As 2025 kicks off with a wide array of new ad tech initiatives, particularly developed by the IAB working groups, here’s what digital businesses need to pay closer attention to in the next 12 months and beyond.
Following the streak of continued standard updates during the H2 2024, closer to the end of the previous year several of IAB’s working groups have introduced a series of new standards and initiatives, proving the organization’s ambitious goals to further innovate the global online advertising industry.
Here’s what you can expect to adopt in several key market niches in 2025 and beyond.
Curation Takes It All: SDA Becomes Curated Audiences
As the global online advertising industry witnessed the whirlwind resurrection of curation as one of the most-hyped monetization strategies for publishers (via DCaaS and more) in 2024, and is commonly perceived as one of the hottest market trends, predicted for 2025, quite predictably, IAB Tech Lab couldn’t stay aside of the matter either.
In many ways driven by the low SDA adoption rates and aiming to reshape existing standards in view of the newly-emerging trends, right at the end of 2024 the organization announced the rebranding of its formerly launched Seller Defined Audiences as Curated Audiences, providing more clarification, regarding their possible definition/provision by a wider range of businesses beyond the sell side.
In addition, its Addressability Working Group has also launched the so-to-speak Curation Workstream for 2025, expected to handle the industry’s feedback on how to address common challenges, regarding curated audiences and their implementation, i.e. visibility, data leakage risks, testing frameworks and more.
And while it’s still unclear how successful IAB Tech Lab’s efforts will be in the short-term perspective, the new specification name will definitely drive more companies’ interest to how it can benefit their digital ad revenue streams. In this respect, much will depend on how comprehensible and efficient the Working Group’s communication with market players will be in H1 2025.
RMNs Push for More Standardization with the In-store Retail Media Guidelines
Obviously following the previously announced roadmap to achieve the faster (and the more universal) standardization of the retail media advertising industry, in December 2024 IAB Europe introduced the new guide covering in-store retail media standards.
Bringing together the valuable market insights, provided by the 14 major European retail media networks, like MediaMarkt, Kingsfisher and Schwarz Media, just to name a few, the newly-released guidelines cover several key staples of in-store retail media.
Namely, not only these include the more precise definitions of key terminology and major digital formats, applied in-store retail media advertising (e.g. DOOH), but also provide comprehensive recommendations, regarding ad performance measurement and reporting of both the media metrics, like traffic and ad exposure, and the sales metrics (e.g. incremental sales, brand lift, lookback windows, etc.).
Non-surprisingly, given that relatively short time period after their release has passed, the new guidelines will definitely take some time to be implemented by retail media businesses in the EEA. As for the U.S., however, the best case scenario is that the adoption time frame will take several years, with many changes, possibly proposed by biggest market players in the region, like Walmart and Amazon, along the way.