Entire direct-to-consumer empires have been built on the back of paid social and search advertising. But empires have to think about the long term to last.

With platforms such as Facebook and Instagram becoming more expensive and quite possibly less brand safe, Comcast hopes to tempt away DTC advertisers from those performance-focused channels and lead them toward TV and CTV inventory. Its execs hope a new ad sales platform, Universal Ads, could help convert performance marketers into long-term brand builders.

It’s a move many DTC and SME brands would welcome, according to eight media buyers working with DTC clients that spoke with Digiday. That said, it doesn’t mean a shift in DTC spend to TV is a fait accompli.

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Influencer agencies have embraced generative AI applications over the last year, as they seek to cut the time taken to arrange creator involvement in brand campaigns.

The client reaction to those solutions has been mixed. But in recent months, agencies operating in this space have found one area with clear application for AI tools — brand safety.

Creator vetting can consume up to “a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the depth of analysis,” said James Clarke, senior director, digital and social at PepsiCo Foods U.S. AI solutions aim to cut that time down to a matter of minutes.

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Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL coverage was a hit among viewers and advertisers. Its two holiday games each drew an average of 26.5 million U.S. viewers, according to the Nielsen Big Data + Panel, while ad inventory sold out weeks in advance.

In the short term, that performance will defuse industry concerns over the service’s ability to host major sporting moments, following its glitchy telecast of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight in November.

“They proved that they can handle the NFL,” said Adam Schwartz, svp, director of video investment, sports at media agency Horizon Media.

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For Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard Jared McCain, there’s more to life than basketball. 

Specifically, there’s 4.4 million followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram watching as the 20-year-old ballplayer dances, makes skits and posts sponsored content on behalf of Amazon and Yahoo.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know McCain isn’t an exception. Over the last 12 months, football players and brothers Jason and Travis Kelce inked a $100 million podcasting deal with Wondery; soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Jude Bellingham launched YouTube channels; and Angel Reese capped a breakthrough season in the WNBA by launching her own interview podcast.

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Sports marketing spend shot up in 2024. Amid soaring viewership figures for last year’s Olympic Games, worldwide ad spend on sports-related advertising rose to $60.9 billion, according to WARC.

But sports marketing doesn’t always just mean chasing the largest audience possible. In 2025 brand marketers are set to seek audiences via niche, unconventional sports opportunities. Interest among audiences in spots such as padel, pickleball and darts is rising — and in recent months, brand marketers have moved to get in on the game while they’re still emerging.

Best Buy, for example, signed up this winter as one of the principal sponsors of TGL, a televised simulator golf tournament. The new league, set to debut on ESPN (including ESPN+) from Jan. 7, also counts So-Fi and Samsung among its brand partners.

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Whichever way you look at it, 2024 was a slam dunk year for women’s sports. 

The WNBA enjoyed a banner season featuring newly minted superstars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese while the NWSL saw TV audiences rise by almost 20% compared with the previous season, according to CBS.

Advertiser dollars followed. During the 2024-25 broadcast year, GroupM — still the industry’s largest media agency network, at least for now — has driven more client spending toward women’s sports, increasing it 115% by the end of October (a spokesperson declined to share the dollar amount).

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Modern marketers know that any new work they put out into the world in service of their brand might be encountered by many different audiences.

There’s the target consumer audience, with whom marketers hope their latest campaign or activation will land. There’s competitors, keeping an eye on their rival brands’ every move. There’s online culture warriors waiting to turn an advertiser’s misstep into a cause célèbre. And now there’s another constituency marketers must keep in mind — large language models, the foundational tech upon which generative AI chatbots and applications are based.

With AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity gaining traction, tech firms are creating new ways to understand how large language models perceive their brands — and what AI answers say about them. One of the newest developments comes from Profound, an SEO startup focused on AI search platforms, which today is debuting a way to estimate conversation volume rather than just analyzing AI outputs.

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Few creators have been able to export their star power beyond the walled gardens of the social internet.

And although the influencer sector hasn’t wanted for commercial growth in recent times, the marketing benefits of a creator partnership or influencer campaign have been largely restricted to channels like Instagram and TikTok.

But this year, brands including personal care and household product maker Arm & Hammer, toy brand Miko and tech firm Snapdragon began experimenting with the use of influencer-made marketing content, in place of traditional creative assets, in programmatic ad inventory accessed via Amazon, The Trade Desk and Google’s DSPs.

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Reddit’s sports fan communities grew rapidly in the last year.

Perhaps no great surprise, given 2024’s bumper sporting schedule, which saw the Olympic Games, Copa America and Euro 2024 tournaments catch the attention of audiences. The platform recorded a 35% year-on-year increase in engagement in over 1,000 sports-themed Subreddits, according to internal data that didn’t outline specific figures, shared with Digiday.

But that growth isn’t accidental. For the last year, Reddit has been working behind the scenes with the biggest organizations in American sports, including the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) and NASCAR.

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Premium chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely harbors grand hopes.

For the last 19 years, the Dutch chocolate-maker has grown gradually, utilizing bright packaging and an anti-exploitation narrative to establish itself as the thoughtful shopper’s chocolate of choice. It’s been active in the U.S. since 2015, and in sweet-toothed European markets such as the U.K. and Germany since 2019. 

Its CMO, former PepsiCo marketer Sadira Furlow has the task of building on recent commercial momentum while shepherding a smaller media budget than competitors such as Hershey or Cadbury’s. Her plan – which focuses on paid social activity and retail media – offers a contemporary playbook for smaller brands looking to grow rapidly in tough markets.

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