Digital Diligence: Why The Right Tech Is Essential For Today’s (and Tomorrow’s) Digital Content Needs

2025 is in full swing, and as publishers and advertisers look ahead — as they always do — the continuous need for digital content shows no sign of slowing.

In fact, new research from Canto and Ascend2 confirms that, with more than three-quarters (77%) of creatives expecting their production volume to increase this year, up a full five percent from the 72% in previous years. All this, while 17% expect budget cuts.

 

Digital Publisher Programmatic Ad Sales Continue To Inch Out Direct Sold

Programmatic ad sales on properties owned by digital publishers will reach $22.69 billion by 2027, adding $3.7 billion to where it was in 2022, according to Advertiser Perceptions’ “Q4 2024: The State of the Ad Industry” survey.

 

Will AI-Generated Advertising Disrupt The Creative Industry? 

The time and cost savings that AI-generated creative can provide during the development journey of an ad campaign are very attractive for brands. Why spend time and money to create an animatic or a storyboard if you can feed the text prompt and see the rough draft of your idea brought to life in a matter of moments? Some even believe that AI-generated content will be able to eliminate the need to produce a finished copy and will become the standard in the ad creation process. But are we there yet?

 

The Future of the Martech Stack 2025

A significant 96% of marketing professionals view their marketing technology as successful in achieving strategic objectives, with 35% rating it as “very successful” or best-in-class. The majority, 61%, find their martech stack somewhat effective, reflecting general satisfaction but indicating room for improvement.

Tech Check: Google Makes First Exemption Payment To Canadian Publishers

Where Canada/United States relations go after this week is anybody’s guess, but those recent posturing headlines have obscured other Canadian-partnership news that loom large in the publishing world.

Of course, I’m referring to the safe arrival of the massive check Google had dropped in the post, allowing the company to stay in north-of-the-border business.

 

We Analyzed 332 Million Queries Over 21 Months To Uncover Never-Before-Published Data On How People Use Google

Google is a massive presence on the modern web. They’ve held 90%+ of the global search market share for 15 years. Even the rise of AI tools has been unable to budge that number (so far). They get <9% of all web visits, but send more than 60% of all referring traffic to other sites.

 

Those Tiresome Emails: Consumers Quick To Switch When They Get Too Many

Email remains the most popular channel with consumers, but it is easy to annoy them with excessive volume and lack of personalization, judging by The 2025 Optimove Consumer Marketing Fatigue Report. Of the shoppers polled, 59% prefer email as their primary channel for messages, compared to 18% who prefer social media. Moreover, 48% notice email over other channels. But there is a risk of overuse …

 

Consumers Like Locally Targeted Ad Messaging

68% of US internet users think marketing from national brands with local messaging makes ads more relevant and shows advertisers are investing in local communities, per a study from The Harris Poll and Locality.

AI Advertising Advantages: How AI Is Revolutionizing Media Sales

There seems to be no end to what AI is capable of … or at least will be very soon. 

That’s good news for those who adopt and maximize the tool sooner rather than later … and great news for those in media sales in particular, with more than half (57%) of ad buyers using or planning to use AI-powered products, according to a recent EMARKETER survey.

 

Unlocking The Impact & Potential Of AI

While the world is awed by the stuff of science fiction suddenly come to life, few fully comprehend the
 power and possibility of AI — and the risks and
responsibilities that come with it. We surveyed AI buyers to gain a better understanding of how they currently harness AI in their organizations, results they’ve seen, challenges they face, and what they believe the future holds.

 

Trigger Happy: Brands Seek To Boost Their Automation And Personalization

Email marketers have set two main priorities for the next 12 months: automation and personalization, according to The State Of Email In Lifecycle Marketing, a study by Litmus. Of companies polled, 35% hope to create more automated/triggered email. And 29% are expanding their personalization use. 

 

2025 B2B Marketing Mix Report

For 2025, brand awareness has again taken center stage, securing the top spot on the list of objectives for B2B marketers, just as it did in 2024. This consistency highlights that businesses recognize the critical importance of building and maintaining their brand. While lead generation and client retention remain strong priorities, a robust brand distinguishes a company in an increasingly competitive landscape, fostering trust, loyalty, and premium pricing.

Quality Time: Top Barrier To Growing Programmatic Is Quality Of Media

As we kick off 2025 and consider this year’s goals — from the personal New Year’s resolutions to the bottom-line targets — it’s important to keep looking ahead at the hurdles standing in the way.

For potential programmatic investors, that hurdle is clearly the quality of media.

IAB Europe conducted its annual Attitudes To Programmatic Advertising Report, and in surveying advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad tech vendors across Europe, the top-ranked key barrier to adopting or growing their programmatic trade was the quality of media (e.g. fraud, brand safety, viewability, transparency).

 

2025 Digital Media Difficulties For Publishers And Platforms

U.S. digital media publishers and platforms are split on the difficulties they will face in 2025, according to a September 2024 study from Integral Ad Science and YouGov. Almost a third (29%) cited ads delivered alongside risky content, contextual targeting, monetizing with/without social platforms, and scaled audience extension as major challenges.

 

Casual B2B: Brands Are Advised To Humanize AI Mentions, Corporate Style

B2B marketers have a habit of sending out the wrong vibe. For example, they waste readership focus by inserting generic mentions of AI. It doesn’t work, and marketers are turning away from it, according to Vidmob’s 2024 Creative Trends Report with LinkedIn. 

 

2/3 Of Digital Content Creators Do Not Check Their Facts Before Sharing, But Want To Learn How To Do So

At a time when digital content creators have become a major source of information for people, a UNESCO survey published today reveals that 62% do not carry out rigorous and systematic fact-checking of information prior to sharing it. But 73% express the wish to be trained to do so.

Transparency and Unbiased Reporting The Biggest Drivers In Building Newspaper Trust (New Report)

As I’ve written before, the trustworthiness of newspapers is nothing new, but for all it means to readers and advertisers alike, that fact should continue to be celebrated.

And while I touched upon the main takeaway from the America’s Newspapers study — that local newspapers (and local TV stations) were the most trusted media for more than half of those surveyed — it’s worth diving deeper into what drives that trust.

 

2025 Advertising Spending Forecasts: A Detailed Look at Growth Categories

With 24% of respondents indicating a significant increase and 51% noting moderate growth, CTV/Streaming/OTT Video continues to lead as a top growth category. This trend aligns with eMarketer’s projections, which estimate that digital video ad spending will grow by 13% in 2025, driven largely by consumer migration to streaming platforms.

 

AI Shifts Ad-Tech And Media-Buying Budgets For 2025

Budgets will shift to emerging AI-powered channels that embrace creative automation and conversational commerce as marketers begin to feel more optimistic about the coming year. Seventy-five percent of participants in a study from Smartly released today anticipate a budget increase to support change.

 

A Third of Gen X and Baby Boomer Shoppers Make Purchases After Seeing Digital Ads

LoopMe … has today released US data revealing that consumers from the Gen X and Baby Boomer generations are most receptive to digital ads. Over a third (37%) of 45-54 year olds and 40% of 55-64 year olds stated they make purchases from ads they see online at least every few months — greater than the average of 31%. The findings indicate that marketers will need to be highly targeted with their spend if they want to capitalize on older shoppers’ online ad engagement.

Stay Human: New Study Finds Journalist-Crafted Articles Preferred Over AI

The holidays have come early for human journalists around the world.

A recent study from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich found that “traditionally-crafted news articles are more comprehensible than articles produced with automation,” with AI’s word choice being a particular point of dissatisfaction for the readers surveyed.

“Readers complained that the AI-produced articles contained too many inappropriate, difficult, or unusual words and phrases,” says the report, originally published in the Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism journal. “Furthermore, readers were significantly less satisfied with the way the automated articles handled numbers and data.”

 

America’s News Influencers

A unique Pew Research Center study provides a deeper understanding of both the makeup of the news influencer universe and its audience. The project includes an in-depth examination of a sample of 500 popular news influencers and the content they produce, derived from a review of more than 28,000 social media accounts. We also conducted a nationally representative survey of Americans to better understand who regularly gets news from news influencers.

 

Email Fear And Flight: Workers Dread Opening Their Inboxes

Here’s a sobering thought for B2B marketers trying to reach prospects by email at work: People are afraid to read their emails. To be specific, 78.7% of employees dread opening their work email inbox, and 58.5% fear it on a regular basis, according to a new study by Emailtooltester.

 

Digital Dominates Advertising, But Traditional Channels Are Still Relevant For Some Sectors

Over 80% of ad spending in the US for technology and electronics (87.1%), retail (82.9%), and consumer packaged goods (80.2%) is directed toward digital media, according to EMARKETER’s August 2024 forecast.

AI Expectations: Why Publishers Must Balance Excitement With Realism

As anyone can tell from how much I have written about AI’s place in publishing and in the newsroom specifically, it is clear that I’m coming from a place of excitement.

From here, at the particularly-thrilling intersection of publishing and technology, this tool’s work potential is worthy of our best efforts and explorations now while it’s impossible to ignore.

Still, the more-measured reactions and AI reports — whether that’s from the user or the audience perspective — are always welcome, and a recent study from Enders Analysis provides an interesting one to chew on.

 

Marketers and GenAI: Diving Into the Shallow End

Marketers are leading in GenAI use, but it’s only surface level. What’s needed to take the next step?

 

The AI Character Question: Can AI Agents Reverse Declining Trust In Brands?

Consumers are hardly in a trusting mood as we approach the holiday season. A full 72% have less faith in companies than they did a year ago, up from 56% in 2023, according to the State of the AI Connected Customer, a study by Salesforce. Only 26% trust companies more, down from 44% last year. 

 

Chatbots Are Marketers’ Most Popular Use Case For AI

38% of marketers worldwide cite chatbots as the most impactful AI use case for enhancing the digital experience, according to a September 2024 survey by Advanis and Sitecore.

AI Companies Collaborating on $10 Million In Support Projects For Newsrooms

As newsrooms continue to explore AI’s potential and what it could mean for their work, the tech companies themselves are taking steps to further their exploration.

The latest effort is from the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, founded by former Philadelphia Inquirer owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest in 2016, which is collaborating with OpenAI and Microsoft to “help newsrooms explore and implement ways in which artificial intelligence can help drive business sustainability and innovation in local journalism.”

In total, $10 million will be awarded over two years to support projects by Chicago Public Media (Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ), Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Seattle Times, for AI focuses varying from text summarization and translation to media analyzation and marketing services.

 

Wave of News Publishers Arrive on Bluesky As Sign-Ups Surge

A wave of news publishers have arrived on Bluesky in recent days, following audiences and journalists departing X/Twitter. Days after announcing it was leaving X, The Guardian has become one of a flurry of news publishers to set up an account on the rival microblogging platform. A significant uptick in account registrations since the U.S. election has prompted a wave of new journalists and publishers to start posting to Bluesky over the past week. As of [last] Tuesday it had 20 million accounts, up from 16 million before the [previous] weekend.

 

Email Reigns: It’s The Most Popular Channel Worldwide

Consumers worldwide are more likely to trust a message when it contains a logo or check mark, according to Consumer Preferences Report, a study from Twilio. Of those polled, 66% refrained from purchasing from a brand in the past year due to lack of trust. But 49% say they will trust a brand much more if the message displays a logo or check mark. And 62% will likely open an email when it is confirmed to be from a brand they trust …

 

DOJ Says Google Must Sell Chrome To Crack Open Its Search Monopoly

The Department of Justice says that Google must divest the Chrome web browser to restore competition to the online search market, and it left the door open to requiring the company to spin out Android, too. Filed late Wednesday in DC District Court, the initial proposed final judgement refines the DOJ’s earlier high-level outline of remedies after Judge Amit Mehta found Google maintained an illegal monopoly in search and search text advertising.

Premium Programmatic Growth Projected To Only Increase Further (New Report)

Programmatic advertisers face a number of hurdles, from brand safety concerns to larger environmental ones.

But the more I’ve written about those issues, the more I see them as not only conquerable, but also responsible for advertisers ultimately achieving even better programmatic results.

Which makes Guideline’s recent data about the programmatic ecosystem all the more confirming, with a reported 47% growth YoY in the premium programmatic market for January through August 2024.

 

Young UK Adults Read Average Of Six News Stories Per Day, Research Finds

Young people visit publisher news websites far more often than they admit to in surveys, according to a new study tracking online behavior. The last Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, based on a survey of 2,000 adults, found just a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK said they had visited a news publisher website or app over the previous week. But now new research based on tracking a representative sample of UK young people has told a more encouraging story for publishers.

 

Most Podcast Listeners Have Responded To Ads, Study Finds

Podcasts continue to pull in listeners and drive sales, judging by Podcast Pulse, a study from Acast conducted by Edison Research. Of the listeners polled, 84% have taken action after being exposed to a podcast-first omnichannel campaign. In addition, 44% have made a purchase and almost 60% have thought more favorably about the brand, according to the study.

 

7 In 10 Consumers Worldwide Prefer Emails From Brands

69% of consumers worldwide say email is their preferred communication channel with brands, according to a June 2024 survey from Emarsys. Email was followed by SMS/MMS, at 53%.

The Continued Trust In Newspapers, And Why That’s Significant To Advertisers

It’s not the first time that research has come back showing newspapers to be especially trustworthy, but it’s still newsworthy all the same.

Kantar’s new US Media Reactions Report found that consumers ranked newspapers No. 1 for trust, relevance / usefulness, and even consumer advertising receptivity. 

That last ranking is particularly noteworthy considering what Kantar’s press release calls “over-targeting” in ad experiences, which is “driving consumers back into offline channels and more ‘natural’ advertising experiences like retail media networks and news publications.”

 

Unwrapping Success: Key Investments Driving Holiday Sales

While the festive mood is encouraging, our report makes it clear that consumer optimism alone won’t guarantee success during key shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Week, as well as the overall holiday shopping season. To profit, brands must invest in three main areas to attract and retain customers while boosting conversions: Modernizing their eCommerce platforms, powering social commerce and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for a wide range of use cases with proven ROI.

 

Crabby Customers: Over Half Will Jump After A Single Bad Experience

Email teams noticing a lagging response should look beyond their latest creative to place the blame. It may not be their fault. Rather, it could be due to a disappointing customer experience. Moving into 2025, 53% of customers worldwide will walk or reduce their spend after a single bad experience, up 2.7% earlier in 2024, according to 2025 Consumer Trends, a study by Qualtrics XM.

 

CFOs Are The Most Skeptical Of Marketing’s Value

40% of senior marketers worldwide say their CFO is most skeptical of marketing’s value at their company, according to data from Gartner. With budgets tight, marketers are under increased pressure to prove ROI to CFOs. Demonstrating that your tactics are working is even more important so marketers must have solid measurement strategies to demonstrate the value of dollars spent.