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21 January 20257 minute read

Six advertising trends for 2025

As the new year begins, creative advertisers and marketers look for new ways to stay current and get ahead by capitalizing on trends. DLA Piper’s national Advertising team is focused on six trends that are likely to impact advertising and marketing initiatives across various sectors. We take a closer look below.

Changes in administration, changes in enforcement priorities

Over the course of the Biden Administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) pursued a rigorous consumer protection agenda. From identifying new ways to pursue monetary remedies in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC to promulgating new rules, and issuing new and updated interpretive guidance, we witnessed an activist FTC that touched nearly all aspects of consumer protection. With the presidential transition, 2025 will bring a change in leadership at the FTC and, with that change, a new set of priorities.

Protecting consumers from bad actors has strong bipartisan support, but the incoming administration may prioritize deregulation on various fronts. As a result, we could see an actual rollback of Biden-era policies, or a lack of enforcement at the federal-agency level absent clear direction from Congress or the White House.

States step in

If federal regulators become less active, states are likely to step in to enforce their own consumer protection laws. As we saw in the first Trump Administration, state legislatures with Democratic majorities took an activist role in passing new consumer protection legislation, and state attorneys general stepped up consumer protection enforcement activity. Over the coming year, we may see a similar pattern of state-led activity focused on consumer protection. Democratic attorneys general, in particular, may lead a new wave of coordinated multidistrict investigations and litigations that focus on protecting the interests of consumers across state lines. These developments may force advertisers to take a “lowest common denominator” approach of complying across the board with the most stringent state laws, instead of complying with a uniform standard established at the federal level.

Subscription programs get an overhaul

If your company offers or plans to offer a subscription program, it is recommended to start 2025 by reviewing your program for compliance with new laws and regulations that take effect this year. At the end of 2024, we saw significant developments affecting subscriptions that will impact compliance in 2025.

At the federal level, the FTC finalized the highly anticipated updates to the Negative Option Rule, expanding the scope of the rule to apply to virtually all forms of recurring subscriptions. The updates to the rule take effect on January 14, 2025, but sellers have until May 14, 2025 to comply with most aspects of the Rule.

While the rule has been dubbed the “Click to Cancel Rule,” the modifications to the rule affect all aspects of subscription programs. Significant changes imposed by the rule include a broad prohibition against misrepresentations, new requirements for establishing a consumer’s consent to the automatic renewal provision, formalizing the content and placement of disclosures, requiring the availability of a simple and easy-to-use cancellation mechanism, and establishing new record keeping requirements, among others.

The new rule has already seen challenges in various federal circuit courts of appeal, which are ongoing, and some have predicted that the incoming FTC could drastically change course on this front in particular.

But, even if the FTC does change course, changes to state law will go into effect. In particular, California amended its automatic renewal law for the second time in two years through the passage of Assembly Bill No. 2863. The amendments take effect on July 1, 2025. The amended California law broadly prohibits misrepresentations, establishes new consent and record keeping requirements, establishes a timeline for sending price change notifications, and requires that sellers send all subscribers an annual reminder of their subscription terms, among others.

Additionally, the amended California law provides clarity by expressly permitting sellers to present consumers with “save” offers at the time of cancellation, provided that certain conditions are met. In 2025, more states will likely follow California’s lead by introducing amendments to their existing laws or passing new automatic renewal laws.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) put to the test

In 2024, creative marketers were eager to explore GenAI as a marketing tactic. With the early introduction of GenAI and the legal risk and uncertainties associated with it, many corporate legal departments adopted restrictive policies governing the use of GenAI. Although those risks and uncertainties largely remain, prohibiting the use of GenAI no longer appears to be a viable option.

In 2025, marketers and creative teams will likely identify new ways to incorporate GenAI into their routine creative ideation and content development processes – from concepting, to analyzing metrics, to consumer-facing creative. The push to integrate and scale GenAI in new ways may require corporate legal teams to revisit their existing GenAI policies to reconsider the current GenAI landscape and better understand the boundaries of legal risk to enable the business to achieve efficiencies through GenAI.

Small screens, outsized importance

Short-form video content on social media will continue to experience explosive growth as a tool to reach consumers in 2025. While younger generations outpace their elders in terms of daily consumption of social video, this format is increasingly popular across generational lines because it is free, easy to consume through a mobile device, virtually endless through infinite scrolling, and highly targeted to individual user tastes.

Advertisers recognize the increasing importance of this medium to reach consumers and will likely continue to invest in native advertising content, branded entertainment, and influencer marketing. This format raises copyright concerns with respect to third-party materials incorporated in the content, right-of-publicity issues with respect to individuals featured in the content, substantiation concerns for claims that are made, and questions about when and how to disclose the commercial nature of this content to consumers in a way that is legally effective without interfering with the creative. By this point, sophisticated advertisers recognize these concerns and work with their legal teams to put processes in place to mitigate them.

Foundational shifts in college sports: Implications for the advertising industry

Court cases and state laws continue to chip away at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)’s historical prohibition against paying college athletes. Without weighing in on the debate over the pros and cons, what is clear is that college athletes in general can now earn compensation for licensing their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights to third parties.

As the ecosystem for college NIL endorsement deals becomes more sophisticated, and the settlement of various antitrust lawsuits are approved, state laws will likely shift even further toward allowing college athletes to get paid to play for particular schools. This creates new opportunities for marketers.

First, this means that endorsement deals with college athletes will likely play a more constant role in their toolkit. Second, teams in so-called “revenue-generating” sports will likely increasingly play in non-NCAA events in exchange for payouts, and the operators monetizing those events will therefore likely need sponsorship and advertising revenue to offset their costs as well as media distribution, creating additional monetization opportunities. Third, teams in sports that are not considered revenue-generating may find themselves looking for financial support outside of their college athletic departments, and the parties that step up to provide that support (if any), may similarly need sponsorship and advertising revenue to offset their costs. Fourth, some college athletes may ultimately be recognized as employees who are entitled to unionize; if that happens at scale, it could lead to group licensing regimes that consequently lead to efficiencies for things like video games that are common in pro sports but have not existed at the college level.

In theory, Congress could ultimately enact federal legislation that attempts to bring uniformity across states, schools, and sports – but it is unclear whether there is an appetite among lawmakers to pursue such legislation in 2025.

For more information

DLA Piper’s national Advertising team is monitoring these developments and other new developments that are likely to affect the advertising industry in 2025. If you have questions, please reach out to Ben Mulcahy, James Stewart, or your usual DLA Piper contact for assistance.

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