Palo Alto – May 1, 2025 – Just arrived back—still sweating and slightly sunburned—from what is shaping up to be the most important annual conference for marketing and advertising in the U.S.: the POSSIBLE Miami conference. In the same week that eMarketer confirmed its forecast of global media ad spending surpassing $1 trillion for the first time, marketers, agencies, brands, and advertisers remained bullish despite economic headwinds.

Held at the sprawling Fontainebleau Hotel and Conference Center in Miami’s South Beach, the event revolved around three core forces: Marketing, Creativity, and Advertising. As someone with 15 years in the deep end of digital advertising, I tend to skip broader marketing and creative conferences like ANA or SXSW. My niche requires going deep rather than wide. Yet POSSIBLE—fittingly named and branded with an infinity-inspired logo—offered a wake-up call: marketing, creativity, and advertising are not separate functions. They’re threads in a continuous, looping story.

At POSSIBLE, the silos disappeared. Martha Stewart—the original influencer—spoke passionately about filling the storytelling void. Minutes later, data scientists shared insights on AI and personalization in creative workflows. Whether you’re building brand awareness, designing programmatic campaigns, or crafting creative, we’re all shaping the consumer journey through storytelling. And without a doubt, data and AI are the threads weaving it all together.

10 Key Takeaways from POSSIBLE 2025

1. Agentic AI is Reshaping Commerce
AI shopping assistants talking to each other isn’t science fiction—it’s here. Microsoft Ads launched its first ‘brand agent.’ Surprisingly, major LLM players like OpenAI and Perplexity were largely absent, even as they quietly transform how we discover and buy.

2. AI Is a Marketing Partner, Not a Tool
AI helps marketers deliver hyper-personalized experiences, build trust at scale, and operate more efficiently. The future belongs to marketing leaders who experiment and ask smarter questions—not just manage.

3. Contextual Commerce Is How We Shop
Shopping happens in the moment of inspiration—without switching apps or devices. Commerce is has merged directly into content and experience.

4. Creators Are the Strategy, Not a Tactic
Creators aren’t just influencers; they are the strategy. They bring storytelling, tools, and budgets. But as creator marketing scales, data fragmentation becomes a growing challenge for increasing ROI demands.

5. CTV Is Learning from Social—and Winning
Connected TV is mimicking social’s best moves: personalized, timed creative delivered with precision. Fun fact: you can run a CTV Olympic ad for $500 (even if it airs during modern pentathlon).

6. SMBs Are the Economy—but Underserved in Marketing
Small businesses make up more than half of U.S. business activity, yet often get ignored in marketing innovation. With AI, we finally have scalable tools to change that.

7. Everyone Is a Commerce Media Data Company Now
Forget the old ‘everyone’s an ad network’ idea. Now we’re all dealing with commerce media data—augmenting, activating, measuring, optimizing. Independents like Skai, Magnite, and Kevel are leading.

8. Generative AI Is Here—but Still Nascent
Surprisingly, only about a third of marketers are using GenAI for creative development. Will 2025 be the year of adoption and integration?

9. Economic Anxiety Was Muted but Present
The conference occurred as U.S. GDP dipped 0.3% and rumors of 10% ad budget cuts circulated. Yet, sentiment remained optimistic. The real question is: how long can that last?

10. The Best Advice on AI: Ask Better Questions
Don’t rush to answers. Asking better, deeper questions is the real advantage in an AI-driven marketing world.

Standout Startups

These companies impressed with tangible solutions and forward-thinking use of AI:

• Growth Channel – Audience intelligence across fragmented media landscapes.
• Clinch – Agentic AI deployed across marketing workflows, including CTV creative optimization before launch.
• Spaceback & Swayable – Innovations in social creative and pre-optimization for ads.
• Yobi – An AI platform offering digital synthetic agents for sales, customer service, and workflow support within a private-by-design behavioral intelligence model.
• Mobian – Develops AI tools for workflow automation and data management, with a focus on clinical trial systems.
• Maker AI – Offers AI tools to streamline creative content production for businesses and individuals.