Multichannel Optimization

As brands enter the thick of the annual season for brokering advertising commitments, also known as the upfronts, many are in a disquietingly familiar state of uncertainty. The Trump administration’s trade war has upended 2025 planning, putting marketers in a holding pattern and potentially pushing more toward cheaper, lower-funnel channels. 

The moment presents its distinct set of challenges but in many ways echoes when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, stopping the world in its tracks and making agility a mandate. However, data demonstrates that marketers did not always move quickly to capitalize on emergent channels during the early 2020s, and the industry’s proclivity for risk aversion may again test whether brands thrive or shrink in a downturn.  

“I think that some of what we’re feeling, in our core, is an awful lot like the uncertainty that we felt during the pandemic,” said David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in comments kicking of the trade group’s digitally oriented NewFronts showcase in May 2025. “Now is not the time for fear. Now is not the time for hunkering down and short-termism.” 

That said, the media landscape looks significantly different than in March 2020, in no small part thanks to the pandemic-driven acceleration of digital habits. Retail media, a still-nascent term at the turn of the decade, is one of the fastest-growing areas of advertising, propelled by the dual forces of wider e-commerce adoption and the search for alternatives to third-party cookies. The media network model has not only produced hundreds of retailer-owned ad platforms, but also spread to categories including ride-hailing apps, financial services and travel, resulting in oversaturation. Other channels that were already gaining purchase with brands prior to COVID, including streaming and TikTok, have become dominant in culture, though ad spend has sometimes lagged consumer adoption. That could change as premium media properties like live sports finally flock to the digital arena at scale. 

Amidst this new channel paradigm, the business of marketing hasn’t achieved the same level of refinement as a TikTok For You page. Fragmentation and opacity are greatly exacerbated in a world where everyone’s online while many companies have lost sight of brand-building fundamentals in the chase for media math mastery. 

“Media is more complex than ever,” said Sorin Patilinet, the former senior director of marketing effectiveness and growth sciences at packaged goods giant Mars, over email. “In the past, we had a media manager and a digital manager. Today we have a [manager for] search, retail media, organic media, in addition to the traditional media roles.”

As media sits at another inflection point, with the threat of contraction looming large and antitrust crackdowns priming a shake up, looking to the recent past may be the best way to steel the industry for an uncertain future. Below, Marketing Dive examines the forces that have reshaped media since the pandemic’s outset: What stuck, what flared out and what these channels say about an evolving consumer mindset. 

TikTok and the decline of the ‘social graph’

Social media fads come and go, but few apps have altered how people view content on their phones as much as TikTok. The platform made short-form, “snackable” video the norm for both users and advertisers, shifting everything from budgetary priorities to agency assignments. Crucially, it changed how brands interact with culture, with a premium on lo-fi creator content and fast response times to buzz-worthy moments.

“The content production quality has changed in some ways. There used to be so much preparation into a 30-second commercial. Now that window, again, has become really, really short,” said Alison Mayes, managing director of independent media agency Apollo Partners.

TikTok’s addictive For You page was enshrined as a U.S. cultural fixture as the pandemic forced people to stay locked inside while craving a peek at what everyone else was up to. In 2020, the ByteDance-owned offering became the most-downloaded app globally, ushering a transition from a social media ecosystem oriented around what experts termed a social graph — the network of friends and family the user actually knows — to one centered on out-of-network content surfaced by algorithmic recommendations. That step change aligned with more consumers turning to social formats, including ads and sponsored posts, to learn about new products and services, laying important groundwork for a more recent rise in social commerce.  

It wasn’t long before rivals that were built on the social graph, including Instagram, Snapchat and even LinkedIn, began to crib from TikTok’s model, though few wield the same degree of sway over the crucial Gen Z audience.

“It’s just a stickier product offering. You have more content you can share with more people, that’s more likely to be engaging,” said Ben Allison, executive vice president of media at VaynerMedia.

While TikTok was quick to snap up public mindshare, some advertisers were slow to invest in the channel, a potential response to nascent ad products and wariness over its Chinese ownership, factors that have continued to dog the business.

“TikTok is another environment where we also still struggle when it comes to measurement. They’ve gotten better in recent years, but, when we first launched with TikTok, a lot of it wasn’t measured,” said Mayes. “We can see that stuff now, but it also is in an area that we, as a media planner, crave more accountability as well.”

TikTok represented 3.7% of U.S. social advertising in 2021, or about $2.1 billion. That market share more than doubled the following year, according to estimates from WARC, the start of an upward climb that has extended into today. Facebook, the poster child for the social graph, conversely saw its piece of the pie decline from 65% in 2020 to 49.8% last year, a more than 15 percentage-point drop.   

“I would say 2022 or so is when you start to see, okay, [TikTok] is now a consistent line item. Every advertiser was asking about it,” said Allison.

TikTok is expected by WARC to secure about $11.8 billion in U.S. ad spending, or 13.5% of total social advertising, in 2025. Hitting those benchmarks is contingent on the app not getting banned over national-security concerns. 

The Trump administration has already twice pushed back a deadline for finding a U.S. backer for the company, effectively putting the ownership question on the backburner, but there may come a time in the near future where a scramble will again be set off again to find an alternative. Even in that case, executives don’t see the TikTok model of short-form, creator-driven video going anywhere, speaking to the lasting impact the app has had on the shape of social media.   

“What happens with TikTok in the U.S. is going to be a huge variable but I think the ecosystem is already kind of baked,” said Allison. 

CTV’s ascent against linear takes time

As much as stir-crazed people were glued to their phones during the peak of the pandemic, they were also watching a higher volume of TV, though less frequently through linear means. The public health crisis sped up an existing cord-cutting movement and welcomed a proliferation of platforms in the areas of connected TV (CTV), over-the-top video and other forms of streaming. 

The uptick in CTV spending has not quite been meteoric, but is gaining substantial traction as premium programming, such as live sports, evolves. Digital video, a segment that includes CTV, is forecast to capture 60% of total video and TV ad spending in 2025, doubling its share from 2020, according to the IAB. 

“From a platform perspective, it is an arms race to acquire rights to quality content and sports,” said Jamie Rubin, chief media officer at 22Squared. “From a consumer perspective, it has become very difficult and very costly to access all of the content that they are interested in being connected to.”

Streamers are standing up more sophisticated ad-tech offerings and sales pitches, with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video among the two largest to ramp up overtures to Madison Avenue. Brands that used to spend as much as 75% of their budgets through conventional upfront agreements are now favoring the flexible digital approach, according to Mayes, along with chasing the promise of superior targeting and analytics. CTV has also welcomed a wider pool of advertisers once priced out of the national linear TV set, including small- and mid-sized brands, with programmatic self-service solutions, the IAB found. 

“CTV doesn’t need to be planned on an annual basis. Those are dollars that you’re not committing to a year in advance,” said Mayes. “It is so much more real-time planning versus having this calendar outlook or even a quarterly outlook sometimes feels like a long time now. It’s changed the dynamic of how marketing dollars are tied up, essentially.”

Despite streaming feeling like the new norm, total spend is still not close to matching that of its traditional counterpart. U.S. ad investment in CTV — here including multiple video on demand formats, including FAST channels and subscription services — in 2024 hit $15.6 billion versus nearly $56 billion for linear TV, which retains an older-skewing viewer base and destination viewing occasions like the Super Bowl. However, the audience split may not last for long: EMarketer expects that CTV will finally topple linear spending by 2028. 

“Yes, linear TV audiences tend to be older from a macro perspective and CTV audiences tend to be younger,” said Rubin. “The balance is without question shifting from what had previously been linear consumption to now digital, choice-based consumption.” 

A lingering barrier to buy-in for CTV is measurement. Unlike the ratings monopoly present in linear, which was flawed but generally accepted, CTV has few standardized methods for assessing the effectiveness of campaigns. A highly fragmented landscape will make coming up with agreed-upon benchmarks difficult. Some initiatives, like the cross-measurement solution Aquila, which is backed by the Association of National Advertisers, hold promise in solving the riddle of CTV measurement but remain in their early stages. 

“I don’t believe that there is any consistency in how that work is being done across the industry,” said Rubin. “The fact that our industry has been historically anchored to the notion of reach and frequency as pillars of understanding marketing delivery or media delivery and ultimately impact — the fact that we can’t actually measure that in an industry-accepted way today is really mind-boggling.”

Retail media’s gold rush — and uncertain future

Beyond affecting media consumption, the pandemic spurred people to pick up different shopping habits. The closure of physical stores was a pain in the near term but resulted in an influx of e-commerce data that, combined with the deprecation of third-party tracking technology, helped fuel the rise of retail media networks as marketers sought more precise methods of reaching consumers online.   

“Starting at that point in time, a lot of the retail-first companies started to build their own retail media networks,” said Alberto Leyes, senior vice president of go-to-market strategy at Guideline. “Obviously that had been thought of in the past, but it accelerated in 2020 as the brick-and-mortar shops were suffering.” 

CPG advertiser spend on retail media spiked 93% year over year in 2020, the moment the floodgates opened, according to Guideline data that examines spending from all of the major ad-holding groups as well as a selection of boutique agencies. Retail media has since become the fastest-growing pocket of digital, analysts say, and is seeking its next phase of expansion in the realms of offsite media — or running ads outside of the retailer’s owned properties — and through a convergence with CTV. U.S. advertser investment in retail media is expected by eMarketer to grow 20% in 2025 to $62.35 billion and top $85 billion by 2027. 

But eye-popping levels of growth belie the headaches the channel has created. Many brands view retail media buys as a tax imposed on them through larger trade agreements with retail partners that wield power over shelf placement. As in CTV, the sense that retail media networks are walled gardens or “black boxes” that have little incentive to compare notes with rivals is commonplace. 

“Their advantage is they have the closed-loop analysis,” said Mayes. “The difficulty is: I want to see which retailer is performing the best. Everyone has a little bit of a different approach of how they’re getting to those analytic numbers.”

As true standardization feels like a pipe dream, many are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop on a retail media landscape with too many networks to meaningfully support. Mirroring past eras of digital platform emergence, power could consolidate among the handful of players with the scale and sophisticated technology to meet large marketers’ needs.  

“On the retail media side of things, I think there’s going to be an enormous amount of contraction,” said VaynerMedia’s Allison. “Everybody’s coming to market [with] essentially the same type of offering.”

Necessity breeds innovation 

A saving grace for retail media in the short term may be Trump’s tariff chaos. Retail media is built around performance channels that marketers tend to lean on in times of belt-tightening. These bets are meant to be low risk and easier to tie to transactions, but the grueling pandemic years demonstrated that many brands lost value due to a nearsighted swing toward performance.    

“We’ve seen this happen before during economic downturns like the 2008 recession and the 2020 pandemic, and is already re-emerging with recent tariffs news and stock market volatility, pushing brands towards over indexing on performance-focused tactics,” said Mayes in a follow-up email. 

“However, prioritizing short-term performance at the expense of upper-funnel marketing like brand awareness, brand building, connecting with consumers, carries longer-term risk,” she added.

Moments of high pressure may also breed innovation. Marketers have plenty of newer tools to experiment with in their quest for efficiency, including generative artificial intelligence that was not available during the height of the pandemic. And as hectic as the COVID era was, the upshot was 35% growth for digital advertising on the whole, per the IAB. 

“We need to remember that change — even massive, unsettling change — isn’t always bad. We need to remember that the digital advertising industry was born from change, and it was born to change,” said the IAB’s Cohen at the NewFronts. “The faster things change, the more disruption is in our world, the more that digital grows.”

Informa, which owns a controlling stake in Informa TechTarget, the publisher behind Marketing Dive, is also invested in WARC. Informa has no influence over Marketing Dive’s coverage.

Loyalty marketing needs to go beyond discounts and rewards to be effective amid growing signal loss and economic uncertainty, according to panelists during a session that was part of Marketing Dive’s virtual event “Loyalty 2.0: Capturing – and keeping – the customer.”

While many consumers turn to loyalty programs for value and perks, the market is quickly growing crowded with competition. If brands want to stand out, they are going to have to take a more sophisticated approach. 

“I think there are some programs out there that are still treated like a punch card from 30 years ago, where points get discounts,” said Eric Beane, chief analytics and data officer, marketing effectiveness and intelligence at VML, during the June 2025 session. “They’re missing the most important part, which is that human element.”

The future of loyalty was the focus of “Connecting the dots: How brands can boost marketing by integrating loyalty data,” which featured Tamara Oliverio, vice president of loyalty and customer experience at Epsilon, and Beane. The panel was moderated by Peter Adams, senior reporter at Marketing Dive. 

Data as the building blocks of loyalty

Loyalty programs have been a way for marketers to collect first-party data and prevent signal loss as third-party cookies lose their utility. However, the data collected through loyalty initiatives is often siloed in different parts of the marketing infrastructure, creating a disconnected consumer experience. Finding a way to move past those silos is going to be a top priority if brands want to get the most out of their data, according to Oliverio. 

“At the end of the day, it’s going to reduce waste, it’s going to inform smart targeting. It’s going to really open up those cross-functional opportunities for partnerships and personalization across the board, and be much more efficient for your marketing brand,” said Oliverio.

Collaboration is of top importance when it comes to using loyalty data effectively. However, data silos often make that impossible. Budget tightening has only exacerbated the problem, and it can often feel like different teams are completely separate companies because everyone has varying priorities. This makes getting on the same page difficult when it comes to results. 

“Those legacy silos, those legacy walls, that’s made sharing data feel more like a negotiation than like a collaboration,” said Beane. 

Rethinking loyalty

Some markets are better equipped for loyalty programs than others. For example, the restaurant industry has a long history with the strategy. Things really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, when consumers largely turned to online ordering. However, for some categories, such as CPG, the transition hasn’t been as natural. 

Economic uncertainty has compelled consumers to search for better deals, leaving an opening for other markets to get in on the loyalty program game. Seventy-percent of consumers join loyalty programs because of discounts and other perks, according to Epsilon data cited by Adams. However, as more loyalty programs roll out, brands need to set themselves apart to retain customers. And when the economy inevitably turns around, consumers need a reason to stay beyond discount codes. 

“There is value, obviously financial value, in getting people to purchase, but there’s also value in engaging and having more time with the brand,” said Oliverio. 

“Loyalty 2.0: Capturing – and keeping – the customer” was hosted by Marketing Dive and sister publications CX Dive, Hotel Dive and Restaurant Dive, which are all part of Informa TechTarget. An on-demand playback of the entire event is available here. 

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By Acoustic

Today’s customers expect seamless, personalized interactions across multiple channels, devices and touchpoints. Brands that succeed at providing that experience can meet customer needs and drive higher engagement, build long-term loyalty and improve conversion rates. 

To achieve this, brands must leverage integrated marketing channels, ensuring smooth transitions between channels and tailoring interactions based on user behavior. In this blog, we’ll explore the foundational elements of an effective cross-channel strategy and how to optimize your approach with automated cross-channel campaigns. 

Why should marketers focus on the cross-channel customer experience? 

Because the customer journey is no longer linear, it’s critical for brands to have many touchpoints with consumers along their buying journey. Consistency across all channels provides consumers with interactions that feel authentic. And this isn’t just about branding – channels must be designed to work in concert, guided by tech stacks and orchestrated by cross-functional teams. If not, disjoined experiences create inconsistencies that can build friction along the customer journey – often leading to disengagement.  

Elements of a successful cross-channel strategy

• Consistent messaging: Customers should experience a unified brand voice whether they engage with your brand via email, social media, mobile apps, or in-person. A lack of consistency can lead to confusion and reduced trust. Every marketing touchpoint should reinforce your core messaging and values and provide customers with a unified experience.  
• Seamless integration across marketing channels: To create a frictionless experience, brands must integrate their marketing tools and data systems effectively. This ensures real-time updates across all channels and prevents disjointed customer journeys. 
• Real-time targeting and personalization: Today’s customers expect brands to anticipate their needs and deliver personalized experiences in real time. Cross-device targeting ensures that messages reach customers on their preferred platform at the right moment. 

How to implement a cross-channel marketing strategy

1. Choose the right integrated marketing channels

Not all channels are suitable for every brand. Understanding where your audience engages most allows for strategic investment in high-impact channels. 

Here are some considerations based on your industry: 

• Retail & ecommerce: Omnichannel retail marketing strategies should include personalized email campaigns, mobile push notifications and in-store experiences
• Finance & banking: Customers expect secure, cross-device targeting for seamless banking across mobile, web and in-person services
• Media & entertainment: Multi-platform customer engagement is crucial for streaming services and content channels, with tailored recommendations and push notifications driving retention

2. Leverage loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are more effective when they integrate across multiple channels. Customers should be able to earn and redeem rewards whether they shop in-store, online, or via an app. 

Tips for success: 

• When customers hit milestones, offer personalized incentives based on past purchases, not just generic offers  
• Enable cross-channel redemption options to increase engagement
• Use customer journey orchestration to track loyalty program interactions and optimize touchpoints

3. Automate and optimize messaging across channels

Automation is essential for maintaining brand consistency and personalizing interactions at scale. Messaging automation ensures customers receive the right content at the right time, no matter where they engage. 

Best Practices: 

• Use automated cross-channel campaigns to set up sequences like welcome campaigns, or post-purchase surveys
• Optimize with a mobile-first approach to engage customers on the go
• Continuously test and refine messaging based on metrics to improve performance
• Use real-time targeting to trigger personalized messages based on user behavior
• Implement channel-specific personalization, tailoring content for email, SMS, social media and in-app messaging

The future of cross-channel marketing

The evolution of cross-channel customer experience is being shaped by AI, predictive analytics and real-time personalization. Brands that embrace seamless integration across marketing touchpoints will stay ahead of customer expectations. By focusing on brand consistency, data-driven decision-making and customer-centric automation, businesses can create a strategy that fosters loyalty and drives long-term success. 

Are you ready to refine your cross-channel marketing strategy? Start by assessing your current approach and identifying opportunities to improve channel personalization and build a truly integrated marketing experience. Learn more about how Acoustic Connect can help you scale your marketing across channels.  

Retailers for years have made a big deal about in-store retail media, with some going as far as to paint the category as having “broadcast-level” promise. Brands, too, acknowledge the value of reaching consumers when they’re already browsing in aisles to make a purchase, a tactic that has been plussed up by the advent of digital screens and other technology innovations. 

However, a sticking point remains with in-store that separates it from traditional mass-reach levers and may dampen some of those TV-sized ambitions: It is difficult to buy, manage and measure like a media channel, creating barriers to investment and activation. These gaps result in confusion around who owns the in-store conversation and, ultimately, a lack of support for brands. EMarketer, which describes in-store as a “sleeping giant,” expects ad spending on the channel to surpass $1 billion by 2029, a sliver of the total retail media pie.

“Do I want to get in front of the shopper in store? Yes. Is there an infrastructure to support that properly yet? No,” said Benoit Vatere, chief media officer of canned water brand Liquid Death, on a panel at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Connected Commerce Summit in September 2025. 

Vatere cited Amazon as one of the few retail media networks excelling at in-store, as the e-commerce giant can leverage tech offerings like its demand-side platform to better track the path to purchase at Whole Foods. 

“I’m sure Walmart is going to do similar things very soon and I hope all the other retailers are going to follow along,” said Vatere.

Failing to get in-store right carries risk for retail media networks that are looking to maximize the potential of assets they already own, including brick-and-mortar footprints, and as their onsite advertising reaches saturation. For brands, in-store can be appealing as a straightforward way to engage customers in a less noisy environment.

“I don’t think that [in-store] is a new vehicle, but I think it’s playing a massively more important role than ever before because consumers are so overwhelmed with the amount of messages that they're getting out of store,” said Chelsey Alexander, founder and CEO of Open Gate Consulting, during the IAB talk.

Lack of clarity

Other executives on the panel were in alignment that in-store is exciting but a difficult riddle to solve operationally. Much of the frustration with retail media has stemmed from marketers who view the channel as a tax imposed as part of larger trade agreements and existing in an ecosystem where results are hard to compare between platforms due to lack of standardization. 

But at least on the in-store front, advertisers share some of the blame for creating complexity. Marketing organizations do not always clearly identify who is in charge of investment and many traditional CMOs can be allergic to areas like shopper marketing. A lack of clarity extends to the third-party marketing services ecosystem as well. 

“We start calling [in-store] media and it triggers a bunch of really uncomfortable conversations about: Do I own it? Do you own it? Who does the creative? What agency is responsible ... who gets the billing?” said Jordan Witmer, managing director of retail media at Salt Media. “Somewhere, maybe fifth or sixth down that list is: Does it work?”

Some brands are making changes that recognize evolving needs around channels like retail media. CMOs are in some cases being swapped for chief growth officers while Liquid Death is an example of a CPG that has installed a chief media officer to better manage its strategy. 

“You’ve seen a push from CMO to CGO. That is a reflection of this idea that your VP of media — that role sits in such an influential place in your organization,” said Witmer. 

Chasing ‘attribution perfection’

A broader point of discussion at the Connected Commerce Summit was measurement. Marketers for years have pushed retailers to level-up their measurement sophistication and stop grading their own homework. Some speakers at the one-day confab described cracking the measurement code as more of an organizational problem than a technical one. For in-store, an obsession with measurement was viewed by panelists as a hindrance to unlocking growth.

“One of the things that I see as a barrier to full-funnel activation is this measurement conversation,” said Alexander. “We’re stuck in this standstill of [knowing] it’s a huge opportunity — we know that there are millions of shoppers that are walking stores every single day, so it’s obviously an upper-funnel opportunity — but we can’t measure it, so we don’t do it.”

Measurement is another area where brands may need to work harder on ironing out internal alignment, at least when it comes to in-store efforts. Too many in the U.S. are also fixated on “attribution perfection,” according to Matt Claisse, media director at SMG. 

Some may benefit from taking a page from the European model, where retail media networks have been built off of in-store first instead of digital due to the region’s limitations on the latter. Claisse pointed to marketers who immediately start asking if in-store campaigns drove outcomes like purchases as an example of how expectations in the U.S. do not often match reality.  

“That is a crazy objective to have because you can’t even do that with digital. And we’re holding up this crazy standard that's just not gonna happen,” said Claisse.

To put the panelists’ advice in simpler terms: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. 

Social media has been around for ages in marketing terms, but its current era feels like it started in the pandemic haze of 2020 with a TikTok video of a man sipping Ocean Spray while gliding along on a skateboard and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The blissful clip, later expanded into a TV campaign by the cranberry juice maker, led Ocean Spray to fly off of store shelves — and helped place “Dreams” back on the Billboard charts — while serving as an early indicator of TikTok’s distinct power in sparking viral product sensations.

In 2025, the “TikTokification” of media is mainstream and CPG brands are making a bigger pivot to the social-first model, with leading companies allocating up to half of their total ad budgets on the channel while dropping billions to acquire more nimble rivals. This escalation comes as the chase for Gen Z consumers intensifies and as marketers try to account for the further decline of linear TV, their lever for mass reach essentially since the living room screen’s inception. 

“It’s largely to do with capturing the next generation and FOMO,” said Nick Valenti, CEO of agency Mādin, over email. “Gen Z no longer goes looking for information. It finds them through the feeds they live in. Social is where they form taste, trust and identity.”

Such moves represent more than a budgetary change, with a growing number of marketers seeking marketing services providers with deep knowledge of social and influencers, including through dedicated agency of record appointments and the establishment of new in-house units. The moment additionally bears an existential aspect: Can legacy CPGs, rooted in rigidly defined brand values and sometimes literally squeaky clean images, relinquish a sense of control as they face a fleet of ankle-biter upstarts built on the socially native approach?   

“Every year, there’s more examples of success,” said Evan Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of the Movers+Shakers agency. “I think most brands can point to some indie competitors that are eating their lunch that really get social.”

Explaining CPG marketing's shift to social-first

Research emphasizes robust growth for social over time and, in recent years, a surge of interest in the algorithmically curated short-form video format popularized by TikTok. Total U.S. ad spending on social media was roughly $79.4 billion in 2024, according to WARC data, a more than 90% increase over 2020. That’s to say nothing of influencers, who have become top cultural tastemakers for Gen Z and, increasingly, brand entrepreneurs in their own right.

While social’s upward trajectory has been consistent, CPGs in 2025 are talking about the social-first mandate more publicly. Unilever, one of the largest players in the category, in March 2025 said it would shift half of its ad spend to social and multiply its work with influencers 20 fold in a bid to connect with global consumers at a more granular level. 

“There are 19,000 zip codes in India. There are 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want one influencer in each of them,” said Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez at the time, adding he will drive the initiative “like hell” from his new post. 

The owner of Dove and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise increased its marketing investments in 2024 by roughly $1 billion, to its highest level in over a decade, providing a peek at what that type of spending hike could mean for social media and the creator economy at large. While other CPGs have not made announcements as dramatic as Unilever’s, the social-first trend is picking up steam elsewhere, in everything from “unhinged” meme pages to oddball product collaborations and flavor profiles that are designed to get people chattering online. 

Those with deep enough pockets are also upgrading their social know-how through the brute force of dealmaking. Look no further than PepsiCo’s nearly $2 billion acquisition of prebiotic soda challenger Poppi or Unilever snapping up direct-to-consumer soapmaker Dr. Squatch for an estimated $1.5 billion. Announcing the deal in June 2025, Unilever underscored Dr. Squatch’s “viral social-first marketing strategies, partnerships with influencers and celebrities and culturally-relevant collaborations.” 

“The dynamic between brand control and creator authenticity has been completely reshaped by the success of challenger brands,” said Jason Weber, senior vice president of partnerships and head of sales at Open Influence, over email. “The model has been validated by major acquisitions in the space.”

Social-first strategies are about more than just spend

Mastering social-first marketing requires more than just shuffling some dollars around on a spreadsheet or buying a smaller competitor. Unilever has made other moves that indicate where the broader category could be heading in the social-first evolution. 

In July 2025, the company unveiled Sketch Pro, an in-house graphic design unit that aims to help home care brands like Persil pump out content at a faster clip with the aid of cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology from the likes of Google and Adobe. Sketch Pro, which was developed in collaboration with IPG Studios, is positioned as a shift from the “traditional, linear TV-first production to a social-first storytelling model” and recognizes how emergent AI software could further accelerate an already rapid pipeline for social content.

“YouTube is now the No. 1 TV viewing platform in the world at 12.5% share,” said Arthur Leopold, co-founder and CEO of Agentio. “What does that look like five years from now or even three years from now, especially when the cost to create content essentially goes to zero thanks to all these AI tools?”

Other brands are broadening their marketing services rosters to better specialize in the social arena. PepsiCo’s U.S. beverages division in June 2025 aligned its in-house agency closer to VaynerMedia to assist brands like Pepsi and Mountain Dew with staying “culturally fluent” across platforms. Pepsi’s share of the U.S. soda market has continued to slide, with Coke’s Sprite jumping to the No. 3 spot earlier in 2025, per Beverage Digest Data. 

PepsiCo noted that “big brand moments” — i.e. traditional media campaigns — would still be handled by existing agency partners while the VaynerMedia tie-up is intended to support the always-on mindset that social demands. 

Despite the top-level momentum, the journey to becoming social-first could be a long one for older CPGs, as agencies tend to bump up against the way they handle business in areas ranging from cost structure to creative production. Approvals can move at the glacial pace of traditional media, something that does not fly when the social trend machine moves on virtually overnight. 

“There’s so much friction that’s part of the process,” said Leopold, whose company takes a programmatic approach to advertising around creator content. “It can take many months of back-and-forth negotiation for a single integration or post to go live, and because of that, the paid media team historically is never going to touch that.”

Challenges remain in brand reputation, 'elasticity'  

Legacy CPG marketers also need to account for the gulf between the modernized image they think they’re projecting and the level of risk they’re actually willing to embrace, according to experts. Are they receptive to social-first marketing that rides the line of good taste or features innuendo? That riffs on gaffes by politicians or highly publicized hip-hop feuds? What about handing off the keys to content creators and influencers who court controversy? Those are questions that won’t be answered by simply dialing up ad spend. 

“Putting the money there does not solve your organizational problems that keep you from doing good work,” said Movers+Shakers’ Horowitz. “There are so many brands right now that are spending a lot of money on media buys with Meta and TikTok, etc., that you can just look at their creative and say, ‘Wow, that was a big waste of money.’” 

Some CPGs wield well-defined brand images that are adaptable to different channels. Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice has long leaned into absurdist humor that feels like a precursor to the current era of “brain rot” content while Unilever’s Dove has easily extended its “Real Beauty” platform to tackle the biases of social platforms that intensify unrealistic image standards for women. Dove earlier in 2025 launched its first entirely creator-led marketing campaign, another sign of Fernandez’s social-first pledge in action. 

Other brands have less “elasticity,” Horowitz said, referencing a phrase used by executives at his agency’s client, E.l.f. Cosmetics. Particularly in fast-moving consumer goods, marketing frequently underscores qualities like product characteristics, dependability and value. Those don’t necessarily make for prime algorithm fodder and may require a CMO to apply more outside-the-box thinking.  

“If you want your brand to show up differently, your brand has to show up differently. That is not easy for a legacy brand to swallow, and for good reason: They have a lot of equity, they have a diverse customer base, they want to protect that,” said Horowitz. 

That said, some brands may have a wider sandbox to play in than they initially realize. Consumer preferences for nostalgia and recognizable assets like mascots remain high and provide avenues for bigger swings into social content. 

Georgia-Pacific in May 2025 resurrected its Brawny Man paper towel mascot, outfitting him as a plaid shirt-wearing beefcake trying to acclimatize to the cultural context of TikTok get-ready-with-me videos and internet slang like “goblin mode.” The campaign carries perhaps an unintended meta aspect, as a brand established in the mid-70s tries to better ingrain itself in the smartphone age.

Pushing the envelope on humor can also pay off. VaynerMedia recently worked with MiraLax on a March Madness campaign that showed athlete ambassadors conquering pre-game gut problems. VaynerMedia has also generated attention for helping steer Clorox’s bolder social-first marketing tack. 

“The Pine-Sol business at Clorox is different than the Brita business. Identify what that box is and then have freedom inside that box,” said VaynerMedia Chief Client Officer Nick Miaritis. “Where our industry gets in trouble is thinking everything needs to turn into a meme account.”

Lower guardrails and embrace change

Social in some ways offers fewer guarantees than the linear TV landscape upon which CPGs established their names through capital-A commercial advertising. Walled gardens are rampant and there is not a standardized measurement currency used by swaths of the industry. Content moderation continues to be a moving target, with more platforms adopting community notes-based policing.

Social platforms are liable to undergo other changes, internal and external, that can set off shocks to brands and creators. YouTube or Instagram may decide a certain genre of content or video format is more monetizable on short notice. TikTok, which originated the Ocean Spray moment, is still faced with the possibility of a ban in the U.S., though the likelihood of that occurring drifts further away with each update from the Trump administration.    

“Ultimately, it is still a risk for a classically trained CMO or CFO to move more money into marketing because the metrics, the creative guardrails, they are different and less developed than they have been,” said Horowitz of social. “This is a fundamental shift in how we think about creative as well as media.”

Making the leap to social-first now may still be the right move for CPGs, even with many of those guardrails a pipe dream. If category stalwarts like Unilever are racing to go all-in on social, the costs to stand out and degree of competitiveness are only sure to intensify down the road. 

“For legacy CPGs, the real risk is waiting,” said Mādin’s Valenti. “Tools for measurement and brand safety help, but the deeper truth is behavioral: if you’re not where the next generation discovers meaning, you don’t exist to them.”

Google has changed course — yet again — on its plans for third-party cookies, announcing that it will continue to offer the tracking technology in Chrome rather than developing a standalone mechanism around their usage, as previously planned. For marketers, the news is mixed, potentially addressing issues around reach in a fragmented media landscape while also lighting a fire under internal plans to safeguard customer data. 

The latest move appears to put the final nail in the coffin for cookie deprecation while possibly teeing up a future in which Google has offloaded Chrome due to regulatory pressures. Many factors were behind the shift, per a company blog post, including feedback from publishers, developers, regulators and the advertising industry about its Privacy Sandbox proposals, the cookie alternative initiative it launched in 2019. A Google executive expanded on the thinking behind the decision when asked for comment at the IAB’s Public Policy & Legal Summit in April 2025.

“When you look at the evolution that the whole industry has gone through and the regulatory environment, all the pieces from when we first announced Privacy Sandbox a number of years ago until today, it’s continuing to evolve and develop,” said Ghita Harris-Newton, senior director for government affairs and public policy at Google. “We’re continuing to work with the industry and think about that evolution and respond to the feedback that we’re getting from the industry.”

The tech giant in July 2024 said it would explore a “new path” around online privacy instead of deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome, halting plans that first began in 2020. Despite countless resources being spent throughout the industry to develop plans for a cookieless future, the company has now decided to keep cookies embedded in Chrome.

The news was announced days after Google lost a second antitrust lawsuit, with a federal judge ruling that the company wields an illegal monopoly over key aspects of online advertising technology. The company in August 2024 was found to have an illegal monopoly over search, a case that could see the company forced to sell off its popular Chrome web browser. The regulatory pressure could be a factor in why Google is again rethinking its third-party cookie plans.

“This news isn’t surprising. They likely don’t want to do anything that would potentially hurt their ads business if they are ultimately forced to sell Chrome,” said Amelia Waddington, global chief product officer at search intelligence firm Captify, in emailed comments. “Sandbox worked because it was based on them owning Chrome and having complete control of the supply chain. If they don't have Chrome, they will need cookies for targeting, just like everyone else.”

The industry responds

While Google will maintain its current approach to offering third-party cookies, it isn’t completely abandoning privacy-preserving solutions. The company will continue to enhance tracking protections in Chrome’s Incognito mode and plans to launch a new IP Protection feature in Q3 2025, per the blog post. It will also gather industry feedback about what role the Privacy Sandbox will play, sharing an “updated roadmap” and plans for future investment in the coming months. 

As with previous developments in the long, often hair-raising saga around cookie deprecation, opinions on how Google’s latest move will affect the ad industry and how marketers should respond are mixed. While some, like IAB CEO David Cohen and IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur, hailed the move as a win for interoperability or a confirmation of where the ad industry is already headed, others decried it as undermining years of industry progress around privacy.

“At a time when consumers are more aware than ever of how they’re tracked online, doubling down on cookies sends the wrong message. The internet doesn’t have a targeting problem; it has a trust problem,” said Adam Schenkel, executive vice president of global platform strategy and operations at contextual targeting firm GumGum, in emailed comments. “Brands should take this as a wake-up call to diversify their ad strategies now, before audience trust erodes further.”

Other executives noted that marketers have already moved on from third-party cookies amid industry-wide attention on first-party data and channels like connected TV and mobile that are already cookieless. 

“While we expect to see marketers continue to rely on third-party cookies indefinitely for reach, we also expect an increased emphasis on tools that can incorporate the third-party cookie alongside newer destinations and experiences, and provide interoperability and a unified view across all,” said Travis Clinger, chief connectivity and ecosystem officer at LiveRamp, in emailed comments.

More scrutiny

While the questions over the future of third-party cookies in Chrome come to a close, Google is far from out of the woods in its antitrust battles. The course changes and regulatory pressure could encourage the ad industry to continue pushing the largest player in digital advertising for more transparency and competition in other areas.

“Last week’s second major legal judgment against Google for monopolistic practices is expected to ‘reshape’ digital advertising. It also gives marketers the chance to let Google know that the end of opacity in their video advertising practices should fall next,” said Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of the VAB, in emailed comments. 

“While marketers know that the depth and breadth of Google’s non-transparency in video advertising is not (yet) a crime, now is the time to say ‘it ought to be’ and demand and end to the industry’s double standards in transparency, that dynamic certainly needs ‘re-shaping’ as well,” the executive said.

More than five years after Google first announced plans to deprecate third-party cookies, the reshaping of the digital advertising landscape is well underway. The ad industry has been hard at work, adopting clean rooms for data collaboration, developing IDs for better targeting and refining marketing mix models. For the forward-looking players involved in these efforts, the latest news is a “moot point,” said Mari Docter, senior vice president of data strategy and innovation at indie media buying and planning agency Novus.

“The industry is moving towards a more privacy-compliant way of using data, and as all of the fragmented state by state privacy laws come to fruition, the cookie will just become a meaningless piece of technology moving forward,” Docter said in emailed comments. “We are not going to go back in time.”

While marketers are pumping out more campaigns, 87% report experiencing issues with campaign performance in the past 12 months, according to recent Gartner data. A little under half (45%) report potentially needing to terminate a campaign early due to poor performance.

With marketing budgets under increased scrutiny, problems related to campaign performance can add an extra layer of stress for marketers. Concerns around channel fragmentation and the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) have further complicated the picture for marketers. 

“[Issues are caused by] a combination of the volume of campaigns, as well as the amount of channel fragmentation and data silos that just exist as a natural byproduct of the digital world that marketers are operating in,” said Greg Carlucci, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Combining those into singular stories can be challenging.”

Insights were drawn from the “2024 Gartner Channel Campaign Management Survey” and the “2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey.” The channel and campaign survey was conducted online between July and mid-September 2024. There were 418 respondents, 194 from North America and 224 from Europe. While a variety of industries were represented, all of those surveyed were senior marketing decision makers. The CMO spend survey was conducted online between February and March 2024. Of the 395 surveyed, 200 came from North America and 195 from Europe.

Higher volume, more issues

With a 31% increase in the number of campaigns year-over-year, marketers are forced to do more with budgets that are increasingly under scrutiny. Additionally, only 45% of marketing budgets goes toward campaigns, while 55% goes toward technology and transformation, according to the research. 

However, while marketers are producing more campaigns, they are also experiencing significant challenges. Measuring campaign performance is one particularly thorny problem reported by respondents. Seventy percent report facing moderate to significant challenges when trying to measure ROI and 66% report struggling to demonstrate the impact of campaigns to key stakeholders. 

“I think the benefit of reporting is the ability to get extremely granular on outcomes or actions that customers are taking,” said Carlucci. “However, translating different metric types into singular business outcomes can be more difficult given there are a combination of metrics, channels are different and there’s influence among stakeholders on marketing campaigns.”

With channel fragmentation, managing campaigns is costly. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed said they struggle to find the budget to adequately manage campaign resources. Even then, 60% of respondents say they struggle to align campaign strategy with business objectives. 

The whole pie

While marketers face persistent challenges, there are things they can do to optimize campaign performance while minimizing challenges and set backs. A few best practices are evident among the 19% of respondents identified as “high performers” and who reported regularly meeting campaign goals and driving expected levels of engagement and awareness. 

This group tended to approach campaigns holistically and prioritize c-suite relationships. Cross-department relationships are key to campaign success, with 25% of respondents saying sales teams hinder their ability to carry out campaigns effectively. High-performing brands are also more likely to embrace new technologies, such as AI. 

“I think the biggest differences between the high performers and the rest were centered around channel strategy and objectives, as well as governance around what the roles are for the channels,” said Carlucci. “I think if I were to summarize it, it includes channel strategy and objectives, channel management, customer journey orchestration and routes to market.”

Alaska Airlines and consultancy Adswerve have found a projected increase of addressable advertising revenue that could be worth up to $100 million — an 11% projected increase — by using Google’s open-source Meridian marketing mix model (MMM), per details shared with Marketing Dive. 

While the increase is a future opportunity, not realized revenue, the predictive analysis also found a way for Alaska Airlines to secure a 3% increase in return on investment based on budget optimizations. The results demonstrate how MMMs like Meridian can help marketers measure an increasingly complex media landscape.

“We had MMM before, but this is a little more robust than what we had,” said Owen Bickford, paid performance media director at Alaska Airlines. “It’s providing data that we have not really had access to before.”

When announcing Meridian in 2024, Google noted that 60% of U.S. advertisers were using MMMs and 58% of those not using these models were considering doing so in the future, citing Kantar data. While the statistical analysis tools have been around for decades, increased media fragmentation has pushed MMMs back in vogue among those tackling measurement at agencies and other industry bodies.

Like other MMMs, Meridian helps marketers measure channels including television, radio and out-of-home advertising, giving them a holistic view of how channels affect the entire customer funnel. Meridian also takes in additional information such as holidays, seasonality, customer reviews and world events.

Google launched Meridian in March 2024 as a way to provide marketers with the foundation for comprehensive, privacy-durable measurement capabilities. Since then, the tech giant decided against deprecating third-party cookies or offering an opt-out mechanism, and has faced increased antitrust pressure. Like any product from Google — such as its Privacy Sandbox proposals — there is some concern that Meridian could be biased toward Google’s ad offerings. 

“I think it’s yet to be determined if that’s really what it’s going to be. I think with more data, more iterations, we’ll gain a much better insight into how it’s actually going to look,” Bickford said of any biases inherent to Meridian.

Open-source optimization

Alaska Airlines has worked with Adswerve since 2020, developing different machine learning models around advertising and audience data like predicted lifetime value. Adswerve became a certified Meridian partner in January 2025 and utilized a rapid, three-month implementation for its work with the airline.

Meridian helps improve marketing performance by providing granular insights around reach and frequency and a seamless integration of prior business knowledge, especially for large enterprise marketers like Alaska. But its key benefit is providing access to Google Query Volume data.

“The ability to… not only see how people are googling Alaska flights, but how people are googling flight travel in general is a huge benefit. Then you can really discern how much of a difference your ads are doing versus that baseline demand,” said Zach Mitchell, a data scientist at Adswerve.

Adswerve amplifies Meridian’s capabilities via its proprietary dashboard, a tool that gives marketers deeper insights, enables dynamic budget adjustments and allows for experiments around distributions and real-time optimization. As a partner with Google, Adswerve can help marketers implement Meridian more effectively.

“While it is an open-source solution, it’s also pretty complex. It requires a lot of data wrangling,” said Luka Cempre, Adswerve’s head of data modernization and cloud strategy. “It’s not a software-as-a-service solution… so you need to have someone who knows what’s going on in there to walk through it, to know where to run it, how to execute it … and then help Alaska bring all these complex outputs into a really nice way to optimize their budget.”

As it works to realize that $100 million in addressable advertising revenue, Alaska has started to optimize its ad budget in line with Meridian’s findings. The airline has shifted more spend toward a mid-funnel strategy to move consumers to complete bookings. 

“We have a brand team and we have the performance team,” Bickford explained. “How can we connect those two different groups more coherently, share the message across both and really move those people that are traditionally in the brand space from awareness to consideration?”