With AI continuing to evolve rapidly, we expect 2025 to bring reimagined strategies around technology, workforce management, and product innovation that challenge industry standards and redefine business operations. 

But how exactly will we see industries change? What innovations will be unveiled and what new opportunities or challenges will marketers face? 

We asked our executive leaders what they foresee for the year ahead and beyond. Together, these insights show us what the potential future holds and explains how we can adapt, harness new tools, and balance technology with human creativity to thrive alongside our new reality. Keep reading to learn more about their predictions and advice to get a leg up for the new year.

Karthik Rau, CEO

Digital experiences that help shoppers visualize their purchases will dominate

In 2025, brands will deploy more engaging digital experiences to revolutionize the way they connect with customers. Online retailers will rely on AI-driven personalization capabilities, predictive analytics, and immersive technology, like purchase visualization, to deliver more tailored customer experiences. For example, we’ve already seen how Ruggable utilized an AI agent to help make extremely tailored rug recommendations based on just a photo upload. Others who tap into AI personalization at this level will have a leg up on the competition and capture consumer loyalty not just for a season but for the long haul. 

GenAI emerges as the new "Shadow IT" and businesses will need to adapt in 2025

Just like employees were way ahead of businesses with their adoption of consumer cloud apps, they are again significantly ahead of enterprise-level adoption with GenAI usage. Those accustomed to using GenAI in their everyday lives have brought it into the workplace, often outside of the company’s oversight and supervision, in order to accelerate their own productivity. This will create new challenges for executive leaders in the coming year who have not invested time into understanding this technology.  Many will struggle to manage the “shadow use” of GenAI in their organizations, including raised concerns around security and responsible usage. As a result, we’ll see new efforts across the industry to refine AI knowledge and skills to not only stay on the cutting edge of business but also to maintain organizational stability.

Elizabeth Maxson, Chief Marketing Officer

Whether you are B2B or B2C, customers expect a B2H (business-to-human) experience

No matter what line of business you’re in, whether B2B or consumer, human connection can’t be overlooked. In 2025, marketers will need to rethink how they connect with their key audiences now that AI and personalization tools have become the norm. As marketing teams pivot from a test-and-learn mentality to deploying powerful AI-driven experiences at scale, they will need to place even greater emphasis on maintaining meaningful connections with consumers to cut through the noise

Marketing leaders will play a greater role in overall business strategy as they double down on their technical capabilities

CMOs who invest in truly understanding and optimizing their tech stacks will find themselves ahead of the competition. We’ll begin to see marketers increase their investment in tools that enable them to take complete control of their workflows. This will allow them to fully scale their campaigns and own testing with less reliance on developers and engineers and provide the insight they need to convert clicks to sales and demonstrate ROI. We’ll see significant strides in what marketing teams can do for companies in 2025, and as a result, marketing leaders will have a bigger opportunity to drive meaningful business outcomes.

Content will become hyper-personalized at a greater scale

While brands know that personalization is critical, hyper-personalization at scale is poised to take over in 2025. Brands will look to new strategies and evolving technology to understand how to hone in on the right time and person through as many relevant channels as possible to establish credibility and build brand loyalty. Marketers will expand their investment in tools to help them achieve these essential customer connections and really understand consumer reactions through tactics like A/B testing. As a result, we’ll begin to see more impressive, relevant, and impactful messaging across audiences from brand marketers.

Kalvin Brite, VP of Product Management

Brands will prioritize delivering trustworthy interactions, including more warning labels for AI-generated content

Consumers constantly engage with brands in their everyday lives, and it is our responsibility as solution providers to help them facilitate trustworthy interactions. 2025 will be critical for building this trust as AI becomes more deeply integrated into our consumed content. I believe that we’ll see a deeper understanding of this from brands as they look to establish and maintain consumer loyalty and further legitimize the use of AI. The new year will bring an increased investment from marketers as they put a greater emphasis on the ethical deployment of AI content. This will include more safeguards such as workflows with human review steps, traceable AI actions, and AI warning labels to avoid mass misinformation and misleading deepfakes. 

As we move into an AI-focused future, strategies to balance human creativity and authenticity will be top of mind

Although AI has so many benefits for marketers, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the human element. At this point, businesses understand that AI is here to stay, so we’ll begin to see an increase in company guidance and best practices to ensure originality and creativity remain at the core of marketing and brand representation. As we move into this new reality, we also need to be hyper-aware of the risks, including the potential for out-of-control bot-to-bot conversations that may begin to overlook the intended brand tone. Brands will need to use 2025 to establish the gold standard and prepare accordingly for a future where we potentially aren’t interacting as much as humans. While embracing the technology and its capabilities will still be a key focus, we’ll begin to see more conversations and shift in overall business strategy to focus on how we can ensure that real people remain involved at every step to keep authenticity and human creativity a priority.

Ray Martinelli, Chief People Officer

Companies will reevaluate strategies to boost employee morale and retention

The tech industry faced massive HR challenges this year, from layoffs to hybrid work dynamics, and even a generational talent transfer as Baby Boomers head for retirement (estimated over 4.1 million in 2025). As a result, employee morale has been greatly impacted, and now, companies must double down to invest in the well-being of their people. As HR leaders, we need to recognize it, embrace it, and continue to evolve. In order to ensure teams feel valued and connected, I believe 2025 will bring a dynamic shift in business perspective as organizations put a greater emphasis on current employee morale and retention strategies, including offering more flexible working conditions, increased investment in technology and education programs, and more focus on creating resources and opportunities for career development.

The HR leader's role will see unprecedented changes as companies adapt to new technology and evolving ways of working

In 2025, as organizations reevaluate best practices and understand the value of people-centric business strategies, they’ll find that HR leaders are their biggest asset. People leaders across the board have a unique opportunity to act as key drivers in company operations to reshape workforce dynamics and nurture a positive company culture. Fostering continuous alignment between HR initiatives and business goals will be essential, and companies that can achieve this will boost organizational efficiency and improve employee engagement to impact the company’s bottom line.

Sheila Parmar, Global Strategy and Operations 

CMOs will play a key role in the use of AI: balancing automation, creativity, and ethics

Looking ahead, CMOs must continue to balance AI-driven automation with the human touch to maintain creativity and authenticity. Even though AI will start to shift from generic language models and become a true ally to marketers, CMOs will be critical in overseeing the continued development of on-brand content that resonates with their audience. They will also play a key role in managing the risks and ethical implications of AI use, as well as ensuring that brands remain aligned with their core values.

Sara Sullivan, Global Vice President, Solution Engineering

Software companies will need to support “BYOLLM” as companies begin to rationalize their AI systems 

As AI integration becomes ubiquitous, most software platforms have introduced tailored AI solutions powered by their own LLMs. This trend is leading organizations to face a potential issue: managing and tuning multiple LLMs across their tech stacks. For example, a marketing team using 20 different software solutions may find that each tool comes with its own embedded LLM. This poses a challenge in that companies risk inconsistent outputs due to independently functioning LLMs that lack cohesive training and alignment.

Fast forward a year and the optimal approach will become clear. Organizations will need to implement a strategy centered on using a single, consistent LLM across all their business applications to ensure unified messaging, brand voice, and efficient resource use. 

For software platforms, this means embracing the Bring Your Own LLM (BYOLLM) model. Instead of proprietary, black-boxed AI solutions, platforms must support flexibility, allowing companies to apply their own LLMs across applications. A BYOLLM model will enable organizations to maintain consistency and control over their AI systems, fostering a unified, strategic approach to AI deployment.”

Embracing the Year Ahead 

As our experts believe, the new year is poised to bring many unprecedented opportunities and challenges. As AI and other advanced technologies become more deeply integrated into marketers' everyday workflows, our ability to adapt will be crucial. True success will be found not just in the adoption of new tools but also in how we leverage them effectively and align technology with our core brand mission and values. 

At Contentful, we’re excited and hopeful for the year ahead. We’re entering an opportune era to empower our teams to create customer experiences that build trust and loyalty. Regardless of the changes or industry evolutions, we remain committed to our bottom line – supporting the evolving needs of our customers to deliver exceptional digital experiences. 

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