Tinuiti’s CMO Tips for 2025
As if Google doesn’t have enough headaches, between the DOJ trial and calls for it to be broken up, now it has to contend with ChatGPT and Perplexity, which could destroy its search business. Those blue links of highlighted text curated on a Google search are becoming an endangered species, according Tinuiti’s Big Bets for the CMO in 2025 report, which states: “As AI-driven search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT reshape the landscape, Google’s reign could very well be hitting a turning point. Some of the more outspoken voices in the industry are betting that Google’s query volume could nosedive by up to 25% in the next five years as users lean into intent-based discovery, where answers come faster, richer, and more intuitively than ever.”
Oh, the humanity. (Not really in this case.)
Tinuiti CMO Dalton Dornè sat down with StreetFight to discuss other aspects of the report.
Describe “agentic commerce” and how CMO’s can capitalize on it.
We’re seeing AI agents handling purchases with minimal human impact. Amazon’s Rufus is guiding product selection and recommendations, and while it stops short of handling closed-loop planning, as consumers get more comfortable using agents in this capacity this could evolve.
There are also autonomous agents where the user may never even confirm the products or services, but instead would share their preferences in order to feed the experience. This requires really good preference understanding and how well personalization can be maintained without being cumbersome to the user – so I see this as where we are headed as users increasingly engage and build trust.
Ultimately, marketers need to be testing agent-friendly experiences using detailed and structured product data to make sure consumers’ adoption of the technology doesn’t outpace marketer-testing.
The report quotes a 16-year-old saying “Everyone on TikTok is saying that your grandparents weren’t checking each other’s Snapchat scores when they met. Everybody wants that genuineness of real-life experience.” Could this be interpreted as a longing for the perceived authenticity of legacy media messages, such as those in OOH, TV, and print campaigns?
This 16-year-old speaks for a generation that is wistful and longing for something it never had. This type of reminiscence is fundamentally unlike Millennials who long for their own childhoods and want to return to the simpler times.
GenZ grew up with devices in their hands and so they don’t have a simpler, more innocent time they can return to. They have to construct one based on what they’ve heard about from their family members and through a pop culture that was over before they were ever born e.g., Y2K aesthetic, “Friends,” “Mean Girls,” vinyl records, and so on.
From a marketing point of view, this includes “legacy media messaging.” Because it is perceived as belonging to a time when the world was less “fake.” TV, OOH, and print feel more authentic to this younger generation. That doesn’t mean they’re going to give up their phones. The role traditional media has to play in the future to understand this desire and be part of the journey of how brands are speaking to GenZ.
What kind of a TikTok strategy should a CMO consider?
Advertisers should not sleep on TikTok, an incredibly important part of the media mix with some really compelling use cases. For example:
- Advanced measurement – TikTok’s measurement suite has become more advanced in the last few years, and 2024 was no exception. With the rollout of Unified Lift, brands can run more parallel conversion lift and brand lift studies to understand the full-funnel impact of their media, with of course MMM being king in validating TikTok’s role.
- Social Commerce – TikTok Shop’s explosive growth is showing no signs of slowing down. As more large brands enter the commerce platform, TikTok continues to crack down on fraudulent and unauthorized products, allowing brands to win back category share/
Three in four TikTok users say they are likely to buy from a brand they have seen on TikTok Shop. Even broader than TikTok Shop, 65% of U.S. social-media users aged 15 to 42 report having made a purchase from a brand they discovered through an influencer, showcasing TikTok Shop’s big potential runway.
- Search – TikTok’s search offering has been a successful supplemental strategy for brands in 2024 and should continue to remain a part of media mixes for any brands looking to drive additional awareness or consideration for their products.
Tinuiti clients that leaned into TikTok Search to redirect to TikTok Shop, saw a 27% boost in ROAS compared to business as usual catalog media. TikTok Search is a great strategy to capitalize on the heightened social search traffic within TikTok, in addition to supporting traditional search engines and traditional social strategies. With a potential TikTok ban or sale, marketers need to be prepared to adjust.
Why shouldn’t CMO’s “sleep” on YouTube as an essential part of any media mix?
YouTube sits at the nexus of search, social, shoppable, and video media. 87% of users feel they get the highest quality information from YouTube when they’re shopping or browsing. People watched over 30B hours of shopping content on the platform in 2023 with consumers able to buy directly from videos and it is turning into a shopping platform. It is also quickly becoming a search engine leveraged by younger audiences, and it is the largest streaming platform in the US by viewing time (and that figure excludes YouTube TV).
This combination of extraordinary reach and audience trust makes YouTube an essential environment for brands looking to connect with new and returning audiences, both with paid media and with supporting organic content – brands need to become creators. With diverse ad units, shoppable media, an incrementality lens, and powerful audience targeting, YouTube can be an extremely powerful element throughout the funnel.
Any predictions for 2025 for CMO’s and the challenges they face?
As the person often on the cutting edge of change, in 2025 the CMO will truly become AI-change agents in their organizations. Not only from ensuring their teams force-multiply by using GenAI, learning how they market to AI, but also driving AI-enabled innovation and adoption within their companies as a whole.
