Data from 1700+ Global Marketers

If you happen to’re something like me, you in all probability want you had extra time and assets to get by your work, ponder game-changing concepts, brush up on digital advertising and marketing business developments, and provides your audiences unforgettable model experiences.

I get it. That’s why I put collectively this overview of prime advertising and marketing developments for 2025. I’ll share a few of my favourite highlights from HubSpot’s latest survey of greater than 1,700 B2B and B2C entrepreneurs, exploring the important thing developments, instruments, and challenges that right now’s advertising and marketing professionals are centered on essentially the most.

Plus, preserve studying to listen to from leaders at OpenAI, Asana, Adobe, Bitly, and extra. 

Prime Digital Advertising Developments in 2025

1. AI helps entrepreneurs sustain with rising content material wants.

In 2024, AI utilization amongst entrepreneurs rose at a staggering charge. And whereas there are numerous AI instruments accessible to assist with all kinds of promoting wants, right now’s entrepreneurs reported they’ve been notably centered on utilizing AI instruments to create content material to maintain up with their rising content material wants.

Apparently, completely different entrepreneurs use AI to create content material in numerous methods. Whereas some report utilizing AI to develop total drafts from scratch, one of the vital frequent AI use circumstances was to repurpose content material from one format to a different.

For instance, I’ve discovered that entrepreneurs could use AI instruments to show a weblog put up right into a video script, or a video clip right into a social media put up. AI has enabled many advertising and marketing groups to extend their content material output with out having to rent extra folks.

Diving just a little deeper, listed here are the highest AI use circumstances recognized by our survey respondents:

1. Content material creation (utilizing generative AI to write down copy, create pictures, get concepts, and so forth.) (43%)
2. Analysis (utilizing generative AI for market analysis, to seek out datasets, summarize articles, and so forth.) (34%)
3. Brainstorming (utilizing generative AI to brainstorm content material concepts) (27%)
4. Studying methods to do issues (utilizing generative AI to study an Excel perform, debug SQL code, and so forth.) (40%)
5. Information evaluation/reporting (utilizing generative AI to investigate or manipulate advertising and marketing knowledge) (35%)
6. Take notes or summarize conferences (27%)

In the case of the forms of content material that entrepreneurs have been utilizing generative AI to supply, I’ve discovered that social media posts, emails, weblog posts, topic ideas, pictures, and product descriptions are the commonest.

As well as, many entrepreneurs use instruments like HubSpot’s Content Marketing Software to show present weblog posts into social posts, publication content material, audio information, and different content material kinds in just some minutes.

Inquisitive about utilizing AI for content material creation? HubSpot’s Free AI Content Creator is a good place to start out.

It’s additionally necessary to make clear that whereas a lot of our respondents had been centered on utilizing AI to generate content material, AI is poised to develop past content material technology into a variety of associated domains.

As OpenAI’s Head of Strategic Advertising Dane Vahey notes, “Entrepreneurs have been scratching the floor of AI, however to this point, it’s been largely for content material technology. In 2025, we count on to see entrepreneurs make the leap to utilizing AI for inventive ideation, data-driven decision-making, workflow automation, and strategic brainstorming.”

2. Many entrepreneurs wrestle to combine AI into their workflows.

Regardless of the rising reputation of AI content material technology instruments, our survey discovered that many entrepreneurs are nonetheless struggling to study to make use of these instruments successfully and combine them into their workflows.

As Briana Rogers, VP of Advertising at Miro, shared, “Entrepreneurs should learn to combine AI into their work.”

She continued, “The area is shifting so rapidly and we have to experiment with every thing… from the extra well-established use circumstances — like leveraging machine studying to enhance advert shopping for, or creating predictive buyer worth fashions — to newer areas, like figuring out patterns in consumer analysis and knowledge, aiding in inventive growth, and constructing full buyer campaigns which might be powered by AI.”

Our survey discovered that whereas entrepreneurs are more and more investing in AI, many stay lower than assured about their capability to make use of these instruments.

Particularly, simply 47% strongly or considerably agreed that that they had a transparent understanding of methods to use AI of their advertising and marketing technique, and 48% strongly or considerably agreed that that they had a transparent understanding of methods to measure the influence of AI of their advertising and marketing technique.

Furthermore, even amongst entrepreneurs who perceive the fundamentals of AI implementation, integrating these instruments ethically may pose a serious problem.

As Dr. Rebecca Hinds, Head of Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, warns, “Gen Z is sounding the alarm: They’re extra involved than every other demographic about whether or not their organizations can belief generative AI distributors to uphold accountable AI practices.”

She goes on, “Distributors should lead with transparency, clear AI ideas, and a dedication to moral innovation to achieve the help of Gen Z in 2025” — and doing so might be fairly tough for a lot of entrepreneurs.

3. AI is making a serious influence — but it surely shouldn’t change people.

Whereas many content material entrepreneurs (myself included) have voiced issues concerning the potential for AI instruments to exchange human content material creators, our latest knowledge means that that is unlikely to occur.

Previous HubSpot survey data reveals that the overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs nonetheless edit content material that’s been generated by AI, suggesting that AI instruments are appearing extra like assistants than like fully-fledged, human content material builders.

Plus, neither prospects nor search engines like google and yahoo are more likely to reward an extreme reliance on AI-generated content material.

For instance, a latest post from HubSpot Senior Advertising Supervisor Curtis del Principe highlighted the punishment handed down to 1 company after they farmed 1000’s of posts with AI in what’s been known as an “search engine optimisation Heist.”

Different analysis has highlighted the chance of plagiarism when utilizing AI-generated content material, and Google’s Gemini (previously Bard) really lets you double-check its output by offering hyperlinks to sources that affirm the knowledge it gives.

In different phrases, AI is unquestionably making a serious influence on the world of content material technology — however I don’t suppose it’s more likely to totally change human entrepreneurs.

4. Social media is the very best ROI advertising and marketing channel.

In 2025, the highest positions entrepreneurs report their organizations are hiring for are content-related, with a selected emphasis on social content material.

Notably, this development spans throughout organizational hierarchies, with an elevated give attention to social media for everybody from the person contributors answerable for creating posts to managers and administrators answerable for content material technique.

Once we requested entrepreneurs to pick out the highest three advertising and marketing roles that they anticipated to be the highest precedence to recruit in 2025, they listed the next positions:

1. Content material Creator (15%)
2. Social Media Coordinator (13%)
3. Social Media Strategist (13%)
4. Artistic Assistant (13%)
5. Artistic Director (12%)

Clearly, social media stays a serious precedence for right now’s entrepreneurs. However what’s driving this ongoing give attention to social?

Our 2024 Consumer Trends Survey discovered that social media is definitely the popular product discovery channel for Gen Z and Millennials, with Gen X and Boomers additionally rapidly warming as much as it. Actually, 64% of Gen Z, 59% of Millennials, and 47% of Gen X respondents reported having found a product on social media up to now three months.

This survey additionally discovered that 17% of social media customers reported having purchased a product in-app up to now three months, one in 4 purchased one thing primarily based on an influencer’s suggestion, and 19% despatched a DM (Direct Message) for customer support.

On platforms akin to Instagram, TikTok, and Fb, entrepreneurs can arrange digital shops for customers to buy with out ever leaving the app. From model discovery to influencer suggestions to in-app purchases and customer support through DMs, social media can turn into a one-stop store for the whole buyer journey.

As such, it’s no shock that entrepreneurs are rapidly embracing social promoting. Our most up-to-date social selling survey discovered that 87% of entrepreneurs say this strategy is efficient, and 59% report driving extra social gross sales than in previous years.

5. Fb nonetheless proves to be a robust platform for entrepreneurs.

So, social media is clearly the place to be. However what platforms are literally delivering essentially the most worth for entrepreneurs?

Regardless of what you could have heard about Fb being “lifeless,” it’s nonetheless the most well-liked platform for entrepreneurs, with 58% of survey respondents reporting that they leverage the platform as a part of their advertising and marketing technique.

Entrepreneurs additionally report that Fb has had the very best ROI of any social media platform over the previous 12 months, with 40% of respondents indicating that the platform is among the many prime three drivers of ROI.

Because of this, I wasn’t shocked to see that greater than two out of three entrepreneurs plan to keep up the identical stage of funding or improve their funding into their Fb advertising and marketing efforts in 2025.

6. The Threads vs X showdown continues.

Whereas Fb stays a frontrunner within the realm of social media advertising and marketing, the showdown between its Threads platform and X (previously Twitter) stays ongoing.

Our newest survey knowledge reveals that 68% of entrepreneurs plan to proceed or broaden their funding into X in 2025, whereas 59% plan to proceed or broaden their funding into Threads. As well as, 8% of entrepreneurs plan to attempt Threads for the primary time in 2025, and simply 18% of entrepreneurs listing X as among the many top-three ROI-driving social media platforms.

To study extra about X versus Threads — and how one can leverage these competing platforms in your individual advertising and marketing technique — check out a few of these deep dives:

7. Visible storytelling is on the rise.

Whereas an efficient content material technique will usually leverage a variety of platforms, our most up-to-date survey knowledge means that visible codecs akin to short-form video, pictures, and live-streaming video are notably in style.

These types of visible storytelling had been among the many mostly used content material codecs in 2024, and in 2025, entrepreneurs plan to extend their funding into all three at greater charges than all different codecs.

This doesn’t shock me. In spite of everything, in 2024, all three of those visually-focused codecs had been reported as among the many highest ROI codecs, and social media platforms that target visible content material (akin to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok) are additionally seeing elevated funding in 2025 at charges greater than different channels.

Certainly, our weblog crew has been predicting a short-form video renaissance because the rise of TikTok through the pandemic, and right now, there’s hardly any contest.

Brief-form video is now the primary content material advertising and marketing format, with most entrepreneurs saying it provides them greater ROI than every other format.

Particularly, when requested concerning the codecs they use most, entrepreneurs listed the next (I bolded the visible codecs for example simply how prevalent they’ve turn into):

• Brief-form video (29%)
• Photographs (29%)
• Interviews (22%)
• Weblog posts (19%)
• Dwell streaming video (19%)

Equally, when requested which codecs ship the very best ROI, they highlighted:

• Brief-form video (21%)
• Photographs (19%)
• Dwell streaming video (16%)
• Interviews (15%)
• Weblog posts (15%)

Importantly, this isn’t only a matter of the place final 12 months’s advertising and marketing {dollars} had been spent — it’s additionally a development that’s mirrored in entrepreneurs’ plans for the long run. When requested the place they plan to improve funding in 2025, respondents talked about:

• Brief-form video (17%)
• Photographs (15%)
• UGC (14%)
• Dwell streaming (14%)
• Podcasts or different audio content material (13%)

And equally, on the social media entrance, respondents reported that the next social codecs could be seeing elevated funding in 2025:

• Youtube (30%)
• Instagram (29%)
• TikTok (28%)
• LinkedIn (26%)
• Fb (26%)

Priya Gill, VP & World Head of Advertising for SurveyMonkey, has discovered substantial success with visible advertising and marketing.

She explains, “Brief-form video, pictures, and user-generated content material are impactful as a result of they align with how right now’s audiences eat and have interaction with content material — rapidly, visually, and authentically. These codecs seize consideration in seconds and permit companies to inform compelling tales that resonate.”

This even applies to us at HubSpot, too — our personal weblog crew is testing out short-form videos to promote content. That’s as a result of entrepreneurs are seeing that video-centric social media platforms are the best, they usually provide the very best ROI.

8. Area of interest influencers are rising as a key channel.

Whereas influencer marketing has been an necessary advertising and marketing channel for a while, our newest survey highlights the rising function of area of interest influencers specifically.

In 2024, entrepreneurs reported leveraging and benefiting from small-scale influencers — that’s, influencers with fewer than 100,000 followers — greater than larger-scale influencers.

Our respondents famous that regardless of their comparatively small variety of followers, these area of interest influencers provided entry to audiences with sturdy model loyalty and belief, making them particularly priceless.

Parimal Deshpande, Senior Director of Product Advertising for Adobe Specific, agrees that partnering with a content material creator who resonates along with your target market might be extremely priceless, arguing, “The important thing to profitable advertising and marketing lies in constructing authenticity and belief.”

He continues, “Persona-led content material, delivered by creators and channels that resonate with audiences, is integral to reaching that.”

As such, it is sensible that almost one in 4 respondents listed influencer advertising and marketing as a prime development for 2024, with 68% reporting that that they had partnered with a distinct segment influencer within the final 12 months.

In distinction, just one in 4 survey respondents reported working with an influencer who had between 100,000 and a million followers, and simply 7% labored with influencers with audiences of over a million.

To study extra about how real-world entrepreneurs are working with influencers, we requested Bitly CMO Tara Robertson to shed some gentle on her group’s latest expertise with influencer advertising and marketing.

She shared, “Within the second half of 2024, we launched an influencer pilot program on Instagram to higher perceive how established personalities and communities may additional drive content material, dialog, and consciousness past Bitly’s personal channel.”

And what occurred?

Robertson experiences, “The outcomes had been sturdy. In comparison with our common Instagram efficiency, we noticed 5X greater the impressions and video views, 6X greater engagement, and 82% development in followers. Because of this, partnering with influencers is changing into a bigger a part of our general advertising and marketing technique as a method to broaden our attain, join extra successfully with our goal audiences, and present measurable outcomes whereas nonetheless sustaining belief and authenticity.”

Diving deeper, once we requested respondents about the advantages of working with these smaller-scale influencers and creators, the primary cause they cited was that these area of interest influencers had been extra trusted by their followers or subscribers.

Past this, respondents additionally famous that smaller influencers give them entry to extra area of interest, tighter-knit communities, in addition to typically being lots cheaper than influencers with bigger audiences.

In different phrases, follower depend isn’t every thing. Our latest Social Media Trends Report discovered that the majority entrepreneurs say “high quality of content material” is an important issue when figuring out which influencers to accomplice with, slightly than simply what number of followers or subscribers an influencer has.

Certainly, as Aaron Cort, Head of Advertising, Development and GTM for Craft Ventures factors out, “Individuals have such a excessive bar for what they act on today, for each enterprise and customers.”

On this surroundings, “Influencers assist bridge that hole behind a devoted effort towards establishing optimistic model affinity and phrase of mouth first.”

9. Information privateness adjustments stay a problem.

From iOS adjustments to GDPR and Google’s plans to section out third-party cookies, I’ve seen firsthand that elevated knowledge privateness laws have posed a considerable hurdle for advertising and marketing business development over the previous few years.

As a marketer myself, I do know these adjustments might be irritating — however with 84% of respondents in our latest client developments survey reporting that they consider knowledge privateness is a human proper, public opinion is definitely shifting towards having extra safeguards round private knowledge.

As such, it’s comprehensible that almost 9 out of ten entrepreneurs (88%) reported that knowledge privateness adjustments akin to GDPR, iOS, and Google phasing out third-party cookies impacted their general advertising and marketing technique over the previous 12 months.

The excellent news is, there are many instruments and methods that right now’s organizations are pursuing to stability efficient advertising and marketing with adequately defending folks’s knowledge.

To study extra about these alternate options, I’d suggest checking out this blog post, which explores a number of options in depth.

10. Personalization is crucial.

In line with our newest survey outcomes, 86% of entrepreneurs report that their prospects get a considerably or very customized expertise with their model. Much more spectacular, a whopping 94% report that providing a personalised buyer expertise impacts their firm’s gross sales.

In different phrases, the information reveals that providing a extremely personalized experience is extra important than ever.

On the similar time, research present that the majority entrepreneurs lack crucial information about their viewers, with solely 65% saying they’ve high-quality knowledge on their goal demographic.

Certainly, once we requested entrepreneurs what they knew about their target market, lower than half reported understanding the place they eat content material, their fundamental demographic data, or their pursuits and hobbies, not to mention the sorts of merchandise they’re concerned with or insights about their procuring habits.

To handle these challenges, I’ve discovered HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics device might be extremely priceless. This device gives useful insights into buyer habits, preferences, and engagement patterns, serving to entrepreneurs create extra customized and efficient campaigns.

Study extra about personalization with HubSpot CRM.

11. Entrepreneurs nonetheless wrestle with disconnected knowledge and silos.

To personalize your advertising and marketing efforts successfully, you want a single supply of reality. Sadly, our knowledge means that this stays a problem, with many entrepreneurs reporting that they wrestle with disconnected knowledge sources, firm silos, and a scarcity of a centralized and accessible supply of details about their prospects.

Actually, simply one out of 5 entrepreneurs reported that their advertising and marketing knowledge is totally built-in with the instruments they use, and 30% shared that the interactions between the varied instruments they used of their advertising and marketing function was both barely or very disjointed.

Equally, 28% of respondents felt that it was considerably or very tough to get the information they wanted from different groups at their firm, whereas 34% felt that it was considerably or very tough to share their very own knowledge with different groups throughout their firm. These points create a “crisis of disconnection” that may forestall advertising and marketing groups from getting a holistic view of their knowledge, in addition to lowering the standard of that knowledge.

Anna James, Work Innovation Analytics Lead at Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, speaks eloquently to the dangers of this disaster, sharing: “Entrepreneurs are going through extraordinarily excessive ranges of digital burnout because of utilizing fragmented instruments and techniques.”

As such, she argues that “in 2025, success gained’t come from including extra expertise — it is going to come from refining and streamlining expertise, enabling entrepreneurs to give attention to creativity and extra high-value influence.”

And James just isn’t alone on this perspective. At present’s entrepreneurs acknowledge the facility of getting a single supply of reality to handle these challenges of disconnected knowledge and siloed groups: We discovered that 82% of respondents consider that having a single supply of reality for his or her advertising and marketing knowledge is barely, considerably, or very useful to their group.

A single supply of reality straight addresses the highest challenges that emerge when groups are misaligned: An absence of efficient communication, gross sales and advertising and marketing groups utilizing completely different instruments, and problem sharing knowledge between groups. That’s seemingly why 69% of entrepreneurs report that their CRM is considerably or crucial for the success of their general advertising and marketing technique.

One in all my favourite methods to achieve entry to a single supply of reality is to implement a CRM like HubSpot. HubSpot’s CRM integrates knowledge with instruments, slicing throughout silos and boosting alignment throughout groups.

12. Being data-driven is now not a nice-to-have.

Whereas the significance of knowledge is much from new, this 12 months’s survey responses spotlight simply how vital it has turn into to make sure your advertising and marketing group is really data-driven.

Leveraging knowledge successfully helps entrepreneurs perceive how their varied methods are performing, in flip serving to them reveal the ROI of their efforts and informing their decision-making on future technique.

On the similar time, we discovered that utilizing knowledge to know and goal prospects has turn into much less salient within the minds of right now’s entrepreneurs, at the least partially as a result of the information panorama has turn into more and more difficult on account of rising privateness and safety necessities.

As well as, once we requested respondents to determine the best challenges they encountered with respect to understanding and gathering knowledge from their target market, 21% pointed to customers being much less trusting with their private knowledge, 19% pointed to poor knowledge high quality, and 18% famous elevated knowledge privateness laws that cut back entry to non-public knowledge.

However, our analysis demonstrates that regardless of these challenges, being data-driven is now not a nice-to-have. In right now’s panorama, aligning a model’s advertising and marketing initiatives with its prospects’ values will depend on sustaining entry to correct, up-to-date knowledge about these prospects.

That’s seemingly why when requested concerning the largest adjustments within the advertising and marketing business over the past 12 months, 29% emphasised the significance of utilizing knowledge to tell their advertising and marketing technique and 26% famous the significance of utilizing knowledge to reveal the ROI and enterprise worth of their advertising and marketing efforts.

Certainly, the most important benefits of growing a data-driven advertising and marketing technique that our respondents pointed to had been to know which advertising and marketing methods had been simplest (listed by 31% of respondents), to extend the ROI of their advertising and marketing efforts (30%), and to achieve their target market extra successfully (27%).

As Priya Gill of SurveyMonkey explains, “We’ve discovered success utilizing knowledge (surveys and polls) to know what our audiences care most about, retaining content material brief and snappy, showcasing authenticity, and testing and iterating on our concepts.”

Leveraging knowledge successfully might be fairly difficult — however to achieve right now’s enterprise surroundings, entrepreneurs cannot afford not to be data-driven.

What’s Subsequent in Advertising Trade Developments

In the case of the developments defining the present advertising and marketing business, the listing above is simply the tip of the iceberg. As I put this listing collectively, I used to be struck again and again by simply how complicated and difficult the fashionable advertising and marketing panorama has turn into.

That’s why visibility into right now’s prime advertising and marketing developments is so vital. Whereas this text consists of a lot of my prime developments, for an in depth listing of the highest techniques, alternatives, challenges, channels, and content material entrepreneurs will leverage in 2025, I’d undoubtedly suggest trying out our 2025 State of Advertising Report.

In spite of everything, relating to advertising and marketing, I’ve discovered that staying up-to-date is crucial. So don’t be afraid to dive into the information!