Digital campaigning trends in 2025 to look out for
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17/01/2025

Digital campaigning trends in 2025 to look out for

Stonehaven

This note has been produced by Stonehaven’s team of digital campaigning specialists to provide advice on how digital channels and use is set to evolve in 2025. For any queries or to find out more about how to leverage digital campaigning for your business or campaign, please get in touch.

1. Time to drop advertising on X as it polarises to the right.

BlueSky rising as equivalent on the left. X’s role in broad public voter campaigning for corporates is diminishing at an increasing rate as the platform moves further to the right of the political spectrum in synchronisation with Elon Musk’s own views on the world. Questionable advertising results, the widespread presence of fake accounts, and an ever more polarising algorithm mean it has become a less reliable channel to use paid promotion on.

However, it remains a powerful channel for breaking news and trending stories so businesses shouldn’t necessarily move away from the channel completely – but instead minimise their activity to what works for them on the channel and requires minimal resource.

While many media, political, and liberal voices have looked to virtue signal with their departures from X onto BlueSky – we’d caution that the channel is forming an echo chamber of its own. The user base as it stands is predominantly policy wonks, journalists, and left-leaning individuals. We expect the channel to grow in 2025 but not to the level that we’d recommend significant investment in specific content for the channel. Businesses should look to safeguard an account on the platform (if they haven’t already) and use a content strategy similar to what we have outlined for X.

2. Substack continues to emerge as one of the most influential platforms, as publishers and readers turn increasingly to third-party sites.

Amongst influential UK policy-making circles, Substack has quietly and quickly amassed a very influential role. Policy makers, thinkers and lobbyists alike are using the platform effectively to build engaged audiences that they are able to reach more effectively on the channel thanks to its traditional email sign-up and send delivery mechanism that isn’t at the whim of a commercial algorithm.

We’re also seeing the rise of journalists look to “go-it-alone” by forging paid subscription blogs on Substack. The varied issues on social media platforms today (e.g. the over-saturation of content, bots and trolls, polarisation of audiences), plus the idea of paid online subscriptions now being well established, mean that conditions may finally be right for “blogging” to become a mainstream media of its own.

It’s worth noting the established high-profile national media entities (e.g. The Times, The FT) remain important and many users are looking back to these “traditional” sources given there is less trust and more confusion around the truth on many of the platforms.

Substack and other third-party websites also have the added benefit of offering search engine optimisation (SEO) opportunities by enabling keyword-optimised content that improves search visibility and attracts a wider audience. Partnering with influential publishers can amplify reach, while backlinks support search rankings. Integrating Substack enhances domain authority and digital presence.

3. Display and podcast advertising is becoming a better targeting option as social channels polarise and post-2024’s U-turn on cookie bans. Digital OOH and OOH that integrates with online channels back in the spotlight.

In mid-2024 Google announced a U-turn on its plan to remove the use of cookies (temporary files stored on users computers as they browse which help with tracking) on its Chrome browser which captures over 60% of users across both mobile and desktop world-wide. For clients, this means that utilising the Google Display Network programmatic advertising will remain an effective tool for campaigning, providing a more reliable targeting option in the face of highly variable social media channel usage within demographics.

Clients that can combine their own rich data sources, such as Stonehaven’s powerful in-depth Compass data, to target specific segments and websites will reap the biggest rewards from this approach. For more niche audiences like politicians and journalists, paid partnerships for display advertising on key political and national media titles (for example, via MessageSpace’s ability to deliver onto sites like Labour List and Con Home) should also be another tactic used.

It is our view that Podcast advertising will be a major growth area in brand marketing mixes in 2025 with platforms like Acast now offering more advanced self-service options and a bigger variety of ad formats. In a world where many of our digital channels are content saturated experiences – listening to a podcast is perhaps the most focused information delivery channel out there.

While all of these are great digital only options for campaigning, the power of digital display ‘out-of-home’ is often
overlooked due to time and budget constraints. However, those that can make use of these channels and find ways to integrate calls to action with their online channels can unlock big opportunities to reach and engage wider audiences.

4. Short-form video formats and channels are leading the way on social media evolution, alongside new post formats – but activity execution is crucial

While video has long been preached as the panacea of content for engagement on channels, brands cannot expect to find success using it without meaningfully considering what it is they expect to get in return. The rise of user-generated, algorithm video feeds like TikTok’s are what businesses and campaigners should most look to take advantage of further in 2025. This includes ensuring the most effective formats are used for the videos - things like engaging opening frames, thumbnails, clear calls to action, subtitles etc.

Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts in particular loom as the most effective channels to use in campaigns (depending on the topic and campaign of course). YouTube Shorts is particularly interesting as it has been a quiet but powerful addition to their mobile experience. Despite its restrictive 60 second time limit, this hyper tailored feed is a great way to reach new audiences quickly with short form content. One USP that puts it above other vertical ‘For You’ feeds is its ability to link Shorts back to more standard long form videos, where creators typically generate more ad revenue. If a brand is already on YouTube and/or producing video, developing a Shorts strategy to amplify their reach here should be top of
mind.

LinkedIn’s corporate influence continues to grow. However, we’d caution that it is also succumbing to many of the issues of non-business focussed platforms. Personal overshares, a raft of generic AI-written content posts, and unqualified or illegitimate “expert” voices are on the rise. To cut through this and make the most impact, businesses should look to a) utilise and build-up the accounts and posting of C-suite and other influential spokespeople in their organisation, b) take advantage of carousel and other new formats, and c) ensure at least 60% of the posts aren’t redirecting users off the platform (as this is dealt with quite harshly by the algorithm) to reach more followers. A “personal touch” to posts is a good thing – but be wary of overdoing it.

Like with YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn’s new video feed is designed to create significant top of funnel reach for brands and users. While it’s traditional feed has some algorithmic influence, it is still primarily network oriented. This new video feed is a hard steer towards TikTok’s entertainment-first approach to content delivery. Broad appeal videos about general business insights will be competing with an oversaturated content mix, so finding the story that your concentrated group of peers can kickstart the engagement off with is preferable.

Meanwhile Facebook remains an old stalwart as a digital campaign tool and still has by far the best targeting and reporting options available. Its audience base is skewed to older demographics but it still has a strong user base amongst those 25 and above. We’d recommend minimal effort is placed into organic content strategies on Facebook and instead campaigners focus on paid promotion primarily. That being said, Threads and how Facebook begins to promote political content once more are things to keep an eye on this year.

5. Database sign-ups remain the most crucial aspect of digital campaigning, with websites, email and messaging apps vital

At the core of effective digital campaigning remains the need to get people's emails and data captured onto a database so you can continue to retarget them . An engaging website, or newsletter platform, with clear pathways and calls to action is needed for this.

Email remains perhaps the most effective organic channel to deliver to an audience available provided best practice is followed. It negates the need to game posts to outdo algorithms. However, there are some clear watchouts here around ensuring the right things are in place to ensure your email doesn’t get marked as spam (e.g. DKIM, DMARC and SPF records; image sizes etc).

Our view is the best tool on the market for campaign websites is NationBuilder which combines a CRM database, website and email client sending tool all in one, brilliantly integrated product. We’re an official NationBuilder partner so we’re well versed in making the most of the platform which is used by a large majority of political campaigns across the world.

Another channel for consideration is WhatsApp, which is now the most popular/active social network in the UK. A raft of changes to the app means there are new “broadcast” features available which are helpful for leveraging the movement of many users to post, share, and interact privately on channels – rather than on public feeds.

 

A note on AI:

AI generated content is becoming increasingly identifiable across the platforms and being shied away from by many users who are being swamped with generic sounding posts and opinions. Our view is that digital campaigners should use AI in the planning and ideas phase of activity and only on executions where AI is essential or part of a deliberate and obvious use of AI. The opportunities are there to generate and enhance great ideas with AI but like all digital campaigning, having clear objectives and executing plans that acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of platforms and users is key.

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