The
State of
Digital
2025

Third-party cookies have been tracking your internet moves since the mid-’90s. Originally designed to help ad networks and publishers understand user behavior across websites, they quickly became the go-to tool for behavioral targeting. Great for personalized ads, less great for user privacy. Eventually, browsers started pushing back. Safari introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017. Firefox rolled out Enhanced Tracking Protection in 2019. The message was clear: the cookie jar was closing.

The Rise of Privacy Controls

Early consumer pushback and regulations like GDPR and CCPA fueled privacy-focused browser changes. Safari and Firefox took early action, blocking third-party cookies by default. Google Chrome? Not so fast. Chrome, sitting on over half the U.S. browser market, announced plans to retire third-party cookies in 2022, then they postponed the cookie phase-out again, and again, and again.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox and Its Trials

In 2019, Google introduced the Privacy Sandbox, an initiative to replace third-party cookies with privacy-centric alternatives. Key proposals included:

• FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts): Group users into interest-based cohorts. Criticized for privacy loopholes, it was abandoned in 2022 
• Topics API: Browser-derived topic labels shared with sites for targeting. This saw limited rollout and mixed adoption.
• FLEDGE, Trust Tokens, Attribution Reporting API: Attempted replacements for retargeting, fraud protection, and conversion measurement, but were slow to gain traction amid technical and regulatory obstacles 

Despite Google’s initial plan to phase out cookies by 2022, it repeatedly pushed deadlines, first to 2024, then to early 2025, while admitting the ad ecosystem lacked ready replacements. 

The Big U-Turn: Google Keeps Cookies

Just when marketers were finally bracing for a cookieless Chrome, Google pulled a plot twist. In April 2025, they announced Chrome will not phase out third-party cookies after all. Instead, users will keep manual control via browser settings and cookies would be sticking around for the foreseeable future.

Why the reversal?

• Publishers warned of revenue drops up to 60%¹ 
• Advertisers feared even more power shifting to the big walled gardens
• Regulators worried it might unfairly benefit, well… Google

What It Means for Advertisers

1. Cookies are Back on the Menu, For Now – Advertisers can maintain cookie-based tactics in Chrome. Yet, nearly one-third of U.S. users are already on Safari or Firefox, where third-party cookies remain blocked. So while Chrome sustains familiar workflows, a sizable chunk of the audience remains untouched by them.
2.  A Hybrid Future Is Essential – Rather than waiting for cookies to vanish, advertisers should embrace a hybrid approach: continue using cookies in Chrome and continue to invest in first-party data, universal IDs (like UID2), contextual targeting, and clean-room partnerships 
3. Fast-Track First-Party Strategies – Brands should accelerate loyalty programs, gated content, and email opt-ins to build richer direct user data. First-party data is now the cornerstone of an effective, privacy-respectful ad strategy.
4. Test Privacy Sandbox APIs – With Sandbox tools still available, advertisers have a valuable opportunity to test Topics API and Attribution Reporting alongside cookies. Experimentation now allows identification of performance gaps and readiness if cookies eventually fade. These tools can build a competitive edge and future-proof capabilities.
5. Focus on Measurement Models – As cookie tracking weakens, analytics should shift toward solutions like marketing mix modeling, incrementality testing, and privacy-safe clean room metrics.

Industry Outlook

Yes, cookies are sticking around longer than anyone expected, but don’t mistake that for permanence. Privacy expectations are rising. Regulators are circling. And Safari and Firefox have made their stance clear: cookies aren’t coming back. Google’s move buys time. This is not the moment to unpack and settle in, it’s a strategic timeout to retool for what comes next.

Bottom Line 

The cookie didn’t crumble but it is stale. The best advertisers will blend legacy tactics with forward-looking strategies, test everything, and keep adjusting as tech and policy evolve.

It’s no longer enough to simply have a technology-focused brand strategy. Everyone—your competition included—has made significant investments in technology within their business models. The question isn’t whether you’re using technology, but how you’re using it. For mid-market brands especially, the ability to stay nimble, creative, and innovative often determines who outpaces the competition.

Increasingly, the answer lies in embracing open source software (OSS) as a cornerstone of brand technology strategy. According to a 2025 study of open-source adoption, a staggering 96% reported either increasing or maintaining their use of open-source software in the past year. Here’s why the shift is happening, and what mid-market brands might consider.

Key Drivers

1. Cost

The lack of licensing costs is overwhelmingly reported as the number one reason organizations choose open source². That said, often open source solutions require more organizational resources to configure, customize, and manage. Cost savings aside, a team of developers or a trusted dev partner might be a better investment as it enables innovation within your organization.

2. Avoiding Vendor Lock-in

Transitioning enterprise vendors is costly and time consuming, especially when you’re dealing with business-critical functionality or data. Open source solutions abstract core functions of your tech-stack, reducing the scope of change should you need to pivot.

3. Interoperability

Monolithic enterprise platforms offer the benefit of end-to-end problem solving. But what if it doesn’t solve your exact problem? The strategic business case for open source is simple—you own the architecture of your tech stack and can connect systems that address your particular business goals.

Things to Consider

Bridging the Gap Between Open Source and Enterprise

It’s not all-or-nothing. Many enterprise platforms offer robust APIs that allow developers to connect disparate systems. For example, we’ve created purpose-built integrations between WordPress (an open source content management system) and Salesforce (an enterprise CRM) to automate lead-generation workflows and empower sales teams with real-time information. When considering software, look beyond the features of the user interface and see what kinds of API connections are available.

Managing Security Liabilities

Security concerns are often a key consideration when deciding against open-source. Meeting security and compliance requirements is the #2 challenge organizations face when dealing with open source software³. Depending on your organization’s risk analysis and compliance requirements, you may need to consider if open source is right, and put more stringent controls in place to maintain and monitor your systems.

Open source does come with some intrinsic security benefits. Specifically, by nature open source platforms are transparent and supported by a community of developers. This tends to make codebases more widely scrutinized and vulnerabilities discovered and patched more quickly. Consider the size and activity of the community when choosing software.

Open Source Lets You Invest in Development

Every dollar spent on licensing fees is a dollar not spent on building your own intellectual property. Open source empowers mid-market brands to solve their own unique business problems and build a base of ownable IP that sets them apart from the competition.

For mid-market brands, winning in the digital era isn’t about who spends the most on technology—it’s about who uses it most effectively. Open source software provides the agility, innovation, and resilience needed to thrive in an environment where every competitor already has technology. By shifting focus from platform dependency to strategic development, brands can position themselves not just to keep up, but to lead the next wave of innovation.

Zero-click search. AI Overviews. Massive social and online retail platforms. The big players are rising to the top, and we’re in an era of consolidation. Why should a brand invest in an owned digital platform like a website when the audience is already on Amazon, Google, Instagram, ChatGPT, and beyond?

Because your website remains the singular digital asset where your brand retains absolute control, giving you a critical competitive advantage.

Consolidation is the new Normal

The internet was founded on being a free and open ecosystem of digital connections. People, topics, and brands could build a platform to share their message, and a new paradigm of brand findability came in the form of search engines. But time and eyeballs are a finite resource, and the race for consolidation has led to major players like Google, Amazon, Meta, TikTok looking for strategies to keep users within their own individual ecosystems. These platforms now predominately control the way consumers find brands.

Google and other search engines are prioritizing AI-based answers and zero-click search features⁴.

Social platforms have turned from community-driven spaces to advertising marketplaces, where algorithms optimized for engagement control what people see.

Retail giants like Amazon control the end-to-end online shopping experience, from product discovery to presentation, to delivery.

Of course, there are exceptions and outliers, but the main result of this consolidation is that while brands stand to gain exposure, they begin to sacrifice message control, data ownership, and long-term customer loyalty.

It’s Not Enough to Just “Rent” Space

Modern brands absolutely must be present and engaged in these consolidated ecosystems. If you sell a consumer product and you’re not investing in Amazon, you’re missing out on a huge share of retail searches. Instagram and TikTok are mandatory for cultural relevance.

However, this presence comes with significant trade-offs:

• These platforms limit the ability to creatively express your brand through things like templates and restrictions to how you can appear.
• Your reach depends on opaque and shifting algorithms.
• Data access is limited to what the platform allows you to see, potentially missing out on key insights about how your customers are engaging.
• Platform shifts or policy changes can up-end your digital marketing strategy overnight.

Your website remains the only place online where you make the rules.

Your Website is Your Digital Stronghold

Rather than seeing websites as an outdated necessity, forward-looking brands are treating them as central command centers; a hub that powers success across every other channel.

Here’s why:

• You control the narrative – No templates, no algorithmic filters, just your message.
• You own the data – Every interaction can fuel your understanding of customer behavior.
• You set the pace of innovation – A website can evolve as quickly as your strategy does, without waiting for a platform update.

Authoritative Information

The rise of AEO and zero-click search make your website an authoritative hub of product information. Brands need to optimize product pages with key information, comparisons, and FAQs to ensure that when AI-based tools go looking for an answer, they’re given up-to-date and accurate information.

Brand Storytelling

Emotion drives 80% of decision making⁵. This is true for advertising, and it’s true across the spectrum of ways brands communicate with their audience. In the case of Patagonia, their brand ethos is woven throughout the product and retail experience, adding a layer of purpose to the shopping experience. The website is a prime place to tell your story. 

An Application Platform

Modern internet technology has evolved from “documents” of information to full-fledged application development. Effectively any idea that once needed to be built as a piece of bespoke software can now be executed online, eliminating the barrier of downloading and installing an app. Brands can build web-based applications that enhance their product experience at a fraction of the cost and overhead. For CBH Homes, we built a home digital shopping experience that rivals national platforms like Zillow in terms of features and functionality. Consider ways your customers might benefit from a technology solution.

A Digital Layer to Engage

Your product doesn’t have to be digital-first for a digital solution to enhance it. Take the example of L‘Oréal Paris, who built an AI-based beauty assistant to help their customers build personalized skincare routines and product recommendations based on their individual needs. These kinds of digital enhancements to physical products can help create a layer of loyalty through engagement, and give people a reason to interact with your brand in the digital space.

Rethinking the Website

The more the internet consolidates, the more valuable your brand website becomes. It’s not just a defensive play, it’s the offensive advantage that allows you to:

• Differentiate when platforms homogenize experiences
• Own the customer relationship in a world of intermediaries
• Future-proof your brand as AI changes discovery

In this era of AI, zero-click search, and walled gardens, your website isn’t an optional asset. It’s your digital headquarters—the only space where you control the experience, the data, and the future of your brand.

2023 was the year AI joined the conversation. 2024 was the year it started doing the work. Now, in 2025, it’s doing all the steps in between. Welcome to the age of AI Agents.

What Are AI Agents?

Imagine AI that doesn’t just answer your questions or write clever captions, it actually gets things done. AI agents refer to autonomous AI systems that plan, act, and adapt toward a goal without needing you to micromanage. Think of them as the proactive intern who takes a vague task like “launch the campaign” and breaks it into concrete steps: creating copy, uploading assets, A/B testing versions, optimizing budgets, and flagging anything weird along the way.

This is not your average automation. These agents reason, use tools, learn from results, and keep iterating. They’re powered by large language models (LLMs) and often operate across multiple software platforms. 

Where Did They Come From?

Agents went from concept to code seemingly overnight. Projects like AutoGPT and OpenAI’s Code Interpreter burst onto the scene in 2023, sparking a wave of agent experiments. But it wasn’t until 2024 that things got real.

Open-source frameworks like LangChain and Microsoft’s Autogen made it easier to build agent-based systems. LangGraph enabled agent “teams” to collaborate. ServiceNow declared 2025 the year of full agentic adoption⁶. Gartner named it one of the top strategic tech trends of the year⁷. Funding poured in with venture capital directed at AI agent companies projected to reach $13 billion by the end of 2025, up from just $5 billion in 20243⁸. The hype turned into hired help.

Who’s Using Them?

Big names and small businesses alike. Salesforce embedded agents into Slack to help sales, service, and marketing teams work faster⁹. ServiceNow’s “Now Assist” agents are resolving IT tickets before employees even realize something broke¹⁰. Moveworks uses agents to handle HR and IT requests at scale for large enterprises, and just got acquired by ServiceNow for $2.85 billion¹¹. That’s not a side hustle, that’s a sign of where work is going.

How Work Is Changing

We’re watching a shift from AI as an “assistant” to AI as a “colleague.” Everyday workers are starting to offload repetitive chores such as compiling reports, managing approvals, checking dashboards, to agents that just handle it. The forecast? By 2028, Gartner predicts 15% of all day-to-day decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents¹². And it’s already starting.

Why Advertisers Should Pay Attention

If you work in advertising, you’re probably already using generative AI to brainstorm, write, or edit. But agentic AI? That’s a different gear. Imagine this: an agent reads a campaign brief, sets up media buys across platforms, monitors performance in real-time, shifts budgets, swaps underperforming assets, and generates a mid-flight optimization report, all before you’ve had your second cup of coffee. That’s not future speak. That’s where we’re headed.

Agencies are starting to test:

• Agent media buyers that monitor, optimize, and report on spend 24/7
• Creative agents that generate ad variations, test them, and iterate
• Account agents that prep status docs, follow up on approvals, and track deadlines
• Strategy agents that surface insights and draft POVs on emerging trends
• We at Drake Cooper are developing an AI agent designed to automatically QA digital media campaigns providing an extra set of eyes and real-time campaign oversight so nothing falls through the cracks

The 4A’s recently reported that 61% of agencies already use generative AI as a collaborator¹³. Agentic AI is the logical next step: tools that don’t just suggest, they execute.

What This Means for Agencies

AI Agents won’t replace creatives or strategists, but they will  change what those roles look like. Media planners will spend less time pulling levers and more time defining goals. Account managers will focus on relationships, not reminders. Creatives will shape ideas, while agents handle the production grind.

This shift opens up room for higher-value thinking. And as more agentic tools hit the market, agencies will need to decide what to automate, what to oversee, and what to still do by hand. The best shops won’t resist the change, they’ll design for it.

Final Thoughts

AI Agents mark the next big leap in AI-powered work. They’re here. They’re working. And they’re coming for your to-do list.

Social media isn’t new—but how we use it has changed completely. It’s no longer just where people connect; it’s where brands prove themselves, in real-time, every day. As platforms evolve and audiences fragment, a clear takeaway has emerged for marketers: organic and paid social media are no longer separate strategies—they are partners in building modern brand ecosystems. Used together, they offer the reach of paid media with the resonance of authentic brand storytelling.

How Organic + Paid Work Together Today

Drake Cooper looks at organic as a brand’s long-game: it builds trust, credibility, and community. Posts that feel human, spark conversation, or showcase brand tone thrive here. Organic platforms are still powerful for thought leadership and quick engagement with your audience.

We look at paid social, on the other hand, as a scalability engine. It delivers reach and performance with precision—allowing brands to target by behavior, interests, and geography, and optimize in real-time. Ads guarantee visibility, especially important in crowded feeds where organic reach is increasingly limited. And importantly, paid interactions can amplify organic visibility, reinforcing a full-funnel strategy.

Together, organic and paid operate in a feedback loop: organic informs what resonates, paid scales what performs.

Key Stats That Matter

Data from the We Are Social 2025 State of Social report reveals just how deep social behaviors run in American culture:

• 253M social media users in the U.S. (76% of the population)
• The average user spends 2 hours and 9 minutes daily on social platforms 
• The average user opens social apps 15–20 times a day
• Top platforms by daily time: TikTok (1h 27m), YouTube (49m), Facebook (32m)
• Influencer ad spend is $5.62B, yet still only 1.8% of total digital ad spend—this can be an untapped opportunity, or a reinforcement that if influencers are not a key strategy, it’s okay to leave it alone. 

Four Ways Social Delivers Strategic Value Beyond the Funnel

1. Recruitment & Employer Branding – Job seekers now start their search on platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok.
2. Reputation Management – Audiences use social to talk about brand experiences, good and bad. AI engines look to social for information when they work and there are still organic search benefits.
3. Consumer Engagement – Lifestyle and pop culture messaging finds high relevance.
4. Crisis Communication – Social is still the fastest way to deliver real-time truth during emergencies; and all brands will encounter this need at various times and forms.
   

Building a Smarter Team Strategy

All of this likely resonates, but we hear from organizations all the time that having the right internal (and external) teams on-staff and operating in an efficient, “on-brand” manner can be difficult. 

Brands need both external paid media experts and internal organic champions:

• Organic should include a tone-savvy writer, platform-specific creatives (especially video), and a strategic lead managing editorial calendars and personas.
• Paid benefits from specialized media buyers and performance analysts who can integrate social within broader digital programs.

Measurement, of course, matters. So our best recommendations is to focus on:

• Paid: CPMs, reach, ROI, traffic
• Organic: engagement rate, sentiment, share of voice

Final Word for 2025

If your brand’s social efforts feel siloed, now’s the time to rethink. Organic creates the brand’s voice. Paid ensures it’s heard. The winners in 2025 aren’t choosing between the two—they’re mastering how they work in tandem.