2025 Streaming Uncovered: Marketers plan to increase spend on ad-supported streaming platforms as they seek to boost loyalty in a challenging economy
How to allocate ad spend effectively is always at the forefront of marketers’ minds; especially when faced with a multitude of fast-changing, growing, and dynamic digital channels. But with many struggling to make an impact with current performance marketing strategies, how can marketers adapt their tactics and get the best results for the year ahead?
AudienceXpress has partnered with the independent research firm CoLab Media Consulting, for the fifth year running, on a survey looking at how marketers across five European countries are allocating their budgets, adjusting their spend priorities, and preparing for 2025.
Between July and August 2024, CoLab surveyed 500 marketing decision-makers and influencers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (EU5). Respondents were evenly split between advertisers and agencies.
Key findings:
- Marketers plan to increase spend in line with the modest economic growth outlook in Europe
- With levels of consumer loyalty declining amid the rising cost of living, retaining existing customers is a prime objective for marketers
- Measurement remains a top priority, while automation and AI have emerged as major drivers of efficiency
- Nine out of ten marketers want to increase spend in ad-supported streaming platforms, due to their potential to deliver reach and high-quality ad experiences
- Buying complexity and difficulty in managing CTV and linear campaigns are inhibiting investment in streaming TV
In context: Marketing budgets show signs of improvement
Despite geo-political challenges and moderate economic growth across regions, marketing spend intentions continue to improve for the second year in a row, with 73% of the marketers (EU5) expecting their budgets to stay the same or increase. Levels of optimism are highest among Spanish and French marketers – perhaps still riding the wave of the summer Olympics in Paris – while their German counterparts are the least optimistic, with only 14% expecting an increase in marketing spend. Generally, European advertisers are more bullish than agencies, possibly in light of heightened global competition and the rise in the cost of media.
Priorities for 2025 centre around loyalty, efficiency and effectiveness
Key marketing objectives across the surveyed European countries have remained consistent for the past two years; the focus is on retaining and winning back customers on the back of high inflation in the current economic landscape. UK (60%) and German (52%) marketers are especially looking to optimise loyalty through customer data insights.
Customer retention remains top marketing goal
Improving efficiency through technology will be important for marketers who need to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) to their senior stakeholders. Italian (48%) and Spanish (46%) marketers, in particular, are prioritising automation, while generative AI is also coming to the fore as a way for marketers to automate and scale the creation of marketing assets.
But efficiencies alone aren’t enough to maximise return on marketing spend. To this end, marketers are prioritising the measurement of campaign effectiveness. Measuring campaign outcomes is vital not just for benchmarking and optimising future activity; it also provides marketers with the evidence they need to gain stakeholders’ buy-in.
The proportion of marketers (EU5) who consider attention metrics to be ‘very important’ has grown 6% since last year, now representing 70% of the surveyed group. However, there is no clear consensus on whether attention is simply a measurable campaign outcome or a metric that campaigns should be actively optimised towards.
Marketers sharpen their focus on streaming TV
Nearly half of marketers surveyed want their organisation to spend more on streaming TV and connected TV (CTV). Nine in ten marketers expected that they would dedicate more budget to ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels in 2025, with most diverting budgets from other channels to do so.
Views on which channels these redirected budgets should come from vary between regions, with advertisers and agencies not always in agreement. For example, Spanish agencies are keen to redirect expenditure from social to AVOD, whereas advertisers in the country favour taking the budget from linear TV investments. UK advertisers are more likely to consider reducing spend on social media to increase their streaming budgets, while UK agencies would prefer to divert budgets away from online video. Overall, the spending trend seems to lean in favour of premium video inventories.
9 in 10 marketers anticipate to increase spend in AVOD platforms
Growth drivers: Ad experience and reach
One of the key growth drivers for streaming and CTV is the high-quality ad experience that these platforms offer. Marketers in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy rated this as one of the biggest factors influencing ad spend in these formats, while their counterparts in France are more interested in real-time analytics.
The extension of reach that CTV and streaming provide was also considered a key factor by respondents in the UK (45%) and Italy (47%) in particular, with the ongoing diversification of viewing habits across linear and digital platforms. Meanwhile, Spanish marketers were especially motivated by the depth of inventory these channels can offer.
Growth inhibitors: Fragmentation and lack of proof points
With an ever-growing number of streaming and CTV platforms available to viewers, marketers are struggling with the complexity and fragmentation in the marketplace. Considerable time and effort are required to plan campaigns and trade across multiple platforms, with 43% of marketers pressing for this challenge to be addressed. A lack of proof points to demonstrate the effectiveness of these channels is another challenge to investment, highlighting the ongoing concerns around measurement.
Behind marketers’ hesitance, there is also a certain degree of confusion due to a lack of standard definitions for streaming and CTV, especially in France and Italy. In Spain, Germany and the UK, the number of platforms and associated buying tools pose a challenge, suggesting a need for simplification in buying processes and tools used to access and transact on these premium inventories.
Simplification and renewed focus on creativity are key to growth
“With the streaming landscape largely shaped by technology, data and the proliferation of platforms, solving complexity in media planning and buying is a top industry priority,” said Massimo de Magistris, Vice President, Demand Sales & Strategy International, AudienceXpress. “Unifying buys and programmatic trading could provide an answer, especially as the lines between linear TV and streaming become even more blurred.”
“But efficiency and efficacy are only one side of the story. To improve the chances of making an impact, it remains vital that marketers balance their focus on performance marketing with a return to creativity fundamentals if they are to counteract other challenges such as ad saturation and dilution across multiple platforms.”
Download report