2025 predictions for top B2B paid media channels
What's next in B2B advertising? Dive into Google's market shifts, LinkedIn’s UX improvements, Reddit’s testing advancements, and more.
You can say much about 2024, but you can’t call it boring.
From AI Overviews rolling out (now with ads!) to a feed-choking election to cookies (somehow) sticking around in Chrome to the rise of LLM search, PPC advertisers have had to deal with turbulence in the past year.
What can B2B advertisers expect in 2025?
I’ll share my predictions for key platforms like Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit, as well as trends in measurement and martech.
While these are just my best guesses, many are based on trends we already see in our client accounts.
2025 Google predictions
Google will lose some of the search market
We’re already seeing searches soar on LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Even if Gemini improves its UX and results, it won’t keep Google from losing volume and changing user behavior.
Google won’t have to divest itself of Chrome (yet)
This is kind of a layup. No matter what the DOJ pushes for in its antitrust victory from November, it will not happen in 2025.
Even if the judge agrees that Google needs to sell Chrome, appeals and plenty of red tape will likely keep this from becoming a reality within the next 12 months.
Google will launch at least one promising beta for B2B ads
It has been a long dry run for B2B marketers looking for fun betas and features from Google.
Today, all updates seem to point to one thing: feeding the algorithm.
B2B marketers have had fewer opportunities to experiment in search since I entered the field over a decade ago.
That said, I foresee Google throwing us a bit of a bone this year – maybe to counteract the negative momentum it’s carrying into 2025.
They could shock us by reinstituting some match-type controls, but I doubt it.
They’ll likely give us some tools that make responsive search ads (RSAs) easier to work with and more transparent about which combinations actually work for advertisers.
Advertisers will more broadly adopt enhanced conversions.
This is cheating a bit since it’s a prediction for Google advertisers and not Google itself, but I think enhanced conversion usage will be much broader in 12 months than it is today.
In B2B advertising, the key will be finding the right balance between:
- Setting AI guardrails through segmentation.
- Ensuring segments are large enough to maintain data density, as the system struggles when data is limited.
Enhanced conversions are a good tool for helping advertisers port more data into the back end.
This will be essential for training Google to find the right users and keep budget focused on impact.
2025 LinkedIn predictions
Ad types will keep diversifying
Videos, thought leader ads (TLAs), conversation ads, and new ways to promote individual POVs.
We’re seeing promising results from testing all of those in 2024, and I expect LinkedIn to provide more variety in 2025.
The UX and advertising algorithms will improve
LinkedIn’s UX and bidding and targeting algorithms have both lagged, even as clients shift more budget toward the platform.
Those areas will receive more attention in 2025, and the algorithm may even improve at detecting and suppressing AI-generated content, including tedious automated comments.
You may also see LinkedIn make it easier for advertisers to collect lead information on the platform.
For instance, adding lead forms to TLAs would be a nice marriage of conversion friendliness and a popular new ad type.
The best ads won’t look like ads
One of the things we’re working on with our clients is getting creative with messaging and tying it to pain points or industry or job lingo.
In short, we’re doubling down on empathetic messaging and authenticity, which is not unique to LinkedIn.
With the feed getting junkier and more AI-formulaic by the day, the more organic you can make an ad look, the more people will pay attention.
2025 Reddit predictions
Improved testing will roll out as competition grows
For its market share, Reddit made arguably the most significant moves in B2B advertising in 2024.
With new ad types, audience features, advanced reporting, and enhanced targeting capabilities, Reddit enters 2025 with a growing user base and a spot on the shortlist of must-test platforms for B2B and SaaS advertisers.
They’ll meet the moment with more testing features, specifically A/B testing functionality that starts mimicking rival platforms.
Tracking and attribution will struggle
Because Reddit is populated by a younger, tech-savvy audience, part of its brand is tied to user privacy (hence usernames, not real names).
This is great for users with edgy and authentic POVs to share, but it will make life harder for advertisers trying to track the real business impact of their Reddit campaigns.
(Related prediction: their fairly rudimentary CAPI function will improve quite a bit in 2025.)
Dig deeper: Diversifying your B2B paid media portfolio: When does it make sense?
2025 martech and measurement predictions
Chrome’s third-party cookies will survive 2025 – kind of
Yes, Chrome’s cookies will be severely weakened by the (still-impending) opt-out feature that Google plans to implement.
But my prediction is that the cookies will be (somehow) clinging to life at the end of 2025 because I don’t see Google and the IAB agreeing on an alternate solution.
CDPs will gain serious momentum
More marketers will move to adopt server-side tracking in 2025 (disclaimer: we’re pushing our clients hard in that direction) as a holistic, privacy-safe transition away from third-party cookies.
We’re seeing most of our clients getting an artificial increase in “direct” traffic as data is stripped away.
This will hit a critical point, leading brands to get proactive about server-side solutions.
First-party data enrichment tools will gain prominence
Less third-party data to work with means more emphasis on first-party data and the tools that empower it.
Look for names like Stape and Pendar, which are beefing up first-party data collected on the server side, to start appearing more frequently in brand conversations.
Dig deeper: 5 PPC measurement initiatives to set yourself up for 2025 success
Anticipating transformations in B2B paid media and martech
There’s room for 2025 to be a more transformative year than 2024 for B2B campaigns – if only because there will be more room for challengers to Google’s market dominance.
I expect marketers to become more proactive about tracking and measurement solutions because their hands are being forced.
This should also lead to new scrutiny about which campaigns are actually driving business impact. (Or maybe that’s just something on my wishlist every year.)
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