President Donald Trump’s tariffs are already warping the outlook for ad spending, casting a long, uncertain shadow over the year ahead. The full impact remains to be seen — especially since he delayed most tariffs for another 90 days — but early projections point to a market that’s already bracing for impact.
Magna’s latest forecast paints the picture: the digital heavyweights — Google, Meta, Amazon and others — collectively brought in $271 billion in U.S. ad revenue last year. These so-called “digital pure players”, spanning search retail media, social, video and audio are now projected to grow by 9.1% in 2025. That’s a subtle but telling dip from the previously expected 9.9%.
Social media, often the bellwether for digital ad health, is especially losing pace. The sector brought in $83 billion last year and is not forecast to grow by 10.7% down from 11.5% — an early sign of advertisers finishing in an uncertain climate.
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Despite the carrot and stick tactics deployed by Elon Musk’s X to cajole advertisers back on to its platform, big brands still aren’t buying in.
In the math used by marketers and media buyers to decide whether a social platform is worth their investment, X remains on the wrong side of the abacus.
According to eMarketer, X revenues (including subscription and ad income) will rise to $2.3 billion this year; higher than last year’s $1.9 billion, but still far less than its pre-acquisition income.
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Advertising has to be at the heart of publishers’ businesses in the digital age, but publishers have also been working hard to diversify their revenue streams and, hopefully, become less dependent on ads. Those efforts might be starting to bear fruit — fewer publishers are saying the vast majority of their revenue comes from advertising this year, compared with last year.
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Wall Street may be breathing a sigh of relief over the 90-day tariff pause but marketers aren’t joining the celebration. They’ve seen this movie before — temporary reprieves followed by fresh volatility. It’s precisely why they’ve been demanding more flexibility in their media deals, especially in the fast-shifting terrain of retail media.
That’s the real pressure point. Even with some tariffs paused, others remain very much alive. A 10% blanket hike on imports from roughly 75 countries plus a 125% tariff on Chinese goods still leaves marketers facing a potential 25% surge in cost, with no clear end in sight. The math hasn’t really changed. Higher costs mean fewer goods sold. And with fewer goods to possibly move, CPG marketers are asking the obvious question: Will they need to advertise as much at all?
No one has a firm answer yet. If anything, the sudden backtracking on the more aggressive tariffs only underscores the futility of trying to make marketing decisions in real time when the policy backdrop can change by the hour. The prevailing logic now looks like this: Wait as long as possible, and be ready to move the moment it counts.
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Earlier this week, Digiday reported that parties were trying to engineer a divestment of Yahoo’s demand-side platform, but who would buy such an asset, especially in this market?
Now that the hard yards of reporting have been done, it’s time to reflect on the subsequent output of ad tech’s chattering classes to assess the likely outcomes of such a process.
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The complaint that advertising isn’t focused on originality is a common one. Every few years, conversations about when the creative was wild and innovative resurges. What’s different now is that creatives have even more threats to their livelihoods — the rise of AI, the rush to follow trends on social, squeezed budgets and now tariffs.
In the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor, we hear from a senior creative at a creative agency on originality.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
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Apple has finally and officially released the iPhone 16 for customers in Indonesia. Not just the recently introduced iPhone 16e, but the whole lineup that was announced last fall. New iPhones typically don’t take more than 200 days to reach other markets. However, the Indonesian government forced Apple to pay for the opportunity to bring the latest iPhone technology to customers in its country.
Apple launches its latest prestige series today, Your Friends & Neighbors starring Jon Hamm in the lead role. The mix of drama and comedy sees Hamm playing a disgraced former hedge fund manager called Andrew Cooper, who turns to a life of crime to preserve his lavish lifestyle.
The first two episodes are available to stream right now on Apple TV+, with the remainder of the season airing weekly. Apple is running a special promo where new subscribers can get Apple TV+ for $2.99 per month for 3 months, enough to cover the full run of Your Friends & Neighbors.
EV startup Lucid Motors has emerged as a surprise winner in the bankruptcy auction for electric trucking company Nikola’s Arizona factory and other assets, according a late Thursday night court filing. Lucid committed around $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations in exchange for the factory, Nikola’s lease on its Phoenix headquarters, and “certain machinery, […]
If I could snap my fingers and make AirPods in any color, we’d have AirPods in black by now. My second choice? Translucent AirPods. Apple sells a version of “Transparent” colored that I should probably own just to support the clear product cause. AirPods, of course, only come in white with the exception of the AirPods Max line.
Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders, according to a blog post published Thursday.
This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. Microsoft originally intended to launch Recall alongside Copilot Plus PCs last June, but the feature was delayed following concerns raised by security experts. The company then planned to launch it in October, but that got pushed as well so that the company could deliver “a secure and trusted experience.”
The company did release a preview of Recall in November to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel for Qualcomm Copilot Plus PCs and made a preview available to Intel- and AMD-powered Copilot Plus PC shortly after. And after a couple weeks of testing, my colleague Tom Warren said that Recall is “creepy, clever, and compelling.”
In Thursday’s blog post, Microsoft spells out that you have to opt in to saving snapshots with Recall, and you can pause saving them “at any time.”
A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk’s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The […]
