The 3 Biggest CES 2025 Takeaways for Marketers & Advertisers
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is always a major moment at the start of each year, where brands showcase innovations that are bound to transform how we live. For example, CES is where we saw the debut of GPS-enabled automobile technology and the first 1080p television.
What is CES?
Here’s what many people think CES is: a bunch of tech companies taking over Las Vegas for about a week, showing off their biggest, shiniest gimmicks, while reporters flock to the desert to capture the latest clickbait. That’s an understandable takeaway, especially when you read the top posts on Google News.
But make no mistake, it’s a major press event for a reason. It’s amazing (and newsworthy) to experience new inventions like AI integrated televisions, devices that allow users to fully charge their phone in two seconds, and a robot vacuum that actually picks toys up off the floor instead of pushing them around. Aside from seeing flashy new gadgets first-hand, for a lot of marketers on the ground, CES is an opportunity to have creative, intelligent conversations with professionals on the cutting edge of technology. The annual event is a renowned industry platform for previewing upcoming consumer technology trends, enabling crucial head starts for teams seeking to understand – and leverage – evolving consumer behaviors that will inevitably feed into strategic marketing campaigns for the year ahead.
Our Biggest Marketing Takeaways from CES 2025
If you didn’t make it to CES, no worries. We touched base with our three resident experts on the ground to give you the biggest highlights from inside and outside of the venue. Introducing:
- Kolin Kleveno, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships
- Elizabeth Marsten, Vice President of Innovation and Growth
- Lauren Wolfen, Vice President of Product Management
Here’s what they had to say.
Artificial intelligence is old news
Tired: AI. Wired: AGI.
We all remember when ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2023, followed by a surge of thought leadership articles throughout 2024. While we might get a brief respite in 2025, it will likely make way for discussions about artificial general intelligence (AGI). Although this technology is still in its early stages, it’s poised to be a major disruptor in the marketing world.
Consumer devices like TVs are already being envisioned with AGI capabilities, enabling them to understand a consumer’s interests and automatically create multiple personas for viewers. For example, a device could be trained to recognize that you’re a budget-friendly traveler and then provide tailored, helpful recommendations based on its inherent knowledge base. This marks a significant departure from models that rely on specific prompting and return probabilistic results based on preset training data.
The implication is clear: in the future, we won’t just market to people – we’ll also need to market to their machines. This general intelligence will augment everything consumers do, simplifying tasks like knowledge searches and product research. With less manual input required from users, marketers must ensure their content is optimized to appear where machines are searching – not just where users are looking.
LG’s artificial general intelligence offering at CES 2025
While the AI landscape will continue to evolve, two truths will remain for the foreseeable future: people create, and AI executes. These are distinct concepts that shouldn’t be conflated. Innovations in AI are set to transform work as we know it, but marketers should respond by leaning into creativity.
Start by evaluating your current role: how much relies on your creativity versus your ability to perform specific tasks? Use your creativity to identify ways AI can help you execute those tasks more effectively, and focus on cultivating your creative instincts and those of your team. As AI simplifies task execution, creativity will become an increasingly significant competitive advantage.
The impact of innovative display technology
Tinuiti’s experts were ready for a variety of exciting innovations as soon as they entered the main hall of CES. They were met with holograms, projections, televisions, and virtual reality experiences. Elizabeth Marsten even had the chance to try a Godzilla video game transformed into a fully immersive VR experience.
Elizabeth Marsten using Godzilla immersive VR arcade booth
This set the stage for a major theme at CES: innovative display technologies. Electronics companies like Toshiba and LG showcased clearer, crisper, and even multi-dimensional displays. While these displays had an undeniable “cool” factor, their real significance lies in their potential to transform the media landscape.
Some of us remember the first time we saw a high-definition television—watching a football game and noticing the turf flying off players’ cleats. What’s now standard was once revolutionary, and HDTV was shown to make viewers feel more immersed in the content.
Now, imagine an even more immersive, three-dimensional experience in everyone’s living room. This isn’t just exciting for the entertainment industry; it also opens the door for brands to create more tangible and realistic interactions with their products and experiences.
Retail media continues to take over
Retail media has already taken the world by storm, and it made more than a few appearances at CES. The Tinuiti team observed an increase in events focused on commerce and retail media, with more executives exploring its potential, plus intriguing retail media partnerships across novel industries. For instance, Yahoo and Roku announced a new partnership to develop an advanced demand-side platform, while Delta and YouTube joined forces to provide ad supported in-flight entertainment.
Commerce Connect retail media panelists at CES 2025
Elizabeth Marsten, was particularly intrigued by Amazon’s Retail Ad Service. As the largest retail media network, Amazon’s potential to expand in this sphere is nearly limitless, giving the Retail Ad Service significant power to transform retail media engagement.
However, Marsten ultimately found the announcement somewhat underwhelming. “The retailers included in the press release were long-tail and category-niche, making the overall value proposition of one UI or campaign to manage multiple retailers for the same SKU set difficult.” According to Marsten, until Amazon resolves this, competitors like Criteo, Koddi, and Epsilon may not feel much pressure.
A tentpole event for the industry, marketers and agencies specifically rely on the technical partnerships and advancements often announced at shows like CES.
Some attendees, however, found this year’s innovations and messaging more confusing than illuminating. One notable comment overheard at the event was:
“This CES is a hot mess because every brand is sharing their own version of the future.”
When it comes to early-stage innovations, it’s unsurprising that it’s not always clear what will have real-world impact, what’s mostly hype, and what will ultimately resonate with consumers. This initial lack of clarity, particularly evident with nascent products and developments, is a familiar phase in the intersection of marketing and technology.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from CES is this: while we glimpsed technologies that could transform the world, the most significant challenge for businesses may lie in pursuing a clear vision for the future—and understanding how these new technologies will function within it.
That’s why Tinuiti is committed to solving problems related to clarity. While we can’t predict the future, Tinuiti is a trusted partner for marketers and technologists alike, helping them navigate what’s next with confidence. Thanks to our advanced measurement capabilities and strong partnerships with major advertising platforms like Google and Netflix, we’re excited to continue bringing marketing clarity into 2025—in measurement, strategy, and the informed decision-making that drives both.
Curious about how we do it? Learn more about our Bliss Point by Tinuiti measurement suite, or reach out to our measurement experts to get a use case for your own business.