In 2025, ad networks face a dual reality: grappling with challenges like privacy concerns, regulatory pressures, and a $50 billion global ad fraud threat, while also seizing opportunities in emerging markets and leveraging new technologies. Limelight Inc.’s latest report, Progress & Possibility: Ad Networks in 2025, dives into the evolving landscape, offering insights and actionable advice for ad networks navigating this transformative era.

Key Trends Shaping Ad Networks in 2025

1. CTV and AI Growth:

   • Connected TV (CTV): The rapid expansion of CTV is reshaping ad placements and targeting.
   • Artificial Intelligence: AI-driven ad optimizations and contextual targeting are gaining influence.

2. Emerging Markets:

   • Markets like India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico represent significant growth potential for ad networks.

3. First-Party Data and Contextual Targeting:

   • With the decline of third-party cookies, ad networks are investing heavily in privacy-first approaches, leveraging first-party data and contextual targeting.

Major Challenges for Ad Networks

1. Ad Fraud:

   • Estimated to surpass $50 billion globally in 2025, ad fraud remains a critical concern for the industry.

2. Privacy Regulations:

   • Stricter data privacy laws demand compliance, increasing operational complexities for ad networks.

3. Ad Blockers:

   • The rising adoption of ad blockers continues to impact ad visibility and revenue streams.

Opportunities Through Technology

• Enhanced Measurement and Attribution:

  • Adoption of multi-touch attribution models improves ad performance analysis and ROI calculations.

• White-Label Platforms:

  • Offer off-the-shelf solutions for technological upgrades, reducing development time and cost.

• Adtech Innovations:

  • Blockchain technology and augmented reality (AR) promise to revolutionize ad transparency and engagement.

Expert Insights: The Resilience of Ad Networks

David Nelson, Co-founder and CEO of Limelight Inc., emphasizes the adaptability of ad networks:

“Ad networks are the great survivors of the digital marketing industry. They’ve evolved constantly to meet the needs of a fast-changing market. Our white paper offers invaluable advice to help ad networks thrive in the next 25 years.”

The Industry’s To-Do List for 2025

1. Sustainability:

   • Develop and implement strategies for environmentally responsible operations.

2. Responsible AI Use:

   • Create a road map for ethical and effective AI applications in digital advertising.

3. Blockchain Integration:

   • Leverage blockchain to enhance transparency and combat ad fraud.

Despite mounting challenges, ad networks remain a vibrant and essential part of the digital advertising ecosystem. By embracing innovation, addressing fraud, and tapping into emerging markets, ad networks can continue connecting advertisers with publishers to drive effective and efficient advertising outcomes.

Attentio and Skail AI have joined forces to introduce a groundbreaking platform aimed at revolutionizing personalized outreach and communication. This human-centric solution leverages advanced Machine Learning (ML) and Language Learning Models (LLMs) to help individuals and businesses scale their communication efforts while maintaining a personal touch.

Key Features and Innovations

1. Attentio's Single-Shot ML Training Approach:

   • Facilitates hyper-efficient training of open-weight LLMs for organizations and service providers.
   • Enables faster deployment of language models into production environments, significantly reducing time-to-value.

2. Skail AI's Proprietary LLMs and "Digital Clone":

   • Creates a "Digital Clone" that mimics an individual's personality, tone, and language patterns.
   • Generates tailored messaging to enhance productivity while preserving the personal touch often lost in AI automation.
   • Integrates seamlessly into CRMs and email tools, enabling employees to scale their communication efforts effectively.

Insights from Key Leaders

• Zach Hajjaj, CTO of Skail AI:

  • Highlights the uniqueness of Attentio’s platform, stating:

  "Attentio lets us write content that feels so human and has a different flavor than the typical AI-generated text."

  • Attributes faster product timelines and superior accuracy to Attentio's advanced training and context-learning capabilities.

• Julian Besonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Attentio:

  • Emphasizes the importance of open-weight LLMs for avoiding platform risks:

  "We're breaking down technical barriers to make LLM training scalable and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes."

Future Plans and Vision

1. Attentio's Ambitious Goals:

   • Aims to help 100 businesses drive at least $1 million in revenue or cost savings by 2027 through models trained on its platform.

2. Skail AI's Growth Strategy:

   • Plans to expand AI functionality into new communication channels.
   • Targets 20,000 users by the end of 2025.

Impact on Business Communication

• The partnership aims to redefine business communication by merging scalability with a personal touch.
• By focusing on individual-centric solutions, the platform empowers employees and strengthens customer relationships.

PropellerAds, a leading global advertising platform specializing in performance-driven solutions, has introduced a new traffic type: ads within Telegram Mini Apps. This innovation allows advertisers to tap into Telegram's growing ecosystem, offering a unique opportunity to engage a fresh and expanding audience.

Key Benefits and Audience Reach

1. Expanding Audience Beyond Traditional Sources

   • 50 Million Daily Impressions: The new ad format provides a significant reach with millions of daily impressions.
   • Targeted Reach: PropellerAds' robust targeting features ensure that advertisers connect with the most relevant users, driving higher conversion rates and ROI.
   • Top GEOs: Key regions include Europe (CIS countries), India, and parts of Africa, allowing access to rapidly growing audiences across these regions.

2. Seamless Integration into Telegram Ecosystem

   • Ads within Telegram Mini Apps provide a seamless user experience for advertisers looking to engage Telegram's active user base.
   • This format solves the challenge of finding suitable traffic sources for Telegram-based apps, channels, or chats, offering an effective solution for those looking to promote within Telegram’s ecosystem.

Key Features of PropellerAds’ Telegram Mini Apps Traffic

1. CPA Goal Bidding:

   • Advertisers can tailor campaigns to achieve specific cost-per-action (CPA) goals, optimizing for performance.

2. Advanced Traffic Filtering:

   • PropellerAds uses advanced algorithms to ensure high-quality traffic, enhancing campaign effectiveness.

3. Precision Targeting:

   • Offers a range of targeting options, including platform, OS, browser, language, and connection type, ensuring precision in audience targeting.

4. Flexible Moderation:

   • Easier approval processes compared to Telegram's direct advertising policies, making it simpler for advertisers to get started.

5. Familiar Ad Formats:

   • Ads resemble familiar push and click styles, providing advertisers with both ease of use and cutting-edge performance.

Reach and Market Potential

• PropellerAds provides access to a fresh monthly audience of over 500 million users, allowing advertisers to expand their reach on a global scale.
• The ability to engage users within Telegram Mini Apps makes this a highly attractive option for advertisers seeking new growth avenues.

Rakuten Advertising, a leading global affiliate marketing network, has shared its 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping trends. The data highlights how shoppers bought more items while spending less, with distinct shifts in consumer behavior across the holiday shopping weekend.

Key Shopping Trends During Black Friday and Cyber Monday

1. Early Deals Drive Holiday Shopping

   • 5% Less Per Purchase: Shoppers were focused on securing deals early, spending 5% less per purchase compared to last year.
   • 5% Increase in Cart Size: Despite lower spend per item, consumers added more items to their shopping carts, indicating a focus on quantity over price.
   • Popular Categories: Items from apparel, footwear, toys, and video games saw strong sales, while luxury goods saw a lower share of orders during Black Friday.

2. Consumer Strategy: Big Ticket Purchases on Cyber Monday

   • Shoppers prioritized budget-friendly deals early in the weekend to make larger, more expensive purchases on Cyber Monday.
   • Luxury Purchases Surge on Cyber Monday: Luxury category purchases increased by 66% compared to Black Friday, with shoppers willing to spend more for premium items after securing discounts.

Category-Specific Shopping Trends

1. Thanksgiving Day Wins for Consumer Electronics and Beauty

   • Consumer Electronics: Nearly double the number of items per order compared to the previous week, although shoppers spent 9% less per order year-over-year.
   • Beauty Products: Shopping cart sizes increased by 10%, despite an 8% decrease in spending per item.
   • Both categories saw significant activity on Thanksgiving Day, demonstrating a strategic shift in the timing of consumer purchases.

2. Cyber 5 Weekend Trifurcation

   • Rakuten Advertising noted a trifurcation in shopping trends, with consumer electronics and beauty dominating Thanksgiving Day, apparel and toys leading Black Friday, and luxury trending on Cyber Monday.
   • This segmentation made the shopping weekend feel less competitive and more targeted, with brands strategically investing in marketing at specific times to maximize success.

CEO Insights on Consumer Behavior

Nick Stamos, CEO of Rakuten Advertising, stated, "This year, shoppers prioritized price above all else. They capitalized on early deals to stock up on affordable items, leaving larger purchases, like luxury brands, for Cyber Monday. Categories are increasingly owning specific days during the Cyber 5 weekend, making the shopping season feel less crowded than before."

SOCi, Inc., the CoMarketing Cloud platform designed for multi-location enterprises, has announced the appointment of Alistair Jessiman to its Industry Advisory Board. Jessiman, a seasoned leader with extensive experience in financial services and a transformative career at PNC, will lend his strategic insight to help SOCi further strengthen its offerings for the financial sector.

Key Appointment Highlights:

1. Jessiman’s Expertise

   • Jessiman is NACD.DC, CFA, bringing deep expertise in financial services, particularly in banking and investments. He is known for his leadership in initiatives that have redefined customer engagement with a strong focus on a customer-centric approach.
   • With his extensive background, Jessiman will guide SOCi as the company expands its presence in the financial services industry, a sector where local discovery and brand visibility are crucial for success.

2. SOCi’s Vision and Approach

   • Jessiman emphasized SOCi’s unique ability to empower brands to optimize local search visibility and customer engagement, an essential component for industries like financial services, where building trust and visibility is paramount.
   • He highlighted SOCi’s partnership-focused approach, which goes beyond technology to provide actionable solutions across multiple business functions.

Strategic Focus on Financial Services

• As an advisor, Jessiman will focus on strategic guidance for SOCi’s growth in the financial services sector, advising on areas such as messaging, outreach, and key strategies for engaging financial institutions.
• Jessiman’s insights will directly contribute to SOCi’s goal of helping brands build lasting local trust and enhance their digital presence, particularly for businesses with a strong regional or local focus, like financial service firms.

Jessiman’s Commitment to Customer-Centric Solutions

• Jessiman was drawn to SOCi because of the company’s commitment to directly addressing clients' challenges and bridging technology with practical solutions that deliver tangible results.
• His role will be pivotal in ensuring SOCi’s platform continues to meet the evolving needs of financial firms, especially as decision-making in this industry often involves complex, multi-stakeholder processes.

Integral Ad Science (IAS), a global leader in media measurement and optimization, has announced its expansion into China. This strategic move aims to provide global advertisers with comprehensive solutions for addressing invalid traffic (IVT), fraud, and brand safety measurement, aligned with both international and local standards.

Expansion Details:

1. Local Presence in China

   • IAS has incorporated a subsidiary in China and become a founding member of IAB China, reinforcing its commitment to the region and local advertisers.
   • The expansion aims to offer essential local support to Chinese advertisers looking to extend their reach beyond the country’s borders, while also enhancing IAS’s global footprint.

2. Addressing Key Market Challenges

   • With this expansion, IAS will fill a crucial gap in the measurement coverage for advertisers in China. By offering solutions tailored to China's unique advertising environment, IAS empowers advertisers with actionable data that helps optimize their ROI in the fast-evolving digital media space.

3. Strategic Growth in a Growing Market

   • As the second-largest advertising market globally, China’s digital ad spending is expected to exceed $140 billion in 2024, positioning it as a critical area for international advertisers.
   • IAS’s entrance into China supports its long-term international expansion strategy, enhancing brand safety, fraud prevention, and measurement for advertisers operating in or targeting the region.

Statements from Leadership:

• Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, highlighted that IAS is one of the few measurement solutions capable of addressing the unique needs of the Chinese market, emphasizing the importance of filling the gap in comprehensive measurement solutions for advertisers.
• Tracy Cui, Vice Secretary-General of IAB China, echoed the importance of the collaboration, stating that the partnership with IAS will help international brands access global standards while bringing new technologies to the Chinese market.

Building on Past Success in the APAC Region:

• This expansion builds on IAS’s ongoing efforts in the APAC market, where the company has already strengthened its presence in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• IAS’s operations now span across multiple APAC countries, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

AudiencePoint, a pioneer in email marketing innovation, has launched its next-generation Audience Engagement Suite, a robust toolset designed to redefine how email marketing drives revenue and fosters deeper audience engagement. With a focus on transparency and data-driven optimization, AudiencePoint's Inbox Placement solution ensures emails land in the inbox exactly when they matter most.

Key Features and Benefits:

1. Revolutionizing Inbox Placement

   • AudiencePoint's Inbox Placement solution offers enhanced visibility, helping marketers determine exactly where their emails land—whether in the inbox or the spam folder. This innovation addresses the limitations of traditional methods like seed lists and panel data, offering more accurate insights and empowering marketers to improve email delivery.
   • Dr. Matthew Dunn from Campaign Genius notes, "AudiencePoint’s Inbox Placement will restore transparency to email marketing, making engagement measurable and visible again."

2. Improved Engagement and Data-Driven Decisions

   • By leveraging direct, subscriber-level data from a pool of over 700 million unique email addresses, AudiencePoint offers unparalleled insight into subscriber behavior. This enables brands to refine their segmentation, re-engage inactive subscribers, and maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns.
   • Success stories like Jay Graves from Style Blueprint, who saw a 30% boost in engagement after using Inbox Placement technology, demonstrate the significant impact of optimizing inbox placement.

3. Subscriber Deployment Optimization (SDO)

   • The Engagement Suite features SDO, which allows marketers to send messages at the optimal time for each subscriber based on their historical engagement trends. This goes beyond traditional send-time optimization, significantly increasing open rates and conversions while fostering deeper connections with audiences.

4. Ethical Data Use and Privacy Compliance

   • AudiencePoint emphasizes the ethical use of real subscriber data, sourced responsibly from trusted brands. The suite adheres to stringent GDPR and CPRA standards, ensuring that data privacy and compliance are always prioritized, enabling marketers to focus on meaningful engagement without compromising integrity.

Statements from Leadership:

• Andy Perez, CEO of AudiencePoint, emphasizes the importance of genuine audience connections, stating, "Email marketing is about more than reaching inboxes; it's about reaching real people."
• AudiencePoint's ethical approach and focus on actionable insights set it apart in an increasingly data-driven and privacy-conscious marketing environment.

AKOOL, a leader in Generative AI for personalized visual content, has partnered with LiveX AI, a frontrunner in multimodal AI agents, to redefine the way businesses interact with customers. The collaboration combines LiveX AI’s high-precision conversational AI agents with AKOOL’s cutting-edge dynamic avatar technology, addressing the limitations of traditional virtual agents and offering a new standard in customer engagement.

Key Features and Benefits of the AKOOL-LiveX AI Partnership:

1. Real-Time, Accurate Problem-Solving
   The integrated solution combines multimodal AI agents with AKOOL avatars to deliver fast and accurate resolutions for tasks such as personalized recommendations, sales support, product education, customer service, order tracking, and even churn prevention. This results in a seamless customer experience and more efficient problem-solving.

2. Natural, Empathetic Interactions
   By leveraging advanced conversational AI, the new system can understand user emotions and intent, providing tailored responses that address customer needs with empathy. Whether it's resolving conflicts, recommending upgrades, or offering support, the AI adapts dynamically to the situation, ensuring a more human-like interaction.

3. Integrated Conversational and Visual Intelligence
   AKOOL's avatars are designed to adapt in real-time to customer inputs, enhancing engagement with a highly immersive experience. This integration of conversational AI and visual intelligence creates a cohesive and dynamic interface, bringing a human-like touch to digital interactions.

4. Improved Customer Engagement and Satisfaction
   The partnership delivers a more effective and emotionally resonant way for businesses to engage with customers. The ability to blend visual avatars with conversational AI makes interactions feel more authentic, fostering trust, boosting satisfaction, and improving self-service rates.

Leadership Insights:

• Jiajun Lu, CEO of AKOOL, shared, “By combining our strengths, we’re addressing critical pain points in AI-powered customer support. This partnership sets a new standard for intelligent, immersive interactions.”

• Jerry Li, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveX AI, added, “At LiveX AI, we’ve helped millions of users build strong connections through AI-driven interactions. With AKOOL’s avatars, we’re taking customer engagement to the next level, adding a face-to-face element that fosters trust and satisfaction.”