A major shift is under way in marketing and it is altering not only content creation, but also many marketing processes. Artificial intelligence is a key force in this changing landscape. Our expert academics from the Marketing and Consumption research group provide their insights on key trends to watch out for in 2025.
What to look out for in 2025
- Podcasting as a digital marketing powerhouse – Dr Rushana Khusainova
- From real to rendered: The rise of AI influencers – Emily Godwin
- The future of appearance – virtually modified humans and (mental) health implications – Dr Ana Javornik
- Generative AI in marketing: From new products to new services – Dr Eleonora Pantano
Podcasting as a digital marketing powerhouse
Dr Rushana Khusainova, Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Podcasting is set to continue its steady growth, tapping into millions of audio content consumers worldwide. In the UK alone, the number of podcast listeners is predicted to reach 27 million people in 2025, up from 25.2 million in 2024, according to Statista. Brands are eager to leverage this medium to boost brand awareness, strengthen loyalty, build communities, and stand out in a competitive market.
With the rise of video podcasts and advancements in technology, such as free hosting platforms and AI-powered content generation, podcasting is set to become even more influential in 2025. Here are the key digital marketing trends in the podcasting space, solidifying its status as a marketing powerhouse:
Video and live podcasting
An increasing number of podcasters are broadcasting their shows live, and platforms like YouTube and Spotify are actively promoting video podcasting.
While video podcasting is not entirely new (Spotify integrated video capabilities back in 2020), its significance is growing. As demand for visual engagement and high-quality content rises, video podcasting is expected to experience significant growth in 2025. For brands, it offers a unique opportunity to expand their reach, foster community building, and become an integral part of digital marketing strategies.
There’s also potential for cross-channel development, with podcasters increasingly offering live, in-person on-stage shows, attracting even wider audiences.
AI-generated podcasts
Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI are booming trends across industries, and podcasting is no exception. As the technology becomes more sophisticated and user-friendly, AI-generated podcasts are stepping into the spotlight in 2025. Although still in their infancy, AI-generated podcasts can sound great, offer a high-quality conversational content that might easily be mistaken for a real human-led conversation.
For instance, tools like Resemble AI and Google NotebookLM can create lively, realistic discussions from an article or text input with a set of instructions. Check out this episode of my podcast, Marketing Ecosystem, as an example. The main part of this episode was created by Google NotebookLM, and was based on this article that we published with colleagues in Times Higher Education. This development has the potential to take the podcasting industry to a whole new level.
While AI-generated podcasting is unlikely to replace human-led shows entirely, as it still requires human input (e.g., written scripts), its potential is exciting. It holds meaningful implications for marketing, research, and education and training industries.
Conclusion
Podcasting as a digital marketing powerhouse in 2025 is growing, evolving, and becoming more accessible. Its synergy with advancements in AI and technology overall makes it a dynamic space for innovation.
For marketers, there’s also a meaningful opportunity to connect with Gen Z, both as listeners and as podcast creators. According to Spotify research, business and technology are the fastest-growing podcast categories among Gen Z entrepreneurs, who use podcasts as a platform to learn about building and managing businesses.
Will generative AI podcasts replace human-generated audio content in the future? Probably not. But for 2025, AI-powered digital marketing is undoubtedly on the rise, reshaping the possibilities within podcasting and beyond.
From real to rendered: The rise of AI influencers
Emily Godwin, Senior Research Associate
Imagine scrolling through Instagram and encountering a profile that posts regular updates, shares photos, and responds to messages – but isn’t run by a human. AI-powered social media accounts are exactly what they sound like: social media profiles operated by artificial intelligence rather than real people. These digital personalities are gaining traction as social media platforms and brands explore new ways to engage with audiences.
The commercial potential of AI-powered social media personalities was first demonstrated by independent creators. For example, Spanish agency The Clueless launched AI model Aitana Lopez in 2023, who quickly built a following of hundreds of thousands on Instagram through her lifestyle content and carefully crafted personality. With monthly earnings reaching five figures from brand partnerships, Aitana showed how AI personas could successfully engage with audiences and monetise their presence.
This early success caught the attention of major platforms, with Meta demonstrating broader possibilities with personas like “Carter”, a relationship coach who offered dating advice, and “Liv”, who presented herself as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller”. The company is now expanding its AI ambitions, with Meta’s vice president of product for generative AI, Connor Hayes, recently announcing that they envision these AIs existing on their platforms “in the same way that [human] accounts do”. Through their AI Studio, brands and creators can now create their own AI personas on Instagram and Facebook.
The trend extends beyond Meta’s platforms, with services like TikTok’s Symphony suite and Arcads.ai enabling brands to create marketing videos starring AI personas– complete with sophisticated editing, b-roll footage, and quick cuts that mirror the polished style of today’s top content creators.
Authenticity in a synthetic world
Yet in this context, questions of authenticity and transparency become increasingly critical. AI personas and influencers present significant psychological risks through their ability to generate flawless images and curate idealised lifestyles. These “perfect” digital entities, untouched by human flaws or real-world constraints, set unrealistic standards that could further damage users’ mental well-being, particularly among younger audiences.
The issue of artificial perfection becomes even more problematic when combined with questions of representation and identity. Meta’s experience with Liv – an AI persona representing a “proud Black queer momma” developed by a team that included no Black people – demonstrates how AI personas can perpetuate harmful biases and misrepresentation, creating an artificial and potentially damaging version of diverse identities that lacks genuine understanding or authenticity.
The growing spectre of digital disinformation
Moreover, as we inch closer to what some call the “dead internet theory” – where an increasing proportion of online content and interactions are AI-generated – distinguishing genuine human engagement from artificial becomes increasingly difficult. AI personas and influencers introduce unprecedented risks for misinformation, as their responses can be unpredictable while simultaneously engaging in thousands of personalised conversations. Though platforms include disclaimers about “inaccurate or inappropriate” messages, the challenge of moderating AI-generated content at this scale remains largely unresolved. Recent controversies around AI chatbots, including a lawsuit alleging harmful interactions with vulnerable users, serve as a warning of the potential risks as these technologies become more integrated into our social media landscape.
Where do we go from here?
In my view, while AI-powered social media accounts represent an innovative leap in digital marketing, we must proceed with extreme caution. Their rapid proliferation risks creating a social media landscape where perfection is automated, authenticity is programmable, and truth becomes increasingly difficult to verify. As brands rush to embrace this technology, we would do well to pause and consider whether the pursuit of engagement through artificial means might ultimately hollow out the very human connections that made social media valuable in the first place.
The future of appearance – virtually modified humans and (mental) health implications
Dr Ana Javornik, Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Our already complicated relationship with appearance is on a course to get even more entangled due to the new technological trends shaping our expectations in this domain. I would like to highlight a few key trends that we can expect to impact industry and consumer trends in beauty sector this year.
Uses of AI and immersive technologies in beauty industry
While virtual make-up or apparel try-on has existed with reasonable success in the beauty sector for year, the entry of AI is bringing along new changes (Fast Company, 2024). It is providing brands with possibilities to offer their customers the opportunities for appearance visualisation that are more sophisticated, more convincing, more easily implementable and more wide-ranging. This can be related to depicting one as a younger or older version of themselves, creating makeup imagery or videos based on text, other images or cultural references and just generally providing the customer with more advanced options to generate personal appearance-focused content. Also, more AI tools will be developed and implemented to deliver scalable hyper-personalised recommendations about one’s skin and body, general health, nutrition, fitness and similar. Recent McKinsey report (2025) states that such hyper-personalised recommendations can significantly increase conversion rates and improve customer in-store and product experience.
What does this particular use of AI mean for consumers? One aspect to consider is the following. These appearance visualisations might bring a more extensive focus on appearance, which can lead to higher beauty and appearance standards, thus creating additional pressure for consumers to ‘perform’ in this domain. The beauty industry’s main task will be to leverage the power of this technology in a way that makes customers feel good about themselves and ensure that it does not lead to perils such as appearance homogeneity, perpetuating cultural or racial biases and more unrealistic appearance standards.
Avatarised online representation
While social media have been a major player in setting standards for how consumers depict themselves online – for better or worse – , innovative trends that are affecting human online representation, are on ‘to-watch’ list. Younger people are for instance spending more time in virtual gaming and social environments, depicting themselves as avatars, which can encompass a whole range of visualisations – realistic, fantasy-like, cartoonised, excessively beautified and so on. Together with the team of international and interdisciplinary collaborators, I discuss this topic in our recently published report ‘Virtual You’ as part of our ESRC-funded project on Self-avatars and mental well-being.
Moreover, there is a growing number of platforms allowing individuals to create an avatarised version of themselves – for instance to share it on social media or create video content. One of the best known platforms in this space is London-based Synthesia, allowing individuals and companies to generate high-quality AI-led avatar-based content, which can be used in education, business, entertainment and other sectors. It will be important to observe what appearance trends will be incorporated in these different forms of avatarised content and how they will affect our perception of beauty and appearance trends online and offline.
Proliferation of the service industry providing intrusive cosmetic procedures
Recent years have seen an increase of demand for cosmetic procedures, characterised by: a growing number of cosmetic procedures (somewhat shockingly among younger population) (Forbes, 2024), more affordable services (for instance through rise of cosmetic tourism) leading to democratisation of cosmetic surgery consumption and, importantly, influence of online appearance trends on the offline demand. I expect this growing demand for elective cosmetic surgical and non-surgical procedures to continue as a result of increased premium that the society is placing on attractive appearance, disproportionately so for women and at the expense of mental well-being. This also mean we can expect to see further cases of health complications as a consequence of such procedures – placing additional pressure on the NHS – given the lack of regulation in this area. In that sense, what appears on the surface to be only a game or ‘just for fun’ experimentation with virtual looks, can translate into very real consequences through physical and mental harm as people seek to replicate related appearance trends offline. This is a complex socio-technological challenge that will require multidisciplinary collaboration and activities to allow consumers developing a healthy relationships with appearance and body. Indeed, much progress has been made through movements such as body positivity. While I do not expect a major overturn in this area in 2025, a discourse on this topic will surely continue to develop, some of it (hopefully) in a positive manner.
Generative AI in marketing: From new products to new services
Dr Eleonora Pantano, Associate Professor in Retail and Marketing Technology
The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in marketing, particularly generative AI, has surged significantly over the past year, reshaping industries and transforming the relationship between businesses and consumers.
What we know
AI is designed to mimic human intelligence, with different types specialising in areas such as logical-mathematical reasoning, social skills, verbal-linguistic abilities, processing speed, and visual-spatial reasoning (Pantano & Scarpi, 2022). Depending on its purpose, AI has been deployed as a co-worker, collaborator, or teammate, offering diverse benefits and posing unique risks for users and organisations.
Specifically, AI plays a pivotal role in product and service recommendations. From suggesting movies on streaming platforms to recommending physical products like skincare foundations tailored to individual skin characteristics, AI has achieved remarkable predictive accuracy in marketing and consumer research (Kumar et al., 2024). Beyond recommendations, AI enhances customer service through chatbots, assists in vacation planning, automates checkout processes in grocery stores, and curates subscription boxes for everything from food to fashion. However, consumer reactions to AI-generated products vary widely, ranging from fascination and curiosity to concerns about potential human replacement (Lee and Kim, 2024). Moreover, AI is now contributing to product design, such as in the case of bespoke handbags for luxury brands that reflect their core identity (Pantano et al., ahead of print).
What we (scarcely) know
Like human intelligence, AI systems are not immune to biases. These biases may stem from the quality of the datasets they are trained on or the reliability of the sources they access. This raises complex questions about accountability: Who bears responsibility for AI outcomes—the technology itself, its developers, or its users?
Additionally, AI’s ability to generate synthetic samples for consumer research remains limited. Such samples often fail to capture the intricate complexity of human behaviour and emotional responses, making them less reliable for nuanced marketing insights (Viglia et al., 2024).
What we don’t know yet
Key questions about the intersection of generative AI and consumer behaviour remain unanswered. How does AI, particularly when anthropomorphised, influence customer experience? Can consumers develop meaningful, “pseudo-social” relationships with AI in marketing and retail contexts?
Another critical gap in knowledge lies in understanding how human-like AI features might protect robots, employees, and retailers from customer aggression during service failures in physical retail settings.
As generative AI continues to evolve, addressing these unanswered questions will be essential for building trust, enhancing customer experiences, and realising AI’s full potential in marketing.
One thing is certain – for digital marketing, 2025 will be far from boring. Read further insights from our marketing and consumption group.
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