With 2025 in full swing, media planners are working diligently to account for last year’s media trends to develop strategies for the coming months. Although no one can predict where trends in the advertising world will go or precisely how the market will change as the year goes on, planners can leverage recent history to forecast how advertising investments may play out in the future. 

This article will offer some insight into key 2024 media trends that are likely to influence your advertising strategy for the months to come.

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2024 Media Trends to Note: Digital Video Domination

As a media channel, Digital has seen higher rates of year-over-year (YoY) growth on average above all other media channels. Although the rise of digital media is no secret, the year 2024 proved a turning point for this media channel, as illustrated through the following trends:

Digital Video Surpasses Linear

In 2024, Digital video spend overtook Linear video for the first time. Thanks to this historical rise, Digital almost rivals broadcast for total spend on video. It’s important to note that as the end of the year approached, Linear video investments ultimately outgrew Digital, but both investment types increased through Q4 2024. 

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OLV Overtakes OTT

Another first for media investments, Online video (OLV) overtook Over-the-top (OTT) for growth in 2024. Historically, OTT YoY growth has significantly overshadowed OLV, but this year’s trends illustrated a notable shift, primarily driven by Social video on OLV. While OTT experienced a 13.2% increase YoY, OLV spend expanded 18.7%.

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TTD Surpasses DV 360

A supply-side platform (SSP) is a digital marketplace used by publishers for selling advertising space on their websites. In terms of absolute media spend, Display and Video 360 (DV 360) by Google continues to dominate the SSP space (DV 360 had 51.5% media share to The Trade Desk’s [TTD’s] 48.5% in 2024). However, last year was the first time TTD overtook DV 360 in media spend on the video ad type.

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Tentpole Events Influencing Media Trends for 2025 and Beyond

If there’s one thing that advertisers can rely on, it’s tentpole events—or planned, large-scale broadcasts that drive significant interest. These are typically presented or streamed live and consist of major sporting events (e.g., the Super Bowl, the Olympics), awards shows (e.g., the Oscars, the Grammys), holiday celebrations (e.g., the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New Year’s Eve), among others (e.g., concerts, elections, public observances). 

Let’s take a look at several of the major tentpole events of 2024 and how they influenced the media landscape:

Impact of Sports Content on Linear Spend

As the only genre of programming on Linear to see any appreciable YoY growth in 2024, sports content is essentially keeping Linear channels in the game. This trend was primarily driven by NFL programming, with a measurable increase resulting from the Olympics broadcast. Notable for its use of a platform-agnostic, on-demand approach to delivering Olympics coverage, Comcast experienced similar declines on Linear as the rest of the marketplace succeeded in almost making up the entire difference through Digital growth.

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Impact of Presidential Election on X Ad Spend

In mid-2023, the social media platform Twitter was rebranded as X when it was purchased by Elon Musk. Consequently, many advertisers responded by pulling their ad dollars in late 2023. After monthly YoY declines on the order of -50% to -80% on X, marginal improvement occurred in November 2024 at -32% before increasing a whopping 123% in December, after the conclusion and results of the presidential election. 

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Enter the New Era of Media Planning

Needless to say, perfect predictions are not the goal. However, a comprehensive understanding of where 2025 media trends are moving can be invaluable when developing your media strategy. By strategically tracking relevant changes in the landscape, media planners can anticipate shifts and bring clarity to their planning efforts. To unleash the full potential of your media strategy, talk to a Guideline expert today.