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Video Just Killed The Upfront Star 😵 Finally Transparency Concessions From Google 👀 Digital Video Ad Spend To Grow 14% In 2025 📈

Also: Welcome To The Era Of Experience

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🗞 Marketing News

Video Just Killed The Upfront Star [2 min read]

Digital video has overtaken linear TV as the dominant media buy for the 2025 upfront season, projected to capture nearly 60% of total TV/video ad spending this year - more than double its share from five years ago. U.S. digital video ad spending is expected to reach $72 billion in 2025 (a 14% increase from 2024), with growth being driven by both major marketers and small to mid-size advertisers using programmatic CTV advertising platforms. Despite economic uncertainties and geopolitical conflicts making the 2025 marketplace difficult to predict, all three components of digital video (CTV, social video, and online video) continue to experience double-digit growth.

Finally Transparency Concessions From Google's Performance Max [5 min read]

After nearly five years since Google introduced Performance Max, the company has finally conceded to advertisers' demands for greater transparency by announcing three critical updates: channel-level reporting that shows where ads are served across Google's platforms with detailed metrics including cost breakdowns, search terms reporting that provides visibility comparable to standalone search campaigns, and creative asset reporting that reveals which specific videos and product listings are used in campaigns.

Digital Video Ad Spend To Grow 14% In 2025 [2 min read]

The digital advertising landscape is seeing significant growth with digital video ad spending projected to reach $72.4 billion in 2025, marking a 14% increase from 2024. For the second consecutive year, digital video will outpace linear TV spending, capturing an expected 58% of total video ad investments. Connected TV has emerged as a particularly important channel, with 68% of marketers considering it a "must buy" for their media plans, driving its projected growth to $26.6 billion in 2025.

🤖 AI

Welcome To The Era Of Experience [35 min read]

The field of artificial intelligence is transitioning from learning based on human data to learning through direct experience, which will ultimately surpass human capabilities in many domains. This "Era of Experience" will feature agents operating in continuous streams, grounded in real environments, with rewards based on outcomes rather than human judgments, and planning based on direct experience rather than human thinking patterns. The shift is already visible in systems like AlphaProof, which achieved breakthrough mathematical performance by generating millions of its own experiences through reinforcement learning rather than relying solely on human examples.

Meta Has Finally Launched Its ChatGPT Competitor [2 min read]

In a move to challenge OpenAI's dominance, Meta has launched its standalone "Meta AI" app built on the Llama 4 model, featuring integration across Meta's ecosystem and voice-first capabilities with Ray-Ban smart glasses. The app includes a distinctive "Discover feed" allowing users to see how their connections use Meta AI, though opting out of having personal data used for AI training is virtually impossible. This launch represents not only a product release but also a strategic demonstration of Meta's AI ambitions to investors and developers, backed by a massive $60 billion investment in U.S.-based data centers.

Researchers Secretly Infiltrate Popular Reddit Forum With AI Bots [5 min read]

Researchers from the University of Zurich infiltrated Reddit's r/changemyview forum with AI bots that posed as real people with specific identities and left over 1,000 comments without users' knowledge or consent. Reddit is now considering legal action against the university, with their Chief Legal Officer stating the experiment was "deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level" for violating academic research norms, human rights, and Reddit's policies. While the researchers claimed they included ethical safeguards in their AI models and reviewed each comment before posting, Reddit moderators firmly rejected the value of the research, emphasizing that their community is "a decidedly human space that rejects undisclosed AI as a core value."

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Is Your Retention "Too Good"? [5 min read]

While conventional wisdom suggests maximizing customer retention, high retention rates in B2C subscription businesses might actually signal overly conservative marketing that focuses solely on core customers rather than exploring growth opportunities with adjacent audiences. Understanding and improving your "cohort floor" - the point at which customer churn stabilizes - is important for long-term business value, as demonstrated by Hulu's success in raising their floor from 20-25% to 30%. Finally, businesses must recognize that different types of churn, whether occurring in the first 90 days or after nearly a year of subscription, require distinct solutions, as early churn often relates to onboarding while later churn typically stems from product-specific issues like content exhaustion.

The Process Behind Employee Generated Content [9 min read]

Employee-Generated Content (EGC) is emerging as a major social media trend for 2025, with various brands seeing significant engagement increases by featuring their employees in authentic social content. The success of EGC relies heavily on implementing a structured process that includes cross-functional collaboration between teams like HR and Brand, clear content guidelines, and strategies to make employees comfortable on camera while maintaining brand authenticity. When executed properly, EGC can drive impressive results, including a 270% growth in TikTok following and viral content success, particularly when featuring genuine employee discussions and behind-the-scenes material that feels authentic rather than overproduced. 

When Should You Invest In Paid Marketing? [9 min read]

While paid marketing might seem like an easy solution for growth, the authors strongly caution against premature implementation as it can lead to wasted money and unsustainable growth. Before investing in paid marketing, companies need to meet specific prerequisites including having product-market fit, optimized landing pages, organic traffic of at least 10,000 visitors, proper technical infrastructure, and a minimum budget of $75,000 over six months. Finally, companies need to determine whether paid marketing will serve as a catalyst for virality and user-generated content (where ROI is less critical) or as the primary growth engine (requiring fast payback periods and reinvestment capability).

🏗️ For Founders

How To Do Scenario Modeling [15 min read]

Scenario modeling is a powerful tool that helps de-risk initiatives by working backward from goals to determine what needs to happen for success, revealing whether objectives are achievable and identifying key drivers to focus on. The structured six-step framework includes defining goals, creating driver trees, assigning values, quantifying gaps, identifying key drivers, and finding viable scenarios to reach your target. Through a detailed food delivery marketplace example, scenario modeling provides strategic clarity by systematically evaluating potential levers like increasing restaurant contracts and improving delivery batching, allowing teams to focus on high-impact drivers rather than making minor adjustments across multiple areas.

🔮 The Future

Four In Ten Consumers Now Expect Personalized Marketing Experiences [2 min read]

Nearly 40% of U.S. consumers expect personalized online shopping experiences and indicate this makes them more likely to purchase from brands, according to TransUnion's latest research. Despite this desire for personalization, consumers remain cautious about data sharing, with 80% expressing concerns about sharing personal information and 89% considering data privacy important when engaging online. This creates a significant challenge for marketers who must deliver relevant, personalized content while carefully respecting consumer trust boundaries and data ethics to avoid instantly disqualifying their brand in consumers' eyes.

Reimagining Human Marketing: How Passion Drives People-First Strategy [5 min read]

Gaming has evolved beyond traditional audiences to become mainstream across all demographics, requiring marketers to understand this expanded landscape. Havas Play distinguishes itself by emphasizing empathy-driven marketing that views gamers as people rather than data points, using AI-powered personas to gain deeper insights into their motivations. Successful brand integration in gaming requires specialized expertise and strategic precision rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, with campaigns ideally planned by actual gamers who understand the culture as gaming continues to evolve and merge with other entertainment forms.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

Lead Nurturing: The process of developing relationships with potential customers throughout their buying journey. It involves providing relevant information and value at each stage of the decision process. Lead nurturing keeps prospects engaged until they're ready to buy. 

Example: A software company sends helpful articles, video tutorials, and case studies to prospects over several weeks before offering a product demo.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A prospect who has shown interest in your offerings and meets your criteria for being a good potential customer. MQLs have engaged with your content or company in ways that suggest they're more likely to become customers. They require different marketing approaches than casual contacts.

Example: A website visitor who downloads your pricing guide, attends your webinar, and visits your product pages becomes an MQL.

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