The New Year marks a moment to reflect on the shifts that shaped the year just passed and to consider what may emerge in the months ahead.
As part of our annual Three Trends series, we continue speaking with industry leaders about the year just passed and the trends they see shaping what comes next.
Next up, we speak with Rishi Bedi, the Managing Director for APAC at Ogury, who returns for another year after offering up his Three Trends picks for our 2025 edition.
Rishi shares with us his favourite and least favorite trends of 2025, his take on what to look for in the coming year, and how things went with his 2025 New Year’s resolution.
Looking Ahead
What are three trends to look for in the coming year?
1. When AI goes from revolutionary to rudimentary, what’s next?
The maturity of AI adoption varies across different functions within marketing and campaign lifecycles. Still, all are undergoing a gradual (or, in some cases, very rapid) shift from experimentation to adoption to business as usual. As AI’s capabilities become mainstream, attention will shift to its limitations.
I expect the dividing line will be creativity and emotional intelligence. AI models are, by nature, predictive, while creative breakthroughs hinge on unpredictability. If campaigns lean too much on reproducing what has been done before, they will lose their ability to delight and surprise. Human imagination will retain the edge here, though may go from being the norm to a premium as high-volume performance campaigns opt for the most cost-effective option.
2. Connectivity, not identifiers, will power advertising’s next leap
Diminishing identifiers, tightening privacy regulations, and limited scale of alternate IDs in APAC will keep pushing marketers to adapt and leverage hybrid audience strategies, such as connecting behavioral and contextual signals or combining intelligence across first-party data and zero-party insights.
Diminishing identifiers, tightening privacy regulations, and limited scale of alternate IDs in APAC will keep pushing marketers to adapt and leverage hybrid audience strategies.
This will encourage a more collaborative data ecosystem, as there is far more to be gained from unifying audience insights than guarding them. Proactive data collaboration between publishers, platforms, retailers, and brands can paint a full picture of consumer movements and preferences from what would otherwise be scattered fragments.
3. Will superapps keep competition alive in APAC or become new walled gardens?
The rise of regional super apps and country-specific media/OTT platforms will continue to challenge global tech players who are attempting to efficiently navigate the fragmentation of APAC markets.
However, don’t expect the preference for home-grown media to create a more open environment. Once these players reach a certain level of scale and influence, they tend to build self-contained platforms that can behave like walled gardens. APAC is not immune from walled gardens; the only difference is that there might end up being more of them.
Looking Back
Favorite or Least favourite trend of 2025:
AI-powered video content generation is unreal, and has been both my favorite and least favorite trend.
It’s impressive and scary at the same time: an incredibly powerful and accessible creative tool with potentially disastrous consequences for information integrity and public trust.
If you could sum up 2025 in one emoji:
🧑🏫
We have all had to read, learn and absorb so much around technology shifts, especially the AI and machine learning revolution, to stay ahead of the curve. And this is on top of dealing with all the other changes in our industry, it’s enough to have almost made me pick the melting emoji!
One of your favourite campaigns of 2025:
Coca-Cola’s remixed “Share a Coke” campaign for the Chinese market combined everything I love about contemporary advertising: iconic branding, creativity that harnesses on-the-ground cultural awareness, and a persona-based approach to connecting with audiences.
Chinese naming conventions don’t align with the “Share a Coke” labels used in other territories, so they opted to use personas such as “fashionista” or “foodie” instead. It’s a great example of what we, at Ogury, call ‘Personified
What was your 2025 New Year’s Resolution, and did you keep it?
I have been experimenting with AI tools and wanted to complete a formal certification around AI this year, but I haven’t been able to create the time. Maybe next year!
Would you like to share your calls on the year ahead and your take on the year past? Drop us a line.
