Nielsen has today released its seventh Annual Marketing Report, revealing how marketers are taking action to adapt to changing market trends and how they are embracing evolving technologies such as AI and shoppable advertising. The report, which surveyed leading global marketers, identified three trends in advertising, providing crucial insights to deal with an uncertain and constantly changing marketplace.
Connected TV (CTV) and Retail Media Networks were two areas that marketers saw opportunities in. Overall, 56% of marketers reported a planned increase on over-the-top OTT/CTV spend, a rise of three percent year-on-year, and almost two thirds (65%) said that retail media networks would play a growing role in their media strategies this year. Interestingly, whilst new budgets do still predominately go to digital channels and overall budgets are less this year, more marketers are planning increases to their traditional media budgets compared to 2024. Indeed, 16% plan to increase their out-of-home budget by over 50% this year. When it comes to AI, almost three quarters (71%) of brands with large ad budgets ($1B+) see AI for personalisation and optimisation as the key trend likely to impact their business in 2025. These findings were all offset against a trend that sees marketers preparing for a leaner 2025. Over half (54%) of global respondents said they were planning to cut ad spending in 2025, a figure which was even higher in Europe (60%).
The second trend is the decision that marketers are making between growing bottom-of-funnel revenue versus developing top-of-funnel brand awareness. The report uncovered stark regional differences. Marketers in North America and Asia-Pacific are balancing a near-even split between brand awareness (48% and 50% respectively) and revenue growth (47% and 52% respectively), whereas in Europe, 59% of European marketers put revenue growth at the top priority, compared to just 37% for brand awareness. In Latin America it is 46% compared to 41% in favour of brand awareness. Another balancing act for marketers to master is around the share of paid marketing budget going to digital versus traditional channels. Almost a quarter (24%) of global marketers said digital would be their priority, whilst almost a third (32%) said traditional would be their focus. The majority (44%) though gave a balanced answer with Latin America having the most even distribution.
Finally, the third trend uncovered is how success is measured in a constantly changing world. The majority of marketers are struggling to bring digital and traditional channels into a holistic measurement framework – only 32% of marketers globally say they measure their media spending holistically across both digital and traditional channels today, and this is even lower in Latin America (29%) and Europe (23%). There are also numerous challenges to calculating ROI of cross-media campaigns. These include issues with data, weak tools, too many vendors, and a lack of transparency across new channels, such as retail media networks, which are exciting but add complexity.
This is the seventh annual marketing report Nielsen has produced and the fourth to be global. The report leverages survey responses of marketers across a variety of industries whose focus pertains to media, technology and measurement strategies. For this report, Nielsen engaged 1,400 global marketing professionals who completed an online survey between Feb. 25, 2025, and March 6, 2025. In terms of seniority level, global brand marketers at or above the manager level were engaged, all working with annual marketing budgets of at least USD$1 million, and two out of three with budgets over USD$10 million. The report can be downloaded here.
Alison Gensheimer, SVP, Marketing, Nielsen, commented, “Our latest Annual Marketing Report has uncovered that, despite difficult economic uncertainties, marketers are demonstrating their inherent agility by embracing new touchpoints like Retail Media Networks and CTV, optimizing media mixes, and leveraging AI. To truly capitalize on these advancements and align media investments with objectives, reliable and comprehensive measurement is paramount and, at Nielsen, we are committed to ensuring measurement solutions keep pace with the complexities of modern cross-media advertising, supporting growth now and well into the future.”
