We are witnessing a rapid evolution of the media landscape as it has become increasingly driven by sophisticated algorithms. In this expansive world, media is playing a growing role in our lives, fast becoming 100% addressable, 100% shoppable, and 100% accountable.
At dentsu, we call this the algorithmic era of media.
This article is extracted from The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends, dentsu’s 15th annual trends report. In this second of ten trends, we anticipate a barrage of new AI-powered media solutions from platforms. More importantly, we will see strategic brand initiatives across the media value chain to make campaigns more impactful, establishing AI as a cornerstone of the media toolkit.
Mapping AI across the media value chain
Over the last year, many marketers have experimented with generative AI applied to media, mostly through the expanding gamut of AI-powered tools developed by AdTech platforms such as Meta Advantage+ and Google Performance Max. While these solutions have shown promising results, they are bound to their specific platforms, at a time when more than a quarter (28%) of CMOs consider the integration of emerging technologies as the biggest challenge for their organizations.
We expect more brands to take the matter into their own hands in the next year, going beyond platform solutions to explore AI potential across the entire media value chain.
Major opportunities include developing dynamic scenario planning for improved budgeting, tapping into a richer data pool to generate predictive insights on growth audience segments, producing detailed media plans better mirroring the consumer journey, performing autonomous, real-time optimizations across channels to maximize impact, and building upon enhanced insights on media performance for continuous improvement. Understanding the use cases, opportunities and risks of generative AI is the AI application to media at the top of the list of CMOs for the next 12 months.
Raising the media floor and ceiling
For each facet of the media value chain, artificial intelligence can raise both the floor (i.e., making it easier for more people to do a good job) in the short term and the ceiling (i.e., making it possible to reach greater heights of creativity and impact) in the longer term.
While AI potential seems almost limitless, brands must evaluate tangible use cases as they define their priorities for driving media-led growth. Each use case must move the needle for at least one of three aspects: process efficiency (e.g., time spent), media efficiency (e.g., cost savings), or media effectiveness (e.g., sales uplift).
Once use cases are locked in, the focus must move to data, the most important differentiator to gaining a competitive edge. Key considerations encompass assessing the data sets available, evaluating the technology needed to host and connect these data sets together, and defining how to manage access to the AI-enabled outputs across the company. Most importantly, brands must establish a data governance that prioritizes transparency, fairness, accountability, and empowerment both upstream (i.e., data fed to AI models) and downstream (i.e., oversight and validation of outputs).
By using this approach in 2025, marketers will be able to set up the pilot projects necessary to make the most of AI throughout their own media value chains before rolling out successful initiatives at a wider scale.
What’s next?
More frequent use of AI across the media value chain will progressively help marketers to have a more accurate view of the likely impact of their decisions, and thus to plan with more agility according to predicted business outcomes (e.g., ROI improvement from targeting segment A vs. B or increasing budget from a given amount).
This is the second of ten trends discussed in dentsu’s The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report. Get your copy of The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report here to see all ten trends.
