• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 16, 2025

Sometimes it pays to take a look at the other side of the publishing business—the advertisers and marketers. What issues are they facing?

Here are their top challenges with media campaigns, according to a new study by Smartly, conducted by Reach3 Insights.

• Difficulty personalizing creative for target audience—38%
• Time-consuming creative production—37%
• Inconsistent creative quality across platforms—35% 
• Ads not optimized for platform specifications—34%
• Limited tools or automation to support campaign delivery—33%
• Compliance issues related to legal or regulatory standards—30% 
• Communication breakdown between creative, media and analytics teams—30% 
• Overspending on budget inefficiencies as campaign scale increases—29% 
• Managing a higher volume of campaign assets and versions—28% 

Wise publishers could devise ways to help advertisers with some of these challenges..

Despite this, 95% of marketers are using AI for creative generation or optimization. And 88% feel that AI is living up to the hype, up from 80% last year, while 92% feel AI is redefining how they think about the customer journey. 

Indeed, many are using AI to achieve personalization. Of those polled, 46% scale creative production with AI to reach different audience segments. And 42% tailor messaging to audience segments in real time.  

And video rules, which is good news for Smartly. 

One caveat: the most widely used channels are not newspapers and magazines. Rather, Meta and TikTok “continue to dominate spend, reflecting performance-driven habits, the study states. “Broader interest in emerging formats like Pinterest and Reddit suggest advertisers are diversifying beyond traditional social platforms."

Other than that, just what kind of shift is going on? 

“AI is reshaping the funnel with personalization and prediction, and redefining what efficiency means for marketers,” the study states. “No longer are consumers moving linearly through different phases, they are bouncing back and forth before making a purchase decision, or sometimes going right from awareness to customer in a single click.”

Reach3 Insights surveyed 450 marketers and marketing budget decision makers across the US, UK and Germany at companies that spend at least $5 million in paid media per year. The research, conducted in August 2025, covered individuals who work in these industries: agency; automotive; consumer packaged goods; electronics, entertainment and/or gaming; media; financial Services; food and/or beverage; insurance; retail; telecommunications; technology; and travel.