15. December 2025
500 things you missed this year
- New
The year 2025 will make headlines of its own. While the world acclimatises to new AI tools, altered platform logic and novel modes of interaction, a more fundamental shift is occurring in the background: the architecture of the media. The content we see, read and buy, and how these elements are linked, is increasingly being created by automated decision-making systems that generate content and accompany users through their everyday lives.
Those working in the media industry have immediately noticed the change: speed is increasing, but visibility is decreasing. Rather than emerging as a spectacular innovation, AI is increasingly becoming a silent infrastructure that sorts results, accelerates workflows and automates processes. It is often only when familiar models crumble that we recognise changes: traffic flows shifting, campaigns created in minutes instead of weeks, or user expectations changing with each new generation of apps.
Quieter than expected, but effective
New spaces and new relationships
Although AR applications, smart glasses and mixed reality interfaces failed to trigger the hoped-for mass movement in 2025, the first relevant changes are becoming apparent. Digital layers over cities and products are making media more location-based and context-sensitive, while AI-generated city models are demonstrating how such technologies could be used in the long term. None of this has been particularly loud, but some of it has been consistent, and this is often a more important indicator of trends.
At the same time, the relationship between humans and technology is changing more significantly than the interfaces themselves. Emotion-recognition and emotion-simulation AI, digital avatars, and increasingly personalised content are leading to new patterns of interaction that we refer to as 'RelAItionships'. By this, we mean the conscious and unconscious patterns of relationships between humans and empathetically responsive AI. These shifts affect not only marketing, but also perception, trust, and communication norms.
A year full of signals
Our review, 500 things you missed this year, illustrates the quiet but steady shift in developments. Summarising the most relevant patterns from scalable AI, media commerce, hyperlocality, Web 3.0 and individualisation, it classifies areas of technological convergence, market restructuring and topics that will remain relevant in the coming year.
Rather than being a traditional review, our annual review acts as a guide in a time when media, marketing and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. It reveals the trends that will define 2025 and helps us to grasp the dynamics that will shape 2026. It focuses less on spectacular breakthroughs and more on the changes that begin inconspicuously and then transform entire routines and role models.
If you want to understand how the media world is evolving and which developments should not be ignored, this is the ideal place to start. We would like to begin with a foreword by Christian von den Brincken, Managing Director of Ströer CORE GmbH & Co. KG.
A review of 2025
It seems almost old-fashioned to look back; after all, we prefer to look ahead.
Nevertheless, this exercise provides the basis for good future work. Those who interpret today's signals correctly will have a better understanding of tomorrow's dynamics, including their direction, pace and scope.
Yes, we have had AI on our radar for a long time. When OpenAI came up with the idea of using a chat interface less than three years ago, we were torn between fascination and doubt. 2025 has once again shown us how easily we underestimate the speed and scope of developments. People like to think linearly because linearity is reassuring; it promises control and protects the status quo. While this is convenient from an organisational point of view, it is an unreliable guide when the world is scaling up rapidly.
So, where did we go wrong?
- VR/AR: Once again, it is slower than expected and hoped for. Who would like to find an Apple Vision Pro under the Christmas tree? Apple Vision... what? Exactly.
- Web3: Here, too, everyday visibility was lower than the volume of discourse would suggest. How often have you encountered the topic in recent months as a concrete solution to a real problem, rather than just a buzzword? Probably rather rarely.
However, the more important lesson here is not that 'trend X was too slow', but that most developments are not spectacular, but rather par for the course. AI is the best example of this. Rather than a big bang, it is more like a co-pilot in everyday life. It merges with existing realities and appears in tools, workflows and devices. At some point, it simply exists without needing to be labelled a 'trend'.
This also changes the question. It is becoming increasingly irrelevant to ask, 'Do I join in or not?', because development does not ask for permission. Even those who code it are doing so less and less loudly. You can slow it down, ignore it, snub it, or embrace it. What you cannot do is stop it altogether. Trends have come a long way, evolving from barely visible signals into waves capable of transforming and reshaping entire industries.
What does that mean specifically for 2026?
- Embrace curiosity and don't delegate it. Trend expertise is not comparable to the court jesters of the Middle Ages; it is a management discipline.
- Test early rather than discussing late. Small experiments are better than big opinions. This requires courage.
- Don't just evaluate tools; evaluate behavioural changes too. Technology only becomes relevant when it changes routines, not when it makes headlines. 'Let's do something innovative' is certainly the wrong approach.
- Observe the second order. Often, it is not the innovation itself that is decisive, but rather the knock-on effects in terms of costs, roles, governance, skills and expectations.
Perhaps the most pragmatic advice is to learn the language of the machine world. Because, even in the human world, if communication breaks down, many other things stop working too. Without common terms for data, models, automation, security and responsibility, robust decisions cannot be made, either strategically or operationally.
This document is therefore not a museum of missed hypes, but a compass. It focuses primarily not on what you missed last year, but on the signals that will become significant in the coming year and will affect you. Our annual review is intended to help you recognise patterns, sharpen priorities and ask the right questions for 2026. Not everything will be big, but much will be effective. And that is exactly what it is all about.
In the new edition of our Crossroads study, published in January, we summarise what this looks like for our industry — the advertising and media world in Germany. We identify five trends and 17 strong signals, each with their own effects. We will also use the resulting classification scheme for our newsletter in 2026, which we will also revise in terms of visual appearance and content. Even order needs change.
If you are interested, please feel free to contact us: strategie(at)stroeer.de
We would like to invite you to join us in discussing these signals so that we can classify them more clearly together.
We wish you a happy new year!
Christian von den Brincken
& the Ströer Foresight Team