Joe Nicolas, CEO, UM MENATLet’s call 2024 what it really was, an intense year for the media industry when buzzwords such as artificial intelligence, automation and martech dominated our conversations and challenged the core of our business and the purpose of our craft.
This intensity was felt throughout the year leading up to December when the news of the Omnicom-IPG merger was announced – a move that signals the dawn of a new era in media.
These defining moments of the past year now serve as powerful indicators of the transformative trends shaping 2025.
The scale imperative
We’re entering an era when size isn’t just about market leverage – it’s about survival. The proliferation of platforms and solutions has created a labyrinth of complexity that only the most resourced organisations can successfully navigate.
Major holding groups have responded by architecting ambitious technological roadmaps and data strategies, backed by significant investments in engineering talent and data partnerships.
The competitive advantage of an agency’s size in terms of trading power – which seemed to matter less in the previous era – has paved the way to something more fundamental: the ability to sustain investment in transformative tools that can decode our increasingly complex ecosystem.
Gaming, set, go
While gaming has long flirted with mainstream marketing, 2025 marks its decisive breakthrough. The past year saw brands move beyond casual interest to structured strategy, recognising gaming’s underutilised potential as a marketing channel.
Current advertising revenue in gaming hovers around 15 per cent, where the overall growth is at 2.1 per cent a dramatic slowdown from the 7 per cent surge during pandemic years. This deceleration has catalysed an aggressive push by major players to forge deeper brand partnerships and pioneer innovative solutions.
The stage is set for gaming to emerge from the shadows of experimental budgets to become a cornerstone of media strategy.
The conversational revolution
The evolution of brand-consumer communication has transcended traditional boundaries. What began as simple messaging apps has matured into sophisticated platforms where brands can listen, learn and respond with unparalleled intelligence and personalisation.
With 80 per cent of businesses already embracing some form of conversational marketing – from straightforward WhatsApp interactions to rich commerce experiences – 2025 marks a pivotal moment when not only does iOS now support the RCS messaging standard, but also AI elevates these exchanges from mere transactions to meaningful relationships.
This isn’t just about automation; it’s about augmenting human connection with machine intelligence, creating conversations that are not only immediate but deeply relevant and emotionally resonant.
From noise to precision
Back in 2023, Mark Ritson declared that “synthetic data is suddenly making very real ripples” and while applications like ChatGPT were still in “toy stage”, he foresaw massive implications for marketing. Fast-forward to 2025, where AI-powered tools have evolved beyond simple data generation to create ‘synthetic audiences’ – sophisticated models that mirror real consumer behaviours and preferences with unprecedented accuracy.
This breakthrough particularly resonates in regions grappling with limited data resources and audience research services. Through advanced machine learning and AI APIs, we can now simulate audience behaviour, predict responses and craft adaptive campaigns that eliminate traditional data biases.
The result reinforces ‘the scale imperative’ idea: precision targeting that combines intelligence with scalability, fundamentally reshaping how we understand and engage our audiences.
The new tourism paradigm
The convergence of events and tourism has created a powerful new paradigm in destination marketing. Major festivals, sporting events and celebrations have evolved from mere attractions into catalysts for sustained tourism growth.
Events such as the Dubai Shopping Festival, Riyadh Season and landmark occasions like the recent Coldplay concerts in Abu Dhabi have set the stage for even grander moments – Saudi Arabia’s Expo 2030 and the 2034 FIFA World Cup – both of which promise to reshape the tourism landscape.
These events are more than just entertainment; they’re cultural currency in our social media-driven world, turning Instagrammable moments into powerful personal branding tools. The real value lies in the data they generate, enabling hyper-personalised campaigns that transform fleeting experiences into lasting brand connections, ultimately shaping the future of experiential tourism.
In this era of rapid change and heightened expectations, brands that master the art of blending intelligence with authenticity will lead the way. Success within media in 2025 won’t just come from adapting to trends, but from turning complexity into clarity, noise into impact and transient moments into enduring strategies.
By Joe Nicolas, CEO, UM MENAT
