Riding the chaos: What the rest of 2025 will bring marketers, agencies and media owners
In an update to a piece he wrote at the start of the year, TrinityP3’s Stephen Wright looks at what we’ve learnt in the past six months and what we can expect from the rest of 2025 across media and agencyland.
Congratulations on making it through to the new financial year. It’s fair to say that the first half of 2025 has thrown up interesting, and perhaps unexpected curveballs for marketers, agencies, and media owners alike.
At the start of the year I made some predictions about what 2025 might bring for the industry, so let’s look at how these interlinking themes are playing out.
The blurring of media boundaries and their impact on activity and media channels
In January, I noted that media agencies had become resellers of inventory and that the consequence of this is that many clients are bringing more media in-house.
It was also clear that some platforms (read: Meta, Google, Tiktok) were increasingly just bypassing agencies.
This has truly come to the fore in 2025 with the promise by Meta to fully automate ad creation by the end 2026. To quote Forbes this isn’t just a platform moving its tanks onto the lawns of agencies “they’re bypassing the agencies that built the industry”.
How clients respond to this change is yet to be seen but there will likely be a subset who look to permanently bypass agencies for much of their digital and focus on driving what is a major engine of their future growth.
Principal media-based trading is (increasingly) out of the shadows
Globally the discussion of principal media and its various manifestations has been slowly building momentum.
In Australia, the topic finally broke through at the Future of TV conference in April with the tricky question of “is principal media evil?”
At the time there were conflicting accounts of both how widespread it is and whether it happens in this market (for the record: it does).
As I observed at the time, barely a day goes by from a TrinityP3 perspective when a client or agency doesn’t raise the issue with us. Principal media will always have supporters and detractors and there will naturally be global and local differences in the acceptance and concerns around non-transparent trading practices.
What will be fascinating is the impact new entrants have in forcing the issue to the fore. Independent media agencies have long been driving the issue but now a major new player in Accenture Song is also in the market with a transparent trading model. They recently had a high profile win securing Optus (declaration: TrinityP3 oversaw this pitch) and it will be interesting to see if other clients are attracted by such an offering.
One thing that is clear is that increasingly marketers, and more particularly their procurement teams are waking up to undeclared fees or inventory which is priced well below market value.
I suspect we’ll see smart players move these practices firmly out of the shadows before year end.
Stephen Wright
Market mix modelling’s growth continues unabated
At the start of the year, I said it was showtime for Market Mix Models (MMMs) and that clients wanted to see proof of the much hyped promise.
It is clear that the strong growth in the space continues and what is interesting is that the entry-point spend for many clients is rapidly decreasing with capacity for reliable findings on lower spend levels.
No longer does having an MMM require hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Consideration and uptake is increasingly widespread indeed it is on most marketers shopping lists and at TrinityP3 we have even run pitches to select a provider for some major clients.
MMMs are increasingly seen as the central source of truth by marketers particularly those who have moved to ‘in house’ key functions.
The thing to watch now is consolidation in the space – will all the existing MMM players remain? Will some get bought up?
It was interesting to see a player like Mutinex release an open-source, vendor-neutral toolkit to independently test and compare any marketing mix model. This will only increase confidence in the MMM sector and further establish their role as the primary determinant of media selection and usage
Holdcos face a test: Who can transform for the new AI agency world fastest?
Where to begin with the holdcos? It’s no secret that they are facing some challenges but it is already clear that winners and losers are becoming apparent.
Some groups are clearly achieving solid growth. According to reports the Australian operation of GroupM, sorry, I mean the newly rebranded WPP Media, is showing 9% growth against falling group revenue. Omnicom’s global media business is also growing at 8% against only 3% growth for the Group.
However a thriving media business and short term profitability needs deeper examination particularly amid a growing backdrop and backdrop of holdco mergers, rebrands and consolidation.
All the holdcos are talking up their version of being an AI-led innovative advertising business but at this stage it is not AI that is driving that profit.
Some holdcos are continuing to ‘non-disclosed’ principal based trading to help lift both profit and their share price. Often these practices mean the media is used as something of a ‘cash cow’.
Investment back into the media product isn’t necessarily a given. Nor is the return on investment for the client.
Proof of the pudding is in client wins and success on the new business front. WPP Media’s performance in this regard reflects success from hard fought wins rather than incrased arbitrage through principal based trading. In the last 18 months they have picked up new clients including – Amazon, Specsavers, Max HBO, Nestle, Unilever, MG, Footlocker and Sorbent.
WPP Media recently won Specsavers
The next six months will see the consolidation (read: takeover) of IPG Mediabrands by Omnicom and for both these groups and their competitors marketers will be closely watching the impact.
Many marketers are watching as holdcos increasingly rely on grouped services for many functions. There are clear positives and negatives for clients from these moves and I expect some clients may be reluctant to share a holding company with their competitor.
Marketers are (albeit slowly) regaining control
Forgive me, this is a perennial theme but this one matters.
Marketers are waking up to the need for them to be active drivers of their strategies and engaged in things like media planning which they might have traditionally delegated to the agencies.
The rise of in-housing and MMMs are clear catalysts in this shift but drawing decision making and selection back closer to the core marketing function and performance measurement can only be a good thing.
What all parts of the media ecosystem need to recognise is that this shift is having consequences.
The needs of media agency partners are evolving as a result of these changes. The agency of 2026 will need to recognise how the world has changed, to be more supportive, more collaborative more willing to be media and information neutral to objectively assess the widening range of placement options (something hard to do if you are also trading non-transparently).
The agency also needs to be supporting marketers in unravelling the increasingly complicated audience data emerging from behind various and emerging walled gardens. It must have partnerships, and collaboration and a collegiate approach…
2025 to date has certainly delivered on the promise of a rocky ride of chaos and change. Expect nothing different in the second half.
This is no time for indecision. Clear decisive actions and initiatives are reaping benefits and across all sectors of the industry winners and losers are emerging.
And unlike a roller coaster with has the biggest drops and thrills at the start of the ride, the balance of 2025 promises to be just as dynamic.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Have your say