Looking at my feed this week, it’s clear that everyone loves to predict the future. But this got me thinking, how often do we check whether we were right?
So, here’s a 2024 recap with a twist: I revisited some of the Lotame team’s predictions for what was then the year to come to see how they panned out.
“While Google has promised to take things slowly with its cookie shutdown early next year, signs indicate another delay may be in the cards. Expect brands and publishers to once again drag their feet on preparing for a cookieless future.
“Here’s where things get potentially ugly. At some point during the year, Google abruptly decides to make good on its plan by shutting down cookies overnight to meet the current Q4 deadline.
The ripple effects would be vast and painful, as we’d likely see significant under-delivery during the holiday spending season, leaving marketers with missed goals, and consumers dissatisfied with less personalized experiences and product recommendations.”
We started strong with this prediction. Google did indeed kick the cookie deprecation can down the road one last time in April. What few of us expected was that Google would then leave it lying there.
Google walked back entirely from cookie deprecation and promised an “approach that elevates user choice”. This has been broadly interpreted as iOS-style privacy prompts, but delivered with friendlier verbiage to encourage opt-ins.
The good news: this meant our underdelivery concerns didn’t manifest (yet). The bad news: we still don’t know what Google’s going to do. Where we were entirely correct is that the industry remained dangerously locked-in to a big tech giant that can’t seem to shake its erratic behaviour.
“The fallout from Google’s antitrust battles and Meta’s clashes with the EU may make us hopeful that big tech’s grip on digital advertising will be loosened, but a weakened duopoly just means other giants jostling for the top spot.
“Google and Meta’s lost market share will be eaten up by Amazon and The Trade Desk. As for social media, all bets are off from the moment TikTok finally rolls out a full-fledged advertising suite.
“Meanwhile, Apple will continue to quietly build a huge advertising business within its Appstore ecosystem, leveraging its control of its platform and exclusivity over the data it generates to clamp down on its advertising competitors, all without denting the halo effect of its consumer-first reputation.”
Amazon muscled in on Google’s turf just as expected, with eMarketer estimating that it secured 22.3% of the US search market this year with 17.6% growth versus Google’s 50.5% share (forecasted to drop below 50% for the first time in a decade this year) and 7.6% growth.
This isn’t a “rising tide lifts all boats” situation either: the Wall Street Journal found that most advertising budgets being spent on Amazon were one-to-one redirections from Google.
Meta, however, had a surprisingly strong year due to better-than-expected Reels performance, which meant TikTok didn’t close the gap on its main competitor despite surging growth — which may crash into a wall depending on the outcome of its potential US ban.
As for Apple, “quietly” remains the modus operandi for its growing ad business, but what we couldn’t have expected is the odd ways it would overlap with Google’s antitrust trial. Discovery documents revealed Google pays around $20 billion a year to be the default search engine in Apple’s ecosystem, which Apple bundles into its reported advertising revenue.
You might think Apple would be salivating at Google’s antitrust misfortunes, but it turns out its competitor was a golden goose all along.
“As more giant players like Netflix and Disney gain traction with their ad supported offerings, smaller video programmers will look for ways to gain more share through partnerships and scale. In fact, CTV is starting to gravitate towards a concentrated group of winners who command the majority of spending.
“Given those circumstances, we may see many independent content players abandon standalone CTV apps, and consider handing sales over to platforms like Roku or Amazon, or various FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) networks.
“And because of that, more ad dollars are likely to be funneled toward the platforms, rather than the independent publishers. As in the gold rush, there may be more money to make selling tools than mining for actual gold.”
Against the backdrop of streaming consolidation, in 2024 we saw a flurry of studios licensing their content across various FAST channels in a streaming-era reinvention of broadcast syndication. Meanwhile, everyone from CNN to Aardman also launched their own FAST channels and — as predicted — have turned to established platforms for distribution.
What’s interesting is that few of these partnerships are exclusive, with channels remaining independent but hosted across an array of FAST platforms. Along with the all-important user experience, how these platforms collect, package, and activate their data will be the key differentiator in their success as advertising channels.
How has this ongoing proliferation of FAST channels paid off for those who are “selling tools” in the gold rush? Very well, if Roku’s New Year stock rally is anything to go by, with its strong Q3 revenues driven almost entirely by advertising — though the company has yet to inch its way to profitability.
“Over the past year plus, we’ve seen a heavy focus on efforts aimed at cleaning up the supply chain. In 2024, we’re bound to see more blurring of the lines between SSP and DSPs, attempts to disintermediate supply paths, and tighter publisher-advertiser relationships.
There will be increased reliance on SSPs to solve for audience discovery and targeting in the post-cookie era, and agencies to embrace curation as a tool to accomplish supply-path optimization (SPO) and addressability upstream.
Overall, we’ll see reduced reliance on middlemen “taxes” that don’t translate to measurable value-add and impact to KPIs.”
Slam dunk.
If we put AI on well-deserved mute for a moment, the adtech buzzwords that made the most noise in 2024 were “curation” and “SPO”. SSPs expanded their direct access to demand, DSPs did the same for supply, and both promised an optimised path to curated audiences.
2024’s conference circuit was packed with presentations on lucrative publisher-advertiser collaborations and panels on how each end of the supply chain — and the data they hold — can be brought even closer together.
As we noted, industry frustrations with the programmatic firehose have been bubbling for some time. In 2024 we started seeing smoke and — if you’ll excuse a prediction of my own — 2025 will be the eruption.
Overall, a strong showing from the Lotame team in a year packed with twists and turns. I know they’ve all taken turns playing prophet for 2025 too (Lotame’s CRO Chris Hogg was brave enough to share his on LinkedIn here) and I’m looking forward to looking back again this time next year.
As I reflected on 2024, I was reminded of how much ground we’ve covered this past year. From cookieless strategies to programmatic transparency, our most-read posts from 2024 tackle the key challenges and opportunities shaping the industry. Here’s a quick look:
These posts reflect the industry’s biggest themes and challenges—and Lotame’s commitment to helping you navigate them. Here’s to more insights and success in the year ahead.
– Andy Monfried, Founder & CEO, Lotame