Those were the thoughts of our founder Liam Veitch back in December, when he hosted a webinar highlighting some of the trends to watch out for this year.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be diving into the details of each trend via a series of blog posts, exploring the impact they’ll have on you marketing and design leaders.
To kickstart our series, we’ve put together a quick recap on some of the key points addressed in Liam’s session, providing you with a taste of what’s to come.
Algorithm Alterations
2025 will see a move away from follower-based timelines, with platforms like TikTok, Facebook and X shifting focus to their ‘For You’ pages. Even LinkedIn has began to follow suit, with more ‘creator’ content being shared on people’s feeds. With this in mind, moving images will be favoured over statics this year, while ‘just in time’ content associated with events, trends and news will continue to prove popular.
Hyper-personalisation
Five years ago, all we had at our disposal was A/B tests. Now, that’s yesterday’s tech. One of our predictions for 2025 is that technology will evolve to a point where an entire website can be changed on the fly, with only a certain amount of input needed before the algorithm does the work itself. We may even look back in another five years’ time and question the level of testing achieved in the next 12 months!
Shoppable Social
If you work in B2C, you’ll already know about this and may call it ‘social commerce’. Our guess is that shoppable social will make its way into the mainstream in 2025, with B2B brands adopting it as a part of their marketing strategy. Think e-commerce inside of TikTok, allowing consumers to buy products directly within social media platforms. Younger generations will prefer this type of content in their feeds too.
Zero-UI & Mixed Reality
The demand for ‘zero-UI’ (or voice-control) is growing, so brands will need to up their game with voice functions in 2025. The same goes for mixed reality. Headsets like the Apple Vision Pro will stick around, but we’ll see a new era of headsets and glasses for everyday activities. Meta and Ray-Ban were ahead of the curve with their XR glasses, but other tech giants like Google are now launching their own iterations.
Social Channel Turbulence
With the US set to ban TikTok very soon, many B2C (and some B2B) businesses are scrambling to know which platform will be most lucrative in 2025, with X (formerly Twitter) facing competition from the likes of Bluesky and Threads. Despite the turbulence, video is performing well across all channels and our expectation is that will continue this year, with X becoming a cost-effective space for paid media.
Agentic Browsing
Right now, we have two-way conversations with large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. But in future, agents are going to drive the web – they’ll manage the process and take action. With that in mind, it’s worth figuring out what that means for research, search engines and optimisation. How could you optimise your site this year so it’s effective for an agent as well as a human?
3D Accessibility
Things have come a long way since the days of red and blue 3D glasses, with the prompt-to-3D tools of today allowing designers to create custom games, product walkthroughs or immersive experiences on demand. In 2025, 3D will take its place in the marketing mix, helping businesses to showcase their products and services in a more visual way. The question is, can you take advantage of this new technology?
Rapid-Fire Research
While AI design remains some time away, what AI is great for right now is ideas and inspiration. Our prediction is that many businesses will begin to use software like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude to conduct their research and planning for upcoming campaigns. That way, they can stay on top of the latest marketing techniques and provide their design team or external partners with better briefs.
Hands-Off Ads
If you’re running ads on LinkedIn, Google or Meta, at some points these platforms will ask you to leave things in their hands. Software like Google’s P-Max, LinkedIn Accelerate and Meta Advantage+ can essentially create ads for you, providing you feed them with content images. By the end of 2025, we think they’ll become more compulsory with tech platforms, but for now they’re a good tool to experiment with.
Creators as Curators
Despite AI’s capabilities, brands still need a team of creatives to steer what it can produce. Take Coca-Cola’s latest Christmas ad, created using Real Magic AI. While the project itself took half the time to complete, it required a team to prompt the tech. So although AI photography and video capture are here, concepting, editing and curation will be human-driven in 2025. But do you have a team capable of that?
Can we help?
Whether you’re looking to build more interactive product walkthroughs or optimise your assets for different demographics, we can help you achieve your goals.
As a forward-thinking agency, we can work with you on a creative support basis, utilising all of the latest AI tools and trends to be your dedicated design team for the cost of a hire. That service starts from £2,200/month and gives you access to a range of design services, as well as a named Project Manager to handle your needs.
Or, you can work with us on a fixed deliverable basis. For example, you may need a certain number of display banners for your next campaign, or a new UX interface for your website. In these cases, we can give you a more standard agency service.
We’re an on-demand design team, on a subscription to scale up when you need it. To find out more, visit our website or book a demo to learn about how it all works.
Liam Veitch
Head of Production at Design on Demand
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