Trent Lloyd.
The AdNews end-of-year Perspectives, looking back at 2025 and forward to next year.
And see the AdNews 50 plus page state of the market report, Forecast 2026
By Trent Lloyd, Head of APAC, Eyeota.
The Australian advertising industry spent much of 2025 making sense of mixed economic signals and increasingly fragmented media behaviour. Some channels continued to outperform expectations. Digital and digital out-of-home were standouts, and social platforms saw sustained growth. A number of traditional environments proved more resilient than anticipated, even as TV softened slightly.
At the same time, a challenging economy was never far from view. Cost-of-living concerns, persistent pressure on interest rates, and subdued consumer confidence contributed to slower spending patterns. Government advertising, which had been a major stabiliser in previous cycles, dropped sharply year on year. That contraction had ripple effects across publishers and platforms alike.
Despite these pressures, marketers continued to prioritise data-driven activation. We saw sustained demand for audience insights across channels including CTV, video, audio, DOOH, and social. As budgets tightened, the focus shifted to practical, efficient targeting approaches that could reach audiences across more touch-points without unnecessary waste. And while AI remained impossible to avoid in industry conversations, marketers spent much of 2025 trying to separate genuinely useful applications from ambient noise.
Looking ahead to 2026, the themes driving the market forward are already taking shape.
Trends to Watch in 2026
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CTV’s expanding role: More spend is shifting into CTV, with increased expectations around precision targeting and unified measurement.
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AI everywhere: AI will continue to dominate conversations across search, shopping, profiling, and audience targeting. The challenge for marketers will be knowing where to invest and where to ignore the hype.
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Further audience fragmentation:Reaching scale will require orchestrating multiple touch-points rather than relying on any single channel or platform.
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Privacy in constant motion: Regulatory change will remain a defining consideration, shaping how data is collected, enriched, and activated.
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Retailers as ecosystems: Expect retailers to deepen their media ambitions and expand the ways brands can engage within their environments.
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Walled gardens in the spotlight:Established players, particularly the major social platforms, will continue to dominate attention and influence.
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Marketers seeking focus: With more complexity than ever, the most effective teams will prioritise what matters, concentrate on the customers they most need to reach, and resist the temptation to chase every new trend.
If 2025 was a test of resilience, 2026 will be a test of focus. The opportunity belongs to marketers who can cut through noise, harness data intelligently, and build strategies that balance precision, scale, and simplicity.
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