apart, one of the reasons it did was confusion about who would lead the combined entity. It’s already clear that Omnicom leadership will be in charge should its acquisition of IPG go through and that the name of the combined holding company will be Omnicom — another signal of who is in charge. That’s a win for Omnicom CEO John Wren, according to analysts and agency executives, who said that if the deal goes through it will help cement Wren’s legacy.

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It’s an end-of-year shake-up for adland: The third largest agency holding company, Omnicom, announced plans to acquire the fourth largest agency holding company, IPG, yesterday morning. The combination will have Omnicom leapfrog Publicis and WPP to become the world’s largest holding company, together accounting for $25 billion in annual ad revenue and over 100,000 employees, should the acquisition be approved by regulators. 

Consolidation has been the name of the game for some time for holding companies albeit at a much smaller scale. Think Dentsu Creative, Omnicom Advertising Group, VML, to name a few. There’s been a push to combine agencies (sometimes doing away with agency brands), find efficiencies where possible (like back office overlap) and use the scale of a bigger shop to woo advertisers. The push to do so is expected to continue with this acquisition. 

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Libie Motchan wants more transparency from Meta. 

Motchan, the co-founder of a direct-to-consumer orthotics brand, Fulton, that has prioritized Facebook and Instagram ads to help build its business, is trying to figure out why her brand has been flagged as part of Meta’s upcoming policy change for health and wellness brands. Communication with the platform so far has been “very opaque,” said Motchan, adding that the lack of transparency from Meta has left Fulton in the dark as to why it has been flagged and what it can do to satisfy Meta to allow the brand to continue advertising as it had been. 

In mid-November, Meta advised advertisers and agencies that it would “begin rolling out additional restrictions on certain categories of websites that are using Meta’s business tools” starting in January 2025, according to an email shared with Digiday. Those restrictions mean that some brands in the health and wellness category would no longer be able to use lower-funnel tracking data for conversions.

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