Spotlighting the Four C's of 2025

At the Native Advertising Institute’s Native Advertising Days 25 event on 14 May, Julia Linehan, CEO at The Digital Voice™ hosted a panel featuring Pete Wallace, general manager, GumGum (EMEA); Minai Bui, director of product marketing, Samsung Ads (EMEA); and Elli Papadaki, SVP, global supply, Onetag.

As advertisers shift toward more engaging, non-disruptive ad experiences, native advertising is evolving to leverage The Four Cs of 2025: content, CTV, curation, and contextual targeting for better personalisation.

In their panel discussion, the four teamed up to debate the merits of each. The wide-ranging discussion covered:

- Whether AI-driven personalisation will solve the problem of ad fatigue or add to it
- What constitutes quality content
- How we get the right balance between human input and algorithms
- How can brands ensure a seamless cross-platform experience
- How each of the four Cs contributes to high-intent conversions

Here’s what the panellists had to say:

According to Pete, championing contextual, “The concept of content is becoming more abstract in an age of AI. When we talk about content, it’s the seed of an idea and what is being built around it. This is fundamentally human-generated, understanding ideas and stories and how that stems into everything that we do.”

“We need to move away from the traditional thought process around contextual. There's much more science-driven opportunity around context that brands can tap into, from a targeting standpoint, but also to enable brands to discover more about themselves, their competitors, their industry vertical. There is so much information to be surfaced from the open web.”

“Contextual is about trying to understand an individual’s mindset. How do we create a predictive understanding of what messaging and content will combine to drive conversions.”

Meanwhile, Minai, championing CTV, said, “Quality content is no longer just about how it’s made and produced, but how it resonates with the audience. You can have the right content, but if it isn’t served to the right audience at the right time, it’s not going to hit the mark.”

“It starts with engagement before conversions. If you don’t have attention, you don’t have outcomes.”

“AI allows you to understand the right moment, context and platform to reach users but when it comes to emotion, humour and culture nuance - things that create a connection - you need the human element. When the two come together, that’s where the magic happens.”

Finally, for Elli, championing curation, “I think CTV is an incredible platform. It has household-level data, meaning there's so much personalisation that can be achieved. On top of that, curation is the buying mechanism that brings it to the next level.”

“If it’s true to its nature, native should blend in with the environment, the context that it's delivered in. It should flow and not be disruptive.”

“The creative has to adapt to the device, different platforms and the user’s emotional state at the moment they see the ad.”

So there, we have it - some great takeaways from an insightful and thought-provoking discussion. Two things all the panellists were agreed on were: Firstly, context is a key factor in landing messaging successfully, whether that’s ensuring that content is served up in a way that’s appropriate for the device people are seeing it on, or the mindset they are likely to be in when they see it. Secondly, while AI is, and will continue to be an important tool in the marketer’s toolbox, it works best when combined with human ingenuity and creativity.

As Pete put it, “There’s a perception at the moment, across pretty much every industry in the world, that AI is going to replace every single human. But AI doesn’t replace people; it is additive”.