In a surprise move following a series of consecutive downgrades, Brian Wieser has boosted the outlook for U.S. ad-spending growth this year to 6.0%. That’s nearly double the percent change he forecast in March when he downgraded his outlook for the second time following his original 2025 benchmark of 5.3% growth in September 2024.
Citing Strong Half, Brian Wieser Surprisingly Turns Bullish For 2025 06/04/2025
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A recent survey of marketing leaders conducted by Iridio found that economic volatility is their top concern, leading to strategic budget shifts and an increased focus on high-value activities like personalization. Iridio’s 2026 Marketing Predictions report also found that while marketers are prioritizing investments in AI to enhance customer experience, they remain highly aware of the technology's potential to erode consumer trust.
Key takeaways of the report include:
Volatility forces AI investment: Economic volatility is the primary cause of uncertainty (56%), followed by AI disruption (32%). This concern, coupled with expected consumer attitudes like economic distress (42%) and demand for lower prices (32%), influences strategic planning and makes AI/machine learning the top technology investment priority (55% in their top three) for driving efficiency.
AI uses: AI investment is overwhelmingly prioritized for high-value functions, including Personalization/Customer Experience (78%) and Data Analysis/Predictive Analytics (76%).
Trust paradox: While relying on AI, marketers view replacing human interaction with AI (28%) and AI-generated deception (25%) as the biggest threats to consumer trust.
Budget shifts to digital: Budgets are shifting toward high-impact digital tactics, including Online Video (59%), Websites (57%), and Paid Social Media (56%).
Adobe announced the next generation of its Real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP), the only enterprise application architected from the ground up for first-party data-driven customer acquisition and engagement. Adobe Real-time CDP helps brands activate known and unknown customer data to manage the entire customer profile and journey seamlessly in one system, without the need for third-party cookies. The relationship between consumers and brands is rapidly evolving. Consumers today are more attentive to the data they share, which has resulted in a patchwork of privacy regulations globally. At the same time, expectations for personalized brand experiences remain at an all-time high, while third-party cookies, which marketers have historically relied on to track unknown visitors, will no longer be supported in browsers. This means brands will have to contend with reduced insight about unknown visitors to their digital properties while still trying to provide a compelling customer experience.
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