What are the key trends of focus among digital ad buyers, and what’s driving their thinking around the next stage of outreach?

The team from Integral Ad Science (IAS) sought to find out with their latest “Industry Pulse Report”, which looks at how professional ad buyers view the rise of AI, the key risks for ad placement, the key opportunities, and more.

IAS partnered with YouGov to survey over 250 U.S.-based digital media experts who utilize programmatic advertising, in order to glean more insight into their thoughts and approaches leading into 2025.

And the chief concern among them is…

“Ads delivered alongside fake news or misinformation” is the primary risk, according to professional digital ad buyers, which was also the main concern in IAS’s “Industry Pulse” report last year.

Questions around ad placement have been amplified in 2024 by reports indicating that X’s revised approaches to content moderation and ad placement have led to more promotions being displayed alongside potentially harmful content in that app, while other platforms also have systems in place to avoid the same.

For its part, X has denied that its ad placements are risky, referring to third party reports which indicate that “99.99% of Tweet impressions are healthy”, meaning that they’re safe for ads to be shown alongside. But as you can see, this remains a key concern, which is why X needs to continue to provide reassurance that its updated approach is working as expected.

Yet, even with these concerns in mind, ad buyers still see great opportunity in social media promotions:

As you can see in this chart, digital video is a relatively close second, while live-streaming and influencer marketing are well back.

I mean, really, most of these elements are incorporated into the “Social Media” banner to some degree, so I’m not sure that this is a significant indicator of a broader lack of faith in these other options. But it does seem that ad buyers view these as less innovative options, which won’t see any significant change in the coming 12 months.

Respondents also believe that social shopping, something that I’ve been skeptical of, will gain traction in 2025, while influencer marketing will also continue to rise in importance.

The rise of generative AI is also increasing concerns around deepfakes, and the placement of ads alongside misleading material:

So, again, this goes back to the prime concern, in ad placement, and potential brand damage, due to unintended association with misleading or fake content. AI tools does increase the risk in this respect, and as such, you can expect to see the platforms working harder to detect and clearly label AI-generated content to alleviate such concerns.

Because this is only going to increase as generative AI tools continue to improve.

These are some interesting insights into the thinking of digital ad buyers, and their key concerns heading into the new year. And while the platforms will never be able to completely address all of these elements, it is worth noting where professional ad buyers are looking, in relation to coming announcements from social apps.

You can download IAS’s full “Industry Pulse” report for 2025, which includes a heap more digital marketing insights, here.