Big Moves in Marketing: Meta’s AI Innovation, Daily Online Shopping Drops & Ad Spending Hits New Highs

$68 B

Amazon’s annual ad revenue surpassed $68 B in 2025, with Q4 ad sales up 22% to $21.3 B, driven by a full-funnel strategy that broadened ads beyond retail media. This strategy added about $12 B in incremental revenue and saw strong engagement from Prime Video ads, even as Amazon plans roughly $200 B in capital spending for 2026.

$60 B

YouTube’s annual revenue topped $60 billion across ads and subscriptions in 2025, helping parent Alphabet exceed $400 billion in total revenue for the first time. In Q4, YouTube ad revenue hit about $11.4 billion (up ~8.7% YoY), and leadership is leaning into subscriptions like Premium and TV plans to broaden monetization beyond ads.

23%

At Super Bowl 60, about 23% of the 66 ads spotlighted AI, but many brands struggled to move past generic “helpful” narratives, exposing a broader AI messaging crisis four years into the hype cycle. Even with notable spots from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, most commercials failed to clearly differentiate their AI offerings, underscoring the challenge of turning innovation buzz into memorable, standout messaging.

12

The percentage of consumers shopping online every day dropped from 21% to 9% (a 12-point fall year-over-year), even as in-store buying grew, per a Salsify survey of ~3,000 shoppers. Price pressure has shoppers comparing deals (39%) and seeking cheaper alternatives (37%), while only 22% use AI for product research and just 14% trust it regularly, showing cautious online spending behavior.

47%

On TikTok, millennials (ages ~25–44) are now the platform’s best shoppers, with about 54% researching products and 47% actually making purchases after seeing ads, outpacing Gen Z in conversion activity. This challenges the idea that TikTok shopping is driven mostly by Gen Z and highlights its growing value as a full-funnel commerce channel for older audiences.

751 M

Spotify delivered strong Q4 2025 results, with monthly active users hitting 751 M (up ~11% YoY) and premium subscribers reaching ~290 M (up 10%). Revenue grew about 13% to €4.5 B, gross margin improved, and earnings beat expectations, while guidance for early 2026 projects continued user and revenue growth.

400 M

Meta’s Threads rolled out “Dear Algo,” an AI personalization tool letting users tell the feed what to show by posting a public prompt starting with “Dear Algo,” and boosts content for 3 days based on that request. The feature is live in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand for Threads’ 400 million+ users and marks a shift toward giving users more control over algorithmic recommendations.