Sophisticated algorithms are driving today’s media evolution. As media permeates our lives, it is fast becoming 100% addressable, 100% shoppable, and 100% accountable.
At dentsu, we call this the algorithmic era of media.
This article is extracted from The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends, dentsu’s 15th annual trends report. The future of marketing is not only 100% addressable, shoppable, and accountable, it is also 100% algorithmic. Brands must evolve how they plan and optimize media for ecosystems, where algorithms act as gate keepers and where creative and media will increasingly work as one. Algorithm availability (i.e., easy to see) will become as pivotal to brands looking to bring their stories to audiences as physical availability (i.e., easy to buy) and mental availability (i.e., easy to recall).
The algorithmic era
As platforms strive to increase audience engagement, they constantly refine their recommendation algorithms to deliver more personalized content, making artificial intelligence the true gatekeeper for information and entertainment. Just as algorithms select what pieces of content to feature in user feeds, they can select what pieces of advertising are most likely to result in the best outcomes for advertisers.
After moving from the broadcast era that focused on brand building to the precision era that emphasized performance metrics, the media landscape is now heading to the algorithmic era. Both brand and performance will be balanced as AI helps to decide what messages will work best for each audience at what time. Marketers must evolve how they plan and optimize media to thrive in this era.
Automation propels media planning
Platforms cater to millions of micro-audiences assembled through proprietary signals. However, because people move between cohorts throughout the day, marketers who manually select these audiences find themselves one step behind with limited relevance and reach of advertising.
Instead, campaigns will increasingly use automation to combine targeting, prospecting, and propensity. Targeting will address the largest segment to get maximum reach at the top of the funnel. Then, prospecting will use AI to achieve a larger net reach by considering more diverse segments that would potentially be interested in the campaign. Finally, propensity will leverage AI to define the best type of content to convert each person or segment.
Through this approach, brands may uncover unexpected but viable audiences missed in traditional planning, leading to new growth opportunities.
A non-negotiable between creative and media
Algorithm-led advertising will also create an imperative for media and creative to work together to maximize reach through relevance, using content optimization.
Historically, some brands relegated dynamic creative optimization to a mere technological add-on within existing media plans to drive personalization, rather than embracing it as a core, integrated strategy that harmonizes media and creative efforts. This approach will not drive success in the era of algorithm-led advertising models.
Instead, algorithm-based creative content (ABCs) starts with premarket optimizations of creative material based on media performance principles. This enables brands to go to market with stronger assets ready for cross-channel automation, so that algorithms prioritize content with more velocity based on desired outcomes.
ABCs will get brands closer to a true zero-waste model that is more sustainable at both the content level (it is not about creating thousands of assets but fewer, higher quality assets that will generate thousands of individual experiences) and at an audience level (every audience now has a value, and creatives can be adapted for each).
What’s next?
The algorithmic era calls for a new breed of planners – at dentsu we call these algorithm planners – to design outcome-based strategies driving impact along the funnel, and of ecosystem specialists to replace channel specialists in implementing these strategies. Scaled, bespoke brand algorithms will be developed to make the most of brand power and own data.
This is the sixth of ten trends discussed in dentsu’s The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report.
Download your copy of The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report here to see all ten trends.
