Early 2025, and the timeline is dominated by one subject: AI video. Sora has just opened up to the general public, Runway and Kling show something more impressive every other week, and half the marketing world is shouting that the camera will soon be obsolete. Nice story. It just isn't quite true.
The trends that make the difference for brands this year are partly new and partly just the things that already worked last year, now a bit sharper. A new tool changes nothing if your strategy isn't sound. Here is what we are paying attention to in early 2025, and why.
Short video is still the engine
Not exciting, but true. Short vertical video remains the format that delivers the most. Wyzowl reports that nearly nine out of ten companies use video, and in HubSpot's numbers marketers name short-form the format with the highest ROI. That isn't shifting this year.
What does change is the bar. Everyone makes Reels and TikToks now, so mediocrity disappears into the noise. The first two seconds decide whether someone keeps watching. Everything after that is negotiation. A strong hook, your most important message up front, and a reason to scroll on to your next video. That is less a creative whim than a craft you can train. And in a paid context that same hook isn't a detail but your click-through rate, because a video that doesn't stop the scroll burns budget without you noticing.
In practice it also means production is allowed to be simpler. A phone, daylight and a good idea beat an expensive setup with a weak concept. For a lot of clients that is liberating news, because it removes the barrier to just getting started.
Video as a performance channel
In performance marketing the creative has become the biggest lever you have. Targeting on Meta is largely outsourced to the algorithm, so the difference between a campaign that pays off and one that burns money sits in the video itself. A scroll-stopping hook is therefore not a creative luxury but your click-through rate, and that rate in turn determines your cost per click, your CPA and ultimately your ROAS.
That is why this year we test harder on creatives than on settings. Five hooks on the same offer, run them, see what moves the audience, pull out the losing material. That isn't guesswork, it's creative testing as a fixed part of the funnel. Video at the top to buy attention, retargeting with shorter and more concrete clips underneath to nudge the doubters over the line toward a conversion or a lead.
The brands leading in 2025 don't treat video and paid media as two separate departments. The editorial side knows what works in ads, and the media buying side knows which story the next creative has to tell. That loop between content and conversion is where the growth sits.
AI video: from toy to tool
At the end of 2024 most AI clips were still shaky. Melting fingers, physics that made no sense, a face that changed from shot to shot. Early 2025 it isn't finished, but it has become usable. Runway, Kling, Veo and Pika do things that looked like science fiction a year ago.
The mistake I see a lot of people make is thinking this replaces the camera. It doesn't, not by a long way. Where it is strong: quickly visualising concepts, filling moodboards, generating b-roll for parts that otherwise wouldn't fit the budget, and testing variants before you book a day on set. We use it as an extension of the thinking, not a replacement for the filming.
Worth staying level-headed about: an AI clip is raw material, not a finished product. You edit it, colour it, design the sound and review it before it goes out the door. Especially with clients in healthcare, finance or anything with a claim in it, you want a human doing the final check. The tools speed up the start of the process. The judgment stays yours.
The counter-movement: real beats perfect
This is the most interesting tension of the year. The more polished AI content floating around, the more valuable something becomes that was clearly made by a human. Raw, local, a little messy. An employee who explains without a script why they're proud of something. A client who shares their own experience.
That authenticity is deliberately hard to fake, and that's exactly the point. An overhead shot of someone making a sandwich in a real kitchen beats a glossy studio production when it comes to trust. Employee-generated content and user-generated content are growing fast this year, not because they're cheap, but because they're believable.
For brands this means a choice. You can join the race toward ever slicker images, or you can bet on the human side that machines can't fake. We're betting on the second, alongside the polished work where it fits.
One video, twenty assets
A trend with little glamour but one that doubles your return: stop thinking in individual videos and start thinking in source material. One good conversation or one production yields dozens of pieces. A long video becomes a series of short clips, those clips become quotes, audiograms, stills and posts.
The brands that stand out this year don't necessarily produce more, they get more out of what they already have. It's also where the algorithms push you, because every platform wants video and every platform asks for a slightly different format. Plan that reusability up front and your production calendar suddenly gets a lot calmer.
Shoppable and interactive, mainly B2C
For brands that sell directly, the distance between watching and buying is shrinking. Clickable elements in video, product tags that take you straight to checkout, livestreams where you order while watching. It isn't relevant for everyone yet, but for webshops and consumer brands it's worth experimenting with this year. It removes a whole step from the funnel, and every step you remove between attention and conversion saves you money.
Looking ahead: where we're placing our bets
Looking ahead from here, I see three things coming together. AI tools are getting better and cheaper fast, so the amount of video on the internet is exploding. That sounds like opportunity, but the real effect is that standing out gets harder. Average work disappears faster than ever. Whoever wins, wins on idea and on authenticity, not on production value alone.
At the same time the value shifts from making a video to figuring out the right video. Soon everyone can generate images. Not everyone knows which images move an audience. That is strategy, and strategy becomes the scarce good.
And finally, the human side weighs heaviest at the moments that matter. An AI can generate an announcement. A human persuades. The better machines get at smoothing things over, the more a brand sets itself apart with what is unpolished and honest.
Trends are fun to follow, but they only mean something when they're attached to something. For us that's growth for the client. A trend that doesn't turn viewers into customers is just noise with good image quality. The art of 2025 is choosing which movements you take with you and which you let go, and that choosing only starts once you know what you want to achieve.
That's what we steer on this year. Not the newest tool, but the sharpest idea, executed in the way that fits where the client wants to go.
