The Nielsen Annual Marketing Report 2025 – what affiliate marketers can learn

Nielsen's 2025 Marketing Report: Key Insights for Performance Marketers and What It Means for the Affiliate Industry

The marketing landscape in 2025 has proven to be as dynamic as predicted, with global economic uncertainties, supply chain disruptions, and rapid technological advancement creating both challenges and opportunities for brands worldwide. Nielsen's comprehensive 2025 Annual Marketing Report, based on survey responses from 1,400 leading marketers globally, reveals critical insights that performance marketers and affiliate professionals need to understand to thrive in this evolving environment.

Data Summary: Key Statistics from Nielsen's 2025 Report

Survey Methodology:

• 1,400 global marketing professionals surveyed between February 25 – March 6, 2025
• All respondents work with annual marketing budgets of at least $1 million USD
• Two-thirds manage budgets over $10 million USD
• Equal regional distribution: 350 respondents each from APAC, EMEA, North America, and Latin America

Budget and Spending Trends

• 54% of global marketers plan to reduce ad spending in 2025
• 29% plan to increase social media spend by more than 50% (down 4 points from 2024)
• 22% plan major increases in video advertising (down 2 points from 2024)
• 21% plan significant display advertising increases (down 2 points from 2024)
• 16% plan to increase out-of-home budgets by over 50% (up 3 points from 2024)

Platform and Channel Growth

• 56% of marketers plan to increase OTT/Connected TV spending (up from 53% in 2024)
• 65% see Retail Media Networks playing a growing role in their strategy
  • 74% in North America (highest)
  • 48% in Europe (lowest)
• 42.4% of U.S. ad-supported viewing time now comes from streaming
• $17+ billion expected U.S. streaming ad revenue in 2025 (+25% growth)

Regional Priority Differences

Top Marketing Priorities by Region:

• North America: Revenue growth (48%) vs Brand awareness (48%) – perfectly split
• Europe: Revenue growth (59%) vs Brand awareness (37%) – heavy revenue focus
• Asia-Pacific: Revenue growth (52%) vs Brand awareness (46%) – slight revenue edge
• Latin America: Brand awareness (50%) vs Revenue growth (43%) – awareness leads

Industry-Specific Spending Cuts

Percentage likely to reduce ad spend in 2025:

• Technology: 70% (highest)
• Financial Services: 60%
• Automotive: 54%
• Healthcare & Pharma: 51%
• Retail: 49%
• Travel & Tourism: 40% (lowest)

Measurement and Attribution Challenges

• Only 32% of marketers measure media spending holistically across digital and traditional channels (down from 38% in 2024)
• 60% consider both reach/frequency AND ROI when analysing campaign performance
• 22% cite stakeholder alignment as their top measurement challenge
• 19% struggle with incomparable data across channels

Technology and AI Adoption

• 71% of large-budget brands ($1B+) expect AI to have big impact on personalisation and optimisation
• 53% of smaller brands ($50M-$1B) prioritize sustainable and purpose-driven marketing
• 48% of smaller brands focus on authenticity and influencer content

Digital vs Traditional Balance

Paid Marketing Budget Allocation:

• 24% heavily favor digital (80%+ of budget)
• 32% lean traditional (less than 40% to digital)
• 44% maintain balanced approach (40-60% digital) – largest group

The Reality of Reduced Ad Spending: A Performance Marketing Opportunity

The Bottom Line: Over half (54%) of global marketers are planning to cut ad spending in 2025, creating both challenges and opportunities for performance-based marketing channels.

The economic pressures of 2025 have forced marketers to make tough decisions about their advertising investments. Technology companies are responding to global supply-chain tensions, while financial firms are reacting to dropping consumer confidence and, in the U.S., a challenging housing market. European marketers continue to contend with sluggish local economies and ongoing geopolitical tensions.

However, this budget tightening presents a significant opportunity for affiliate marketing. When budgets shrink, brands naturally gravitate toward performance-based models where they only pay for actual results. This shift aligns perfectly with the core value proposition of affiliate marketing—paying for performance rather than impressions or clicks.

The report reveals that different industries are taking varied approaches to budget cuts. Tech companies are responding to global supply-chain tensions, while financial firms are reacting to dropping consumer confidence. This creates niche opportunities for affiliates who can demonstrate clear ROI in specific verticals.

Strategic Shifts: Digital Channels and Performance Focus

Despite budget constraints, marketers aren't abandoning growth—they're becoming smarter about how they achieve it. The report shows several key tactical shifts that directly benefit the affiliate marketing ecosystem:

The Move to Less Expensive, Performance-Driven Channels

Many are shifting to less expensive channels, switching to a more digital media mix, placing more emphasis on performance campaigns, and shifting to newer channels (like CTV or influencer marketing). This trend perfectly aligns with the strengths of modern affiliate marketing, which offers cost-effective, performance-driven results across multiple digital touchpoints.

For affiliate marketers, this represents a golden opportunity to position programs as essential components of efficiency-focused marketing strategies. As artificial intelligence continues to transform affiliate marketing, smart affiliates are leveraging these technologies to demonstrate even stronger ROI to cautious brands.

Connected TV: The New Frontier for Performance Marketing

One of the most compelling findings is the continued growth of Connected TV (CTV) advertising. Globally, 56% of marketers report planning to increase their spending on over-the-top (OTT)/CTV in 2025, up slightly from 53% in 2024. The growth is particularly strong in the Americas, where streaming now accounts for 42.4% of ad-supported viewing time.

This shift creates exciting opportunities for affiliate marketers to integrate with CTV campaigns, particularly as attribution models become more sophisticated. The combination of streaming content and performance tracking represents a new frontier where affiliate marketing can demonstrate its value in premium, brand-safe environments.

Retail Media Networks: Full-Funnel Opportunities

The report highlights a significant evolution in how marketers view Retail Media Networks (RMNs). Two-thirds of marketers (65%) see RMNs playing a growing role in their media strategy this year, with a high of 74% in North America and a low of 48% in Europe.

More importantly, RMNs are expanding beyond bottom-funnel conversion tactics. Asia-Pacific marketers tend to use RMNs for bottom-funnel applications and European marketers for top-funnel use cases, but most are now taking advantage of RMNs across the entire consumer journey, especially in the Americas.

This evolution represents a massive opportunity for affiliate programs. As RMNs become full-funnel platforms, affiliate partnerships with these networks can capture value at every stage of the customer journey. However, as highlighted in our analysis of data-driven strategies in affiliate marketing, success requires sophisticated attribution and measurement approaches.

The AI Revolution: Automation Meets Performance

The Technology Imperative: Marketers across all regions are paying special attention to AI and the impact it's likely to have on their ability to create content, personalise campaigns, optimise media plans, perform predictive analysis, and streamline other key marketing functions.

The report reveals that AI adoption varies significantly by company size. While AI is by far the most watched trend on the list for brands with large ad budgets, it's interesting to note that smaller brands are just as curious to explore sustainable and purpose-driven marketing, followed closely by authenticity and influencer content.

For affiliate marketers, this creates a two-tier opportunity structure:

For Large-Budget Brands: Position affiliate programs as AI-enhanced performance channels that can deliver automated optimisation and sophisticated attribution.

For Smaller Brands: Focus on authentic, purpose-driven partnerships that smaller budgets can afford, particularly through micro and nano-influencer strategies that align with sustainability messaging.

The Measurement Challenge: Opportunity for Independent Attribution

One of the most critical findings for affiliate marketers relates to measurement challenges. The report reveals that only 32% of marketers globally say they measure their media spending holistically across both digital and traditional channels today. That's considerably lower than last year.

The Stakeholder Alignment Crisis

Perhaps most tellingly, the biggest challenge mentioned by our survey respondents is stakeholder alignment—or lack thereof, more precisely. The report emphasises that to be successful in today's challenging environment, marketers need to get everyone onboard from the very start and be very clear about the campaign's objectives, what the milestones will be, and how performance will be measured along the way.

This measurement crisis creates a significant opportunity for affiliate marketing professionals who can demonstrate clear, transparent attribution. As we've seen in the evolution of fraud prevention measures, the industry that invests in sophisticated measurement tools gains competitive advantage.

The RMN Attribution Challenge

The report specifically highlights measurement challenges with Retail Media Networks. RMNs offer closed-loop measurement (a direct link between exposure and conversion), but to abide by privacy regulations in the regions where they operate, they often require their advertising partners to use in-platform or custom attribution tools.

This creates what the report calls a “grading your own homework” problem, where it may only be possible to take the data out of the platform in aggregate form, if at all, ruling out analysis across other channels in the advertiser's media mix—including other RMNs.

Independent affiliate marketing platforms that can provide cross-channel attribution have a significant competitive advantage in this environment.

Balancing Brand and Performance: The Sweet Spot Strategy

The report reveals important regional differences in marketing priorities that affiliate marketers should understand:

• North America: Evenly split between revenue growth (48%) and brand awareness (48%)
• Europe: Overwhelmingly focused on revenue growth and customer retention
• Asia-Pacific: Revenue growth leads, with higher interest in customer acquisition
• Latin America: Slight preference for brand awareness

Most organizations try to find the sweet spot for their business within the marketing funnel, and that happens to be right in the middle for North American brands.

For affiliate marketers, this means developing region-specific strategies. European partners should emphasise immediate ROI and customer lifetime value, while Latin American partnerships might focus more on brand building and awareness campaigns.

Traditional vs. Digital: The Surprising Balance

Contrary to expectations of continued digital dominance, the report shows a more balanced approach emerging. By far the largest group (44% of respondents) gave a balanced answer in the 40%-60% range when asked about digital versus traditional media allocation.

This rebalancing creates opportunities for affiliate marketers to demonstrate how their programs can bridge digital and traditional channels, particularly through customer advocacy programs that leverage word-of-mouth across multiple touchpoints.

Looking Forward: Five Strategic Imperatives for Affiliate Marketers

Based on Nielsen's findings, here are the key strategic imperatives for affiliate marketing success in 2025:

1. Embrace AI-Driven Optimisation

As AI reshapes marketing strategies, affiliate programs must integrate sophisticated automation tools that can demonstrate measurable performance improvements to budget-conscious brands.

2. Develop Cross-Channel Attribution Capabilities

With only 32% of marketers achieving holistic measurement, independent attribution that spans multiple channels becomes a critical competitive advantage.

3. Position as Budget-Efficient Performance Channel

As 54% of marketers cut spending, affiliate programs must clearly articulate their efficiency advantages over traditional advertising channels.

4. Integrate with Emerging Platforms

Connected TV and Retail Media Networks represent high-growth opportunities where affiliate marketing can demonstrate value in premium, brand-safe environments.

5. Focus on Stakeholder Alignment

Since measurement challenges often stem from internal alignment issues, affiliate marketers should position themselves as strategic partners who can help solve coordination problems across marketing teams.

The Path Forward for Performance Marketing

Nielsen's 2025 report paints a picture of an industry in transition—one where traditional approaches are being questioned, budgets are under pressure, and new technologies are creating both opportunities and challenges. For affiliate marketers, this environment represents perhaps the best opportunity in years to demonstrate the unique value of performance-based marketing.

The key lies in positioning affiliate marketing not just as a cost-effective alternative, but as a sophisticated, technology-enabled solution to the complex attribution and efficiency challenges that brands face in 2025.

As the future of affiliate marketing continues to evolve, those who can demonstrate clear ROI, provide transparent attribution, and help brands navigate the complexity of modern marketing will be the ones who thrive.

The opportunity is clear—the question is whether affiliate marketers will seize it with the sophistication and strategic thinking that this moment demands.

Access the report here