The top 10 topics EMARKETER clients cared about in 2024: From A(I) to (Gen) Z

Article by Jeremy Goldman | Dec 27, 2024

The trends: Each year, clients rely on our insights to navigate their industries, and 2024 delivered plenty of challenges—TikTok’s potential ban, a global data privacy crackdown, and rising competition for Google stood out.

Here are the top 10 topics our customers searched for in the past year:

#10: AI

What fueled interest: Opportunity—and anxiety. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman professed that AI would take over 95% of all marketing tasks. Determined not to fall behind, 9 in 10 agencies were using genAI for their work, while marketing budgets suffered due to the AI craze.

Brands embraced AI also; Coca-Cola used genAI video for a holiday campaign after OpenAI’s announcement of Sora piqued interest in the use case.
By February, Google was rolling out genAI to all advertisers, despite questions about readiness.
By May, the search giant launched AI overviews broadly, dramatically transforming the search landscape. AI Overview ads began showing up in October.

#9: Social commerce

What fueled interest: TikTok Shop’s major push into US social commerce—which saw it attract $100 million in Black Friday sales—drew attention to the historically slow-growing sector. But it’s still a nascent one: Consumers report lower trust in social commerce, with many staying on the sidelines.

A rocky TikTok Shop launch might have slowed the core platform’s user growth, but by July, TikTok Shop was tied with Instagram as Gen Z’s top social commerce destination.

#8: Social media

What fueled interest: As one of the top ad spending categories, social media is central to marketing strategies. But at the same time, it’s a sector full of change and challenges that requires consistent monitoring to maximize performance.

2024 was the year Instagram expanded its creator marketplace and tested unskippable ads.
Social was a major player in the US election, putting brand safety concerns front and center.
Its impact on minors made headlines, from New York’s SAFE act to Australia’s crackdown to the US’s Kids Online Safety Act.
We noted Reddit’s engagement gains and its revenue growth in its first earnings report as a public company after its March IPO.
LinkedIn began the year with a notable increase in ad prices. It introduced Thought Leader ads, expanded further into solutions for CTV, and touted AI-powered optimization.

#7: Digital ad spending

What fueled interest: Digital ad spending surged in a number of categories. Our forecast was up, and Magna’s was even more bullish—including consumer goods, driven by a D2C shift.

With all of that spending, waste was a major topic, and avoiding overspending on channels like CTV and MFA sites was consistently in focus.
To facilitate more dollars moving to digital channels, players like Google began launching features like AI chatbots to create ads more effortlessly.
We covered how President Joe Biden’s surprise departure from the race upended spending; just prior to the election, we explored how the outcome would affect digital advertising’s future.

#6: Amazon

What fueled interest: Prime Video’s introduction of ads in Q1 was a market disruptor and major shift that forced Netflix to lower CPMs. The company’s May Upfronts represented a turning point in streaming ads' maturation process.

Its streaming success encouraged the tech giant to raise ad loads in 2025.
Advertising on Amazon became more expensive, though RoAS remained strong.
It also rolled out multiple shoppable video ad formats.
It became clear Thursday Night Football would be a big part of the company’s streaming pivot, as it courted 50 new advertisers in its bid to pass $1.8 billion in streaming commitments.
It wasn’t all roses for the giant, which had layoffs early in the year.
It launched Ad Relevance, its post-cookie solution.

#5 Gen Z

What fueled interest: The demographic’s reliance on social searches represents a major shift in how marketers have traditionally reached consumers. The cohort is the most digitally active among those we cover, making it crucial that marketers understand where and how to reach them.

The demographic is increasingly spending on wellness products, drinks less alcohol, and wants to invest in longevity.
We learned Gen Z slang—and that they’re trying to spend less on Amazon.

#4: YouTube

What fueled interest: In February, we reported that YouTube was the top-watched streamer for 12 consecutive months; by midyear, YouTube racked up the best-ever US TV viewership month for a streaming platform.

CEO Neal Mohan attributed much of the growth to sports content and CTV viewing.
In February, the platform improved its creator and affiliate tools; in April, it launched Affiliate Hub to provide creators with additional monetization resources.
Instacart partnered with YouTube on shopping ads.

#3: TikTok

What fueled interest: In January, we noted that TikTok was gaining ground on Google as a search engine. In June, it unveiled image search; by fall, it had launched keyword-based search ads.

Of course, the potential of a US TikTok ban made major waves. Uncertainty slowed the platform’s ad revenue growth, with our analysis showing Meta would gain the most from a ban.
TikTok maintains competitive advantages in some key areas: higher affiliate engagement rates compared to Instagram and successful efforts to increase watch time through longer-form creator content.

#2: Retail media

What fueled interest: This was the year we forecast retail media spending would surpass one-fifth of global digital ad spending and account for most search ad spending growth in coming years.

We noted the surge in offsite retail media spending as major players looked to expand their empires; in April, Walmart Connect announced several updates to offer offsite media to non-endemic brands.
Speaking of non-endemic advertisers, that’s another part of the retail media expansion story. Players like Home Depot, Expedia, and Albertsons all made announcements in the space.
In February, Q4 2023 Amazon earnings impressed and put retail media in the spotlight.
Retail media placements have high engagement rates, despite lower viewability.

#1: Connected TV

What fueled interest: This year, CTV ad attention began catching up to linear, DoubleVerify reported. The ability to precisely target consumers and the debut of several ad formats makes it a highly desirable channel for marketers.

Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio for $2.3 billion made waves.
In March, Disney announced that Disney+ and Hulu inventory would be made available programmatically via The Trade Desk (TTD).
In September, news broke that TTD was working on a CTV operating system. The OS, Ventura, was officially announced in November.