A consumer engaging with personalised AI content on her phone, illustrating how 2025 marketing trends are redefining the digital customer journey. — Audiences are changing faster than marketing can keep up. From AI decision-making to joyful storytelling, Six shifts are already reshaping how marketing works in 2025.

Marketing used to follow a predictable rhythm. Build awareness, craft the message, push it through the funnel, measure the clicks. It worked for a while.

Then the audience changed and broke the pattern.

Today’s audiences move quicker and think harder than the industry built to reach them. They scroll past hard sells and trust AI tools to decide what’s worth their attention. The result? A marketing system running at full speed (and full spend) but losing its impact.

This post explores six uncomfortable but necessary truths that reveal where marketing is heading in 2025, and how small businesses can adapt first.

For decades, marketing ran on a fairly stable set of rules: Find the need. Craft the message. Push it through the funnel. Measure the clicks. Repeat. It worked because audiences behaved predictably. They were reachable, persuadable, and for the most part, passive.

That world has collapsed.

Today’s audiences are hyper-aware, fiercely selective, and armed with tools that let them filter, fact-check, and even delegate decisions to artificial intelligence. The rise of agentic browsing, collapsing ad effectiveness, the consumer craving for joy and the creator economy’s maturity are not isolated trends. They’re all signals of the same shift.

The audience evolved but the industry has yet to catch up.

What follows are six uncomfortable truths reshaping marketing. Each challenges the old playbook built on persuasion and control — and points toward a new one built on clarity, connection, and co-creation.

1. You’re No Longer Marketing to Humans — You’re Marketing to Their AI Agents

A person researching travel ideas on a laptop in a bright café surrounded by greenery, representing everyday consumer discovery shaped by AI recommendations. — Google’s new **“agentic browsing”** mode, powered by Gemini, has already launched in the UK and parts of the US. It lets users ask questions directly in Chrome, then the AI browses sites, compares options, and summarises results. Think of it as an assistant that shops and researches on your behalf. It’s not yet active in Ireland — likely because of ongoing **regulatory uncertainty around the EU AI Act** — but it’s coming. And when it does, small businesses that haven’t prepared their sites will be the first to disappear from visibility.
The key takeaway?
AI agents will decide what consumers see *before* they do. They’ll crawl your site, interpret your copy, and judge how relevant, trustworthy, and well-structured your content is. If your website isn’t clear about who you are, what you offer, and why it matters, AI will skip you entirely.

What small businesses can do now:

Simplify web copy so your core offer is instantly understandable.
Add structured data (schema markup) to make your content legible to AI crawlers.
Be explicit about your purpose, values, and policies — AI systems now favour transparency.

Get ahead of it before it lands here. Because when it does, clarity will be necessary for survival.

And it doesn’t stop at discovery — the same technology that decides which brands appear in search is beginning to influence how customers behave once they’re already on your site.

2. Your competitors could soon appear right inside your checkout.

A professional writing notes while working on a laptop, with soft green digital lines symbolising AI technology influencing product decisions in the age of AI. — If the first shift happens at discovery, this one happens at the **point of sale.**
AI isn’t just changing how people *find* your business — it’s changing how they *buy* from you. With agentic browsing, an AI assistant could suggest cheaper or “better-rated” competitors while your customer is literally at your checkout.
As **Dan Gardner of Code and Theory** put it:
“This is the equivalent of another company putting a sales rep inside your retail store.”
That means your owned spaces — your website, your booking form, even your email funnel — are no longer closed environments. AI can (and soon will) act as a price-comparison engine in real time.

So the question becomes: why should they stay? Your best defence isn’t lowering prices; it’s building an experience that’s worth finishing.

Make your site feel personal and helpful, not transactional.
Use human touches: a thank-you message, after-purchase guidance, or loyalty rewards that reinforce trust.
Keep your story visible throughout the purchase flow so the user is reminded of why they chose you.

Irish businesses still have a window before this becomes the norm — but it’s a short one. Start strengthening the value of your customer experience now, so when the AI tools roll out here, you’re ready.

3. Your Harshest Critics and Weirdest Ideas Are Your Greatest Assets

Safe marketing is invisible marketing. Look at Blizzard Entertainment: their CMO Monica Austin built an entire creator strategy that includes working directly with the company’s most vocal critics. Why? Because they reflect what fans actually think — not what the brand wishes they’d think. That honesty keeps the brand credible.

The same applies to “unhinged” creativity. Pop-Tarts created an edible mascot, lowered it into a giant toaster, and let a football team eat it live. It was ridiculous — and brilliant. The campaign generated $12 million in earned media value.

A notebook with “Give the starter a voice” circled beside a jar of sourdough starter — showing a small business brainstorming creative marketing ideas. — How This Can Work for Small Businesses

When you run a small business, it’s natural to play it safe. You’ve built something solid, and the last thing you want is to look foolish online. But that instinct to “stay polished” is often what keeps your marketing invisible. The truth is, the ideas that feel a bit offbeat — or the feedback that stings a little — can be where the magic hides.
**Imagine this:**
A local bakery is struggling to stand out. Their products are great, but their posts look like every other “freshly baked today” feed. Then, one of the team jokes that they should let their sourdough starter have its own social media account because “it’s moodier than most customers.”

Normally, that would get a laugh and be left at that. But what if they leaned in?

They could turn that throwaway comment into a weekly reel called “The Daily Starter” — short clips mixing baking tips with tongue-in-cheek humour. Suddenly, what began as an inside joke becomes a hook. It’s shareable, distinctive, and genuinely useful.

The same logic applies beyond bakeries. Conor James Doyle has built a huge following among peers and customers alike with his videos offering an insight into the mind of a hair stylist (if you haven’t had the pleasure give him a follow). The point isn’t to be gimmicky — it’s to give your brand a heartbeat, while staying authentic to its personality.

When you give your quirks, critics, and odd ideas a voice, you build trust. People see the human side of the business… and that’s what gets remembered.

So the next time someone on your team says something daft, don’t dismiss it too fast.

There’s often a great campaign hiding inside a Mad idea — it just needs someone brave enough to test it.

3. It Needs to Be Frictionless — Yes — But Also Fun

We’ve made buying too smooth, and while this is a benefit to customers, somewhere along the way, we lost the joy of shopping.

Younger audiences (particularly Gen Alpha) expect interaction. They want that dopamine hit. Seventy-six percent say brands should gamify experiences, with e-commerce sites like Temu and Halara a big example of this in action.

Even serious organisations have learned to loosen up. The U.S. National Park Service mixes humour with education — or edutainment, as they’ve dubbed it. Their much-loved “Fat Bear Week” invites the public to vote for their favourite chubby bear as Alaska’s wildlife prepares for hibernation. It’s smart, silly, and brilliantly effective at turning science into shareable content.

Small business takeaway: Add moments of joy. Whether it’s a playful packaging note or a reward that feels like a game, small sparks of fun create big loyalty.

4. The Great Ad Spend Paradox: Why More Money Now Buys Less Growth

We’ve never spent more on advertising — and it’s never done less for us. Research from ACT and System1 shows creative effectiveness has halved in the past decade. The reason is simple: we’ve stripped the emotion out. Marketing became mechanical — efficient, optimised, and soulless. Or as David Abbott famously said, “Shit that arrives at the speed of light is still shit.” This is a problem AI can’t fix - and why creators are still so important. You can produce for next to nothing, and generate whatever you want - but the big idea? That has to come from a place of creativity. AI is many things, but a creative it is not.

Small business takeaway: Emotion isn’t surface work. It’s how people know your brand means what it says. Don’t flatten your message with generic language or formulaic visuals. Tell stories that make people feel something real. Like The National Park Service, do a Marie Kondo on your brand and find out what sparks the joy!

A young teenager and parent browsing an online shop together on a tablet, reflecting Gen Alpha’s growing influence in family purchasing decisions. — 6. Your Target’s 13-Year-Old Is the Real Buyer for the Household

Gen Alpha — those born between 2010 and 2024 — already influence €5 trillion in global household spending. They decide what their families eat, watch, and buy. They value authenticity, speed, and play.
Ignore them, and you’ll spend the next five years catching up.
**Small business takeaway:** Create experiences that include the family voice, not just the buyer’s. Make content that entertains as well as informs.

So, Where Does This Leave Us?

The old marketing machine was built to push a product or service into the customer purchase journey. The new one has to go farther and earn that attention.

Audiences (human and algorithmic) reward brands that are useful and entertaining, and authentic to who they are. They punish anything that feels manipulative or hollow.

This offers small businesses a strange sort of freedom. You can move faster, communicate more honestly, and connect more deeply than any multinational ever will. Because when the audience evolves faster than the industry, the ones closest to the audience are the ones who win.

Marketing used to be about control. Now connection wins. So how do businesses connect?

Simple: Be clear enough to be found, enjoyable enough to be remembered, and honest enough to be trusted

Thats the shift. And small businesses are well-placed to be among the first to change direction.

Ready to Cut Through the Noise?

If this post struck a chord, you’re already thinking like the brands that win.

Let’s turn that clarity into a plan — one that’s smart, lean and built for growth.

Marketing Trends 2025 (Q4 Update): Why the Audience Is Evolving Faster Than the Industry