By Tim Peterson  •  December 23, 2025  •

Among those loose ends are Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming businesses, WPP’s turnaround plan, TikTok’s U.S. spinoff, ChatGPT’s expected ad product and the resulting remedies of Google’s ad tech antitrust trial.

“This year will definitely be one of those years that, when we look back on it, will feel more consequential than it does being in the midst of it. There have been so many shifts that have happened this year, from the two antitrust cases that Google was swept up in in the U.S. to OpenAI’s evolving business and some of the changes from that that didn’t come to bear,” said Joseph.

Those changes will ripple across the media and marketing industries as they head into 2026, so it’s a good time to reflect on what were the major developments in 2025.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Streaming takes TV’s baton

Peterson: We have Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery, obviously huge. Paramount finally got sold. We also had the launches, finally, of a standalone ESPN streaming service, and Fox rolled out its standalone streaming service. And then Amazon got the NBA, and NBCUniversal got the NBA to have games on Peacock. When I think about these developments in the future of TV this year, it feels like this was the handoff year for streaming to take the baton from traditional TV.

Agencies prepare for the AI era

Jerde: There’s no looser end in terms of how agencies are going to charge for AI use going into next year. The large agency holdco model is broken in a lot of ways. But it’s really being pressure-tested in terms of how it’s incorporating AI and then how it’s turning around and both charging and licensing out that tech for future use. It’s all sort of complicated and messy.

Short-form video’s AI slop era

McCoy: The question I have is how much of this is to woo advertisers. There’s been conversations about using AI to curb how much creative work is done with hands on keyboards. And then I think Disney and the OpenAI deal really speaks to this of putting that work in the hands of AI. But on the other hand, how much of it is trying to get users comfortable with the concept of having AI in your feeds because AI slop is also something that’s entered our zeitgeist here too.

The death of the death of the third-party cookie

Joseph: Almost from the outset it felt like it wasn’t going to happen. There was so much haziness to it, such a lack of detail in terms of how this big, complicated thing was actually going to pan out. And the only belief that we had was because Google had been so public about this plan that it couldn’t possibly row back. And ultimately it did. It gaslit the industry, forced companies to spend millions into development tech and pivoting product roadmaps and ultimately to say, “Actually, we’re not doing it.”