Top Ad Tech Trends to Watch in 2025

Here are the five top ad tech trends to consider as you plan for 2025.

Next year will build on the transformative progress and innovation we’ve made across the ad tech ecosystem in the last 12 months. Programmatic is evolving rapidly and there is vast potential ahead. Whether addressing challenges in the quickly maturing streaming TV channel, navigating the cookieless addressability landscape, or pursuing the never-ending quest for quality and transparency, we will see greater focus on delivering more value and efficiency across the industry. We’re entering the next era of programmatic—the stakes are high, and the time for action is now.

Top 2025 ad tech trends

Live event advertising will be the next frontier in streaming TV

The bar for quality and transparency in the supply chain will continue to grow

The cookieless era demands immediate investment into alternative addressability solutions

Sustainability initiatives will transition from lofty aspirations to actionable change

Supply-side innovation will drive greater value across the digital advertising ecosystem

TREND #1

Live event advertising will be the next frontier in streaming TV

The rapid growth this year of live-streamed sports, awards shows, and news and cultural moments like the US political debates has the programmatic industry pivoting to keep up. Opening live event inventory to programmatic has exposed significant challenges—highly concurrent yet fleeting ad opportunities, unpredictable ad breaks, latency issues, and infrastructure strain during peak viewership, to name a few.

Given the massive opportunity for live events, solving these challenges will be a key focus for the industry in 2025. Scalable programmatic solutions for live event advertising require a unified effort to ensure standardization and interoperability across the supply chain. Proposals to enhance signaling and build new protocols are already in development through IAB Tech Lab working groups.

We expect 2025 to bring a collaborative industry approach to adopting and testing these new standards. These efforts will ensure media owners can extract the full value of their content and marketers can reach attentive audiences during these highly engaging events. Live event advertising isn’t just an opportunity—it’s a necessity to realize the full potential of programmatic in streaming TV.

Learn more about live event advertising in streaming TV →

TREND #2

The bar for quality and transparency in the supply chain will continue to grow

The call for higher standards in programmatic advertising will be impossible to ignore in 2025. Marketers are growing increasingly frustrated with hidden fees, opaque practices, and low-quality inventory, especially given the proliferation of made-for-advertising (MFA) sites. With AI-generated sites spinning up faster than ever, the risk of MFA will remain a real concern in 2025.

As media buyers scrutinize their investments more closely, they’re prioritizing partners who can demonstrate accountability and deliver true value. SSPs will face mounting pressure to enact higher quality standards and eliminate MFA from their exchanges. We also expect to see the growth of curation compound next year, as buyers increasingly turn to it as a solution to their concerns around quality inventory, transparency, and control.

Elevating the standard for quality and transparency in programmatic will benefit the entire ecosystem, improving efficiency, driving more effective campaigns for buyers, and ensuring media owners attract premium demand.

Learn more about upholding transparency and quality in digital advertising →

TREND #3

The cookieless era demands immediate investment into alternative addressability solutions

The time for waiting is over: With 70% of the open internet already operating without cookies, the future of addressability is here. As third-party cookies continue to disappear—regardless of Google’s approach to deprecation—the programmatic ecosystem must adapt swiftly. The ease and simplicity of buying based on a single identifier is vanishing.

Increasingly, addressability will require a mix of solutions based on channel, format, and regional privacy regulations. Companies will need flexibility to operate in multiple modes simultaneously—there may be pockets of inventory that are deterministically addressable through a clean room, pockets where a browser- or OS-based solution like Privacy Sandbox works, and others that require an alternative identifier like Unified ID 2.0.

Proactively investing in a portfolio of solutions will ensure success in today’s consumer-first world.

Learn more about the new addressability landscape →

TREND #4

Sustainability initiatives will transition from lofty aspirations to actionable change

Sustainability has been an oft-discussed, somewhat precarious topic in digital advertising for years. Now, we’re seeing a fundamental shift in how businesses operate, with more making greener decisions and being more transparent about their environmental impact. The urgency to make measurable commitments and tangible progress only increases in 2025.

This year marked the first time the annual average temperature surpassed the 1.5-degree Celsius limit set in the Paris Agreement. Consumers, too, are increasingly voting with their dollars, choosing to support organizations that demonstrate sustainable progress. Subsequently, brands—and agencies on their behalf—are setting firm goals and demanding the same from their advertising partners.

You can expect this shift to trickle through the supply chain as agencies evaluate partners based on their carbon reduction targets and measurable gains—committing to sustainable business practices is quickly becoming a requirement. As more business solidify their efforts, we’ll also see more collaboration on industry-wide initiatives to improve efficiency in programmatic, from reducing unnecessary hops in the supply chain to adopting new features like ad podding in streaming TV to developing new standards.

Learn more about advancing sustainability in digital advertising →

TREND #5

Supply-side innovation will drive greater value across the digital advertising ecosystem

The ad tech industry is in the midst of a shift that rewards efficiency and genuine value creation. We’ve already seen this year how the supply side can unlock more value for the ecosystem through curation, proving that SSPs are more than just auction facilitators or a commoditized infrastructure.

The opportunity for supply-side innovation in 2025 will extend far beyond that. Companies can also activate numerous other value-add solutions leveraging supply-side infrastructure, from AI and algorithmic solutions to data to attribution and measurement, creating a new avenue of innovation. With unthrottled access to inventory, buyers can increase the reach of their buys while media owners benefit from increased demand.

These innovations ultimately promote more choice on where in the supply chain to activate value or even to add layers of optimizations with both the SSP and DSP, further enhancing campaigns to drive better outcomes more efficiently. This shift has the potential to re-level the programmatic landscape—expanding opportunities, driving efficiency, and setting the stage for the next wave of growth in the industry.

Learn more about driving value and efficiency on the supply side →

Ready to shape your 2025 plans?

Our team is here to help. We’ll guide you through the programmatic ad trends to come and arm you with an action plan to prepare for a successful year.

Top Ad Tech Trends to Watch in 2025

Top 2025 ad tech trends

Live event advertising will be the next frontier in streaming TV

The bar for quality and transparency in the supply chain will continue to grow

The cookieless era demands immediate investment into alternative addressability solutions

Sustainability initiatives will transition from lofty aspirations to actionable change

Supply-side innovation will drive greater value across the digital advertising ecosystem

Live event advertising will be the next frontier in streaming TV

The bar for quality and transparency in the supply chain will continue to grow

The cookieless era demands immediate investment into alternative addressability solutions

Sustainability initiatives will transition from lofty aspirations to actionable change

Supply-side innovation will drive greater value across the digital advertising ecosystem

Ready to shape your 2025 plans?

You might also like

The Importance of QPS Optimization in Programmatic

The Importance of QPS Optimization in Programmatic

Understanding Supply Chain Transparency: Ads.txt, Sellers.json, and SupplyChain

Understanding Supply Chain Transparency: Ads.txt, Sellers.json, and SupplyChain

What Makes Live Event Advertising Unique in Streaming TV

What Makes Live Event Advertising Unique in Streaming TV

How To Protect Programmatic Campaigns from MFA and Fraud

How To Protect Programmatic Campaigns from MFA and Fraud

How Curated Marketplaces Add Value to the Advertising Ecosystem

How Curated Marketplaces Add Value to the Advertising Ecosystem