Well, here we are, over a week into the new year and so much to talk about already. Google is splashed all over the news again with its search monopoly facing greater scrutiny than ever. AI continues to evolve at breakneck speed, reshaping industries (allegedly) and driving innovation, while social media will most likely see video content cranked up a notch to reach / resonate with an increasingly demanding audience, all against a backdrop of less supervision and monitoring. In the words of one famous fizzy pop drink ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so strap yourself in and let’s get started!
SEO
AI Overviews (AIOs)
Following two surprise updates at the end of 2024, you can expect more turbulence around rankings, algorithms and changes in the SERPs throughout these next 12 months. This is always the way of things, but as Google continues to push towards zero click culture on the SERPs with its AI Overviews (while conversely tacking AI-heavy content through its spam updates), we can predict AI will remain the hottest of topics. As ever, it’s wise to adhere to E-E-A-T best practices by producing concise, unambiguous and relevant content to give yourself a fighting chance of appearing in future AIOs.
Additionally, it remains to be seen how far Google will push AIOs this year and what impact these will have on overall organic traffic for website owners. Many have already started to see some ‘informational’ traffic start to disappear in certain sectors, but this year *could* see Google up the ante even more. It’s worth keeping a very close eye on the SERPs of your biggest traffic driving pages to see how the layout changes over the year.
Read more about AIO and how it might also be affecting your ranking reports.
Google’s search monopoly
Google's vast monopoly on search remains a huge news story, with the push to sell Chrome and the possibility of allowing users to actively choose their default search engine on devices. While this aims to increase market competition, particularly on iPhones, historical patterns suggest only 5-10% of users might switch to alternatives, with most preferring to stick with Google’s familiar interface. With Trump coming in, it could well be all this talk of ‘tech breakup’ gets put on ice as they start to fall in line behind him. Who really knows? Does Trump even know? We’ll find out and keep you posted!
Video content
We’re likely to see video content becoming ever more central to SEO strategies in 2025, offering a visually engaging way to connect with audiences. A ‘video-first’ approach enables businesses to create affordable, quick and versatile content, with transcripts easily transformed into articles.
“Video content is increasingly essential, as Google prominently features YouTube and sometimes TikTok across various surfaces, like Search, Discover, Google News, the Video tab, Short Videos, and more. Site owners should be well-versed in changes to how Google indexes video content and expands their text content into visual formats”
It's also not just Google who are showing video content more prominently in SERPs. Bing.com is also giving more SERP real estate to both YouTube and TikTok videos in its results.
PPC
As with everything PPC, it's going to get increasingly opaque, with more push towards creative input and performance signals over manual optimisation, requiring marketers to focus more on providing quality creative assets and audience signals than traditional bid management.
PMax
I predict an increasing shift in campaign spending towards PMax. Most advertisers (specifically those that don’t run shopping ads) would opt to run search only campaigns, but an emerging trend demonstrates that PMax performs better over time. The downside is there is much less control over PMax, so it causes more wasted ad spend, but the volume of clicks and conversions generally outweighs the waste.
Ad placements
Google's ad placement strategy will move up a gear. We’ve already seen two key developments: trials around integrating advertisements directly within AI-generated results and testing multiple ad placements from the same advertiser on a single search results page.
Additionally, we’re expecting more testing and perhaps even a permanent roll out of Google Ads placed in between organic results. This has been trialled on and off over the last year or so, but as Google relies to a lesser extent on traditional ‘SEO content’, both via AIOs and other content types, expect PPC to crop up in all sorts of places moving forward.
These changes reflect Google’s desire to keep their ad revenue coffers overflowing while still pushing their AI-driven search experiences.
Social media platforms
Meta
Until a few days ago, I expected 2025 to just be a fairly quiet year for Meta, but it seems Mark Zuckerberg had other ideas. I didn’t think that the direction Musk had taken with Twitter was something anyone would want to replicate, but just this week, Zuckerberg announced that the platform was doing away with third party fact checkers and it would be left to Facebook users (i.e. ‘the community’)’ to resolve fake news and offensive content. Bringing in community notes-style moderation to content feels like a move that will have huge repercussions. Perhaps not for business directly, but certainly for political and other areas of life, which might in turn, further polarise users and/or usage on the platform.
Whether this move will prompt advertisers to up sticks and abandon Meta the way they did in their droves over on Twitter remains to be seen. If the money starts to dry up, changes will need to be made again, but how this plays out is very much a case of wait and see.
I can’t see any significant changes for Instagram on the horizon, not unless the US goes ahead with its planned ban of TikTok (more on that shortly). Meta continues to invest heavily in its Stories and Reels capabilities, with advertisers also upping their game with slick image, music and video creations, plus hyper-personalisation to engage their audience.
Some Android users woke up on 1st January to find WhatsApp no longer worked on their devices. This included various Samsung, Sony and HTC models, with some older iPhone models to follow in May.
Why?
Meta, which owns WhatsApp, says the changes are part of regular updates to ensure the app stays secure and functional while working with newer phones. Reading between the lines, Zuckerberg’s desire to flex some serious muscle in the AI race means that any devices that are incompatible with such advancements can, quite literally, get in the bin.
In other news, WhatsApp introduced a reverse image search feature to help users verify the authenticity of images, with a view to combatting misinformation (and I foresee misinformation going big in 2025 – can’t possibly imagine why!) We’ll also see B2B and B2C capabilities improve, with more companies offering support, booking options and various AI-powered customer support solutions (the likes of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines have been doing this for years).
Tiktok
Despite intense pressure from the US government to ban TikTok, the likelihood is this incredibly popular platform isn’t going away anytime soon. President-Elect Donald Trump has opposed the ban, having already asked for a postponement to the ruling. Currently, TikTok has well over a billion active users and that figure is set to rise.
If the ban *did* go ahead, online marketplaces, such as app stores and web hosting platforms will have to stop making TikTok available to Americans. Internet service providers also will be required to make the app inaccessible on U.S. internet browsers.
That aside, the platform’s growth has been vast in 2024 and I expect to see an increased number of businesses and individuals striving to go viral on the platform even more in 2025. The great ads from even established brands like Currys last year showed that with the right idea and execution, success can be achieved.
X/Twitter
2024 saw a sizeable decline in active users, dropping from 368 million in 2022 to 335 million. This has done little to dampen the platform’s spirits, with a post from X’s CEO heralding big things for 2025, including the launch of ‘X TV’ and ‘X Money’, a payment system that has been talked about for some time but only now appears to be an actual, imminent ‘thing’.
Sadly, I predict that X will continue on its right-leaning trajectory and Yaccarino’s proclamation that ‘you are the media!’ serves as a cautionary foretelling as to what lies ahead in terms of the kind of content we will see in 2025, as a result of Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s queasy bromance.
BlueSky
2024 was definitely BlueSky’s year, thanks in no small part to disaffected former X users leaving Musk’s cesspit of disinformation in their droves. As of December 2024, BlueSky had over 25 million users. To put its mammoth (and quick!) growth into perspective, take a look at this graph from Backlinko. We can see that since September, the number of registered users has more than doubled, with the biggest rise occurring in mid November:
It's likely that in 2025, BlueSky’s meteoric rise will start to plateau, however I would expect to see another spike in numbers around Trump’s inauguration later this month.
YouTube
The current number of YouTube users worldwide stands at a whopping 2.1 billion, with people spending an average 29 hours on the YouTube mobile app per month. It’s more popular than any other streaming service, including Netflix. Will this change in 2025? Only in the sense it is likely to grow, particularly if the TikTok ban in the US comes into force.
Also, as the cost-of-living crisis continues, consumers may be inclined to cancel paid streaming subscriptions in favour of YouTube's free content. Higher user engagement would drive more advertising revenue, which in turn would incentivise more creators to prioritise the platform, leading to even greater user engagement.
Final thoughts
We’re now a quarter of the way through the century (!!!) and if this period is remembered for anything, it will be the vast advancements in technology, particularly around streaming, search and AI. Despite Google’s best efforts to move the goalposts when it comes to search, I believe in 2025, users will remain loyal to traditional organic search as the most trusted source of information (which is good news for SEOs!) although we’ll have to see if Google’s messing about with PPC ads in the SERPs makes any difference (or if anyone even notices…)
This year will also see social media once again being used as a political pawn, particularly in the USA where the Trump/Musk alliance is likely to spawn a troubling yet powerful monster over on X. The fact that relations between Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump have significantly thawed in recent months, with Zuckerberg even donating $1m to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump, gives us yet more cause for concern as to how Meta will be utilised by the Trump administration over the next 12 months.
If we’ve learnt anything though, it’s that money talks on the web, and if any of these moves hurt Wall Street or advertising revenues, you can expect further changes to try and push clicks and earnings even more. Whilst this potentially opens up more opportunities for marketers, we’ll have to see if brands want to continue to be seen in places where content quality comes into question.
