If only we had a dollar for every time a client told us that they found Google Analytics tedious and intimidating. But it’s one of those marketing necessities you have to consider anyway because setting sales targets would be a complete waste of time with effective digital marketing campaigns.

Talking about ad campaigns, 2025 began in a rather interesting fashion. 

Or should we say: we are certain that the poor marketing spend trend from the last quarter of 2022 may continue well into 2025 because everyone is adjusting to the global recession and worsening inflation rates.

Not that anyone enjoys talking in circles about budget cuts and how to “do more with less”—but here we are again, poring over spreadsheets and scrutinizing campaign performance. Sometimes you get lucky and find a small leak you can patch up, and—if you’re persistent—maybe a channel that still pulls its weight. I can’t help but feel we’ve seen this all before, but each year, the levers and dials are ever so slightly re-labeled. There’s always some new metric that starts to matter, or an old one that quietly drops out of the conversation.

It’s weird: in a room full of marketers with all these analytics dashboards open, there’s still a lot of guessing going on. A lot of “what-if we try this?” and “maybe it’s seasonal,” like digital weather forecasters charting some invisible storm. But at some level, those guesses are how new ideas get a foothold—especially when no one’s in the mood to approve a wild spend. In 2025, just tracking, tweaking, and trusting your gut is almost a strategy in itself.

Cutting advertising costs will not solve the problem if the marketing campaigns are inefficient or if you do not implement and make decisions based on the marketing data you analyze.