Advanced Automation: Why More Marketers Are Increasing Their Automation Investment

A new advertising report has automation as the fastest growing area of investment, the only area, in fact, that saw an increase from the report’s previous survey.

According to the 2025 Advertising Outlook Report from Mediaocean, 28% of the marketers surveyed late last year see automation as a most-critical investment, an increase of 17% from those surveyed in July 2024.

“While performance-driven paid media, measurement and attribution capabilities, and brand advertising remain the top three critical investments,” the report says, “automation … was the only option that saw an increase, while creative testing and analysis remained unchanged, and the rest declined.”

The report put particular emphasis on the working relationship of automation and AI that can “streamline omnichannel workflows.” Marketers, the report found, are currently using genAI most for data analysis (47%), market research (38%), copywriting (32%), and image generation (22%).

(Source: Mediaocean)

“With automation, advertisers can use a single platform for all channels, eliminating time wasted on manual, redundant tasks,” the report says. “Innovative ad tech platforms use automation and AI to help build compelling, brand-safe creative at scale, surface actionable insights, optimize campaigns, and drive better business outcomes across channels.”

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