Status Check 2025: Marketing Trends to Watch in H2

While it’s always appropriate to forecast top marketing trends to watch for at the beginning of the year, the changes and new developments of 2025 call for a mid-year catch-up. The rapid pace of technological innovation and the challenges of navigating economic conditions underline the importance of pausing and recalibrating while we have a chance. Seize the opportunity to get ahead of the game: Leaders from across Mod Op have weighed in on where they see marketing going through the latter half of 2025: 

Brand identity and brand personality will be top of mind. 

Branding today means reinforcing or asserting the brand’s identity, connecting on an emotional level, at all touchpoints. Philip Congello, Mod Op’s EVP, Client Success, sees marketers increasingly eager to lean into the “brand world, where all aspects of a brand’s visual and experiential elements are unified.” This is a trend Phillip has been watching all year. Today, he advises marketers to “turn marketing into a connective tissue — building immersive narratives, synchronized product and channel launches, and even translating packaging into interactive gateways via QR, AR, or loyalty tools.” 

We also see B2B focusing more on brand. Hannah Woodham, Mod Op’s SVP, Paid Channel Marketing & Operations, sees a shift away from heavily bottom-of-funnel tactics for B2B marketers. “Maximizing brand impact earlier in the journey – and leveraging the influence of third parties within the buying network – is proving to enhance revenue enablement across the funnel,” she says.  

AI is transforming how market research is done. 

AI now empowers researchers to dramatically reduce the time necessary to analyze and recognize patterns in open-ended survey responses. And AI is becoming even more valuable in market research with the rise of synthetic data. “By using AI to generate realistic datasets, researchers can run studies without actual respondents,” says Lauren Schmidt, Mod Op’s Senior Director of Market Research and Strategy.  

Matt Bretz, Mod Op’s EVP, Creative Innovation points to Dentsu’s recent acquisition of Evidenza, which enables Dentsu to take data around real human beings and create “digital twins” that respond to surveys the same way those humans would. “Assemble a large group of these digital twins, and you have a synthetic audience with which you can test indefinitely, almost instantly, inexpensively and securely,” he says. 

AI will become more prominent in entertainment content development. 

We’ve heard a great deal about generative AI’s ability to supercharge the development of ad creative and marketing materials. But right now, Fabio Fiss, Mod Op’s VP, Technology sees a big question emerging within the entertainment industry – how gen AI should interact with publishers’ and streaming platforms’ intellectual property. “I think [these businesses] will determine that if AI is to some degree ‘the enemy’ – best to keep your enemies close,” he says. Marketers will need to watch closely; in the event this causes IP holders to move toward taking AI-powered marketing in-house for the sake of security.  

Where privacy and security are concerned, we can also expect AI to continue playing a role, and to make good on its promise to drive greater value from smaller data sets. “Targeted datasets are helping teams move faster, find more actionable insights, and save money compared to large-scale data approaches,” says Lauren, a longtime advocate for the power of small data.  

Shorter tech development cycles and economic uncertainty will elevate the importance of marketers’ expertise and input. 

Tech advancements have given marketers day-to-day efficiencies, but the pace of innovation has also demanded greater agility. “Tech cycles have compressed, placing greater pressure on marketing teams to remain competitive and innovative,” notes Holly. The task for marketers is not only to monitor the tech marketplace for new and useful solutions. Their task is also to continue evolving their own skill sets. By extension, the business’s task is to foster a culture of experimentation – “quick wins (and fast fails),” Holly explains. “Balancing these imperatives with compliance and risk management is a growing challenge.” 

Marketers will demand ROI from their current and future tech investments. 

Innovative tech promises value to marketers, but it also costs money. Fabio speaks of an “ROI reckoning” through 2025. Buyers will be focusing on measurable performance and bottom-line business impact. That focus will certainly impact the way businesses vet and choose tools, and the way they assess the tools they already have in their tech stacks. In other words, Fabio sees martech stack audits coming, with businesses looking closely at what’s truly aligned with their present-day goals. And again, this is where marketers can deliver value. “Whether it’s through stack simplification workshops, platform performance audits, or clear ROI frameworks, our role is not just recommending tools – it’s building business cases and helping clients operationalize change,” Fabio says. 

As marketers continue moving forward, they’ll be balancing their ambitions against their risk management skills. Innovation is coming quickly, but the current business climate may call for gradual, iterative steps toward goals. Matt leaves us with this thought,  “A project that a few years ago may have been more convenient to look at over the course of a year will be easier for all to embark upon today if it’s broken up into pieces with clear and less sweeping KPIs set for them.” The task for marketers is to invite closer collaboration with their business partners. Marketers have this opportunity to lead the way to a promising future.