Adtech review and forecast
The AI elephant in the room has matured
Let's start with the elephant in the room. No conversation around AdTech (or marketing, or anything...) can be complete without mentioning AI, so let's start there. While AI made a massive splash in 2023, we saw the space hit its first stage of maturity in 2024. Not only did Google, Meta, and Microsoft integrate AI that creates content into their product offerings, but so did many others like Adobe and HubSpot. There are even rumors about a SearchGPT product from OpenAI. This shows how the tools have matured beyond the hype, and we are finding real-world uses for technology. Even though I have personal doubts about Artificial Intelligence truly replacing human creativity and ingenuity, current developments show the industry is moving in the right direction to support human intelligence across a wide range of tasks.
The next big hurdle in AI adoption will be change management. Through my day-to-day interactions with internal stakeholders and clients, it’s becoming commonplace to explain the difference between AI and run-of-the-mill technology and unravel many misconceptions about the two. Simply put - not every problem requires an AI-driven solution. It’s important for senior leaders to make this distinction. Organizations that do so can make better process and investment decisions.
Furthermore, organizations (especially small and medium-sized businesses) need to understand, recognize and mitigate new risks inherent in AI use, ranging from AI use clauses in contractual agreements to understanding data security and privacy concerns. The data chain has massively expanded and has exposed many organizations to greater risks than before.
Cookies get a reprieve, but privacy is still top of mind
In July 2024, Google announced that it will no longer deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, but the impact of its earlier intention persists. The industry has developed various innovations, such as AI-driven contextual and audience-targeting solutions and customer data platforms to address the challenges of a cookieless ecosystem, and many of these solutions remain effective today. However, efforts to address consumer privacy continue to grow. Meta, Google, and other ad platforms are gradually removing granular targeting capabilities in favor of AI-driven solutions designed to enhance privacy safeguards from advertisers.
Canadian marketers must navigate this evolving landscape while adhering to local regulations and consumer expectations around privacy. Special care is needed to deal with attribution. Although ad platforms can model conversion behavior or run media mix models, these methods may overstate overall conversion volume or fail to keep up with real-time consumer behaviour, leading to suboptimal attribution results. As advertisers increasingly rely on data provided by these platforms for investment decisions, new strategies are needed to mitigate these risks and maintain progress in developing a healthy digital content and media system.
Growing numbers of consumers value receiving relevant ads but don’t recognize the role their data plays in making this possible or fully understand the privacy protections that exist to protect them. Canadian marketers should prioritize consumer privacy, and ensure their activities are fully aligned with their privacy policies to build consumer trust and ensure regulatory action does not impede the ability to collect and utilize information effectively within the Canadian market.
Regulators and politicians weigh in
From the “TikTok ban” to calls to break up Google by both Canadian (divestment of DoubleClick for publishers and AdX) and US regulators (divestment of Chrome), 2024 proved to be a very active year. Following the US election, technology companies took steps to build relationships with the new Trump administration.
2024 also saw the rollout of the Digital Services Tax. Given President Trump’s views of this tax and a federal election expected sometime in 2025, its future is uncertain.
While the fate of TikTok and the Digital Services Tax remains to be seen, this shift in tone from Washington and Ottawa points to a much heavier involvement by policymakers and government to reshape Big Tech’s role in everyday life.
2025: A mix of chaos and optimism
The phrase "what’s past is prologue" holds great significance in 2025. While ongoing issues will influence marketers' planning and decisions, there are many reasons to be hopeful. With untapped potential in AI, the development of robust cookieless solutions, and enhanced communication of organizations’ privacy and data use practices to regulators and the public, the future looks promising. Although 2025 may present its own set of challenges, I am confident that the industry will emerge stronger, more innovative, and clearer-headed by 2026.
