The 7 Media Trends That Defined 2025
If 2024 was the year AI arrived, then 2025 was the year the media industry reorganized itself around the consequences.
Across interviews with senior executives at 10 premium publishers, the same themes surfaced repeatedly: artificial intelligence restructured workflows and revenue models, search traffic declined, events surged, creators professionalized, and commerce media continued its expansion.
While each trend touched different companies in different ways, the picture they collectively paint is a sector actively reinventing its foundation.
AI dominated the year, not only in terms of its utility but also in how profoundly it reshaped distribution, partnerships, and strategy.
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.