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 a time of near infinite content and endlessly scrolling feeds, advertising that captures attention and drives growth will require a higher quality programmatic supply chain in 2025 – one that is more sustainable, transparent, and trusted.
Better Metrics, Stronger Outcomes
A better supply chain starts with a better understanding of advertising outcomes. Digital media always had a granularity in terms of measurement that offline media could never match, and it can now account for a wider range of metrics, from business impact (e.g., sales uplift, footfall) to societal impact (e.g., carbon emissions).
For example, greater investment in supplementary technologies such as eye tracking has enabled a stronger understanding of audience attention across different environments and contexts, which in turned has led to the development of new metrics (e.g., attentive seconds) that can now be used for planning and buying media.
These emerging metrics are gaining traction among advertisers: 86% of CMOs now recognize audience attention as a very, if not critically, important metric for media performance, and 87% are either already using attention metrics to optimize media or running early pilots.
Smart Brand Protection
In today’s environment of increased audience scrutiny and polarization, brands must actively protect their programmatic media from fraudulent, unsuitable, and unsafe environments to shield both their investments and their reputations. Private marketplaces with preapproved inventory (e.g., dentsu media exchange) will rise in importance to provide more transparency of where ads appear and against what content.
Conversely, excessively strict blocking of keywords should be progressively retired from media planning, as this hurts both publishers’ and brands’ capacity to engage with audiences. For example, nearly half (45%) of the articles covering the latest FIFA Euro 2024 final from a leading UK publisher reportedly did not receive advertising as they were wrongfully deemed unsafe for including words like “shoot” and “attack” – a missed advertising opportunity around an event with one of the highest audiences of the year in that market.
A Healthier Supply Chain
The impact of media activity on society is not neutral. As many companies are now committed to sustainability goals, measuring and reducing the emissions generated by media operations is a critical part to achieve these goals. According to dentsu research, 45% or CMO respondents say they have already taken steps to mitigate the carbon emissions of their media activity, and 47% intend to launch new initiatives in the next 12 months. Using a carbon calculator to measure carbon emissions is their preferred way to drive carbon emissions reduction.
The same research shows a growing concern of CMOs around systematic inequity in the advertising supply chain; 22% of them now see this as a major challenge for their organization. Their support for minority-owned media platforms through advertising investment will play an increasingly important role in maintaining a diverse media ecosystem.
What's Next?
With programmatic now accounting for nearly 75% of digital media buying globally and continuing to rise in popularity in fast-growing channels like connected television, the media supply chain will strive to offer greater measurement solutions, limit negative externalities for society, and keep made-for-advertising websites at bay.
This is the eighth 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.
