• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Like most other digital channels, email is seeing a slowdown in growth this year. 

Only 16% of marketers worldwide plan to boost their email budgets by 50% over the next 12 months -- a decline of 3% YoY, according to Nielsen’s 2025 Annual Marketing Report.  

This is happening as 54% of marketers worldwide and 51% in North America are likely to reduce their overall ad spending in 2025.  

The biggest hit is occurring in the technology sector., where 70% expect a decline. In addition, 58% in the financial services sector are reducing their ad budgets. Among all verticals, only healthcare & pharma fall below 48% in the percentage forecasting a decline.  

What explains this trend? The study observes that  2025 has seen “shake ups in the global supply chain and consumer sentiment.”

The study adds: “It’s difficult to make long-term marketing plans when you don’t know if you’ll have products on the shelf in the coming months, and at a price consumers can afford.” 

Among digital channels, social media leads, with 29% planning to increase their spending by 50%. But that’s down 4% from the same time last year.  

At 22%, video online/mobile is seeing a 2% decline and search (20%) has a 3% falloff.  

But some channels foresee an uptick. For example, the display online/mobile category rose by 2% to 21%, and out-of-home will benefit from an increase of 3% to 16%.  

Of course, brands face many challenges in measuring the ROI of digital spending: 

• Stakeholder alignment across key metrics — 22% 
• Incomparable data — 19% 
• Too much data — 19% 
• Unclear which marketing KPIs matter — 19%
• Too many vendors and tools — 18%
• Not enough granularity in measurement — 28%
• Not enough data — 17% 
• Inability to measure newer channels—17%
• Siloed internal teams — 17%
• Inadequate measurement tools — 17% 
• Too much emphasis on short term — 16% 

Nielsen surveyed 1,400 marketers from February 25 to March 6, 2025.