As we approach 2025, I gathered insight from marketing leaders about the shifts in consumer behavior they expect and the changes they anticipate in marketing. Below is insight on personalization, AI, data, and budgets.
Consumers—once skeptical about personalization—are now pushing marketers for more.
Casey Gannon, VP of Marketing and Technology Partnerships at Bold Commerce
“Personalization has transformed from a nice-to-have into a must-have in marketing strategies over the past few years. Consumers now expect tailored experiences at every interaction, and their attention spans are shrinking for anything less. As we move into the next year, these expectations are set to rise, pushing marketers to discover innovative ways to deliver deeper personalization at scale. Enter AI—the fastest and most cost-effective solution to meet these evolving demands.
We’re just beginning to unlock the potential of data-driven insights from AI. While many brands have started with task automation, we’ll see a shift toward more sophisticated machine-learning applications in 2025 and beyond. This evolution will provide marketers with fresh perspectives on consumer behavior, preferences, and sentiments, making personalization more intuitive than ever.
AI adoption will enhance efficiency and open up new opportunities throughout the entire customer journey. From precisely targeted digital ads and real-time optimization to personalized content, offers, and recommendations on your website—AI will make it all possible. Plus, it will streamline the checkout experience by tailoring payment options to individual preferences, ensuring a smoother, more personalized shopping journey.”
Marketers will look for new ways to do more with less as they continue operating on tight budgets.
Katherine Lee, Head of Marketing, USA at GFT
“There’s been a lot of excitement about how AI can be used to drive efficiency in marketing, especially when it comes to content creation. However, I think smart marketers are realizing that they still need to balance this efficiency with thoughtful, human-generated content. Even though generative AI can create things like social media captions, email copy, and blog content in seconds, it often misses the mark on brand sentiment, tone of voice and unique perspectives that set companies apart from their competitors.
I expect that we’ll see marketers put more of a focus on using AI to automate administrative tasks like reporting and data analyses and not so much content creation as they look for ways to stretch their budgets next year.“
As tech becomes more important, the more consumers will crave genuine human experiences.
Gretel Going, President at Channel V Media
“Across nearly all marketing practices, AI and other technologies are taking over functions ranging from basic research, data analysis, and ad targeting to directly engaging with customers and even bringing full creative campaign concepts to life.
Both consumer and business audiences have already become comfortable with things like being more efficiently targeted online. And they don’t have much, if any, opinion on the behind-the-scenes mechanics of marketing campaigns. But on some fundamental level, they do sense the contrast between the eerily perfect, yet unfeeling, content, stories, and conversations generated by technology—and the imperfect, yet soulful, versions of the same that are created by real people.
This year we’ll see marketers take a step back to figure out where to draw the line between introducing efficiency and scale—and haphazardly replacing human ingenuity that uniquely resonates with other humans—with technology.
As for their audiences, the more their lives are perfectly curated by algorithms, the more they’ll crave authentic human experiences from the brands and businesses they interact with.”
Marketers will look to AI to solve the problems that actually plague customers.
Jason Grunberg, CMO at Bluecore
“Marketers know generative AI is going to help them solve problems, but many haven’t yet nailed down what they’re going to solve for.
In the coming year, we’ll see more marketers use AI for use cases beyond driving efficiencies and automating content to solve larger problems plaguing their customers. And when marketers can identify where their customers’ problems intersect with company challenges—and solve for them both with AI—they’ll drive business growth in the process. For example, Amazon introduced its AI shopping assistant Rufus to make it easier for shoppers to find products and quickly get their questions answered, but the technology also increases conversion and revenue.
Companies across every industry, from retail and travel to insurance and healthcare, can solve a multitude of customer problems with AI—2025 will be the year that they put it into action. Ultimately, this sets the foundation for a more agentic future where consumers themselves use AI to handle research, discovery, selection, and more so that consumer life becomes easier.”
Marketers will bring data to the center of everything they do.
Holly Fee, VP of Marketing at Infragistics
“Marketing teams have long collected vast amounts of data on customer behaviors, content engagement, and campaign performance but have struggled to fully utilize it. For many, this has translated to a lack of use of AI, with 45% of companies saying that their data is not yet ready to support AI. In 2025, we’ll see more companies invest in breaking down data silos, creating data-driven cultures, and, ultimately, preparing their data for AI tools.
This will empower marketers to holistically look at data, quickly analyze performance and trends, and make data integral to their everyday work and business decisions. The companies that bring data to the center of their organizations and ready it for AI use will be the ones to stay competitive—and those that don’t will fall behind.”
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