DMEXCO 2025 was clearly dominated by Artificial intelligence — between buzzword overload and real business levers. My core observations: Platforms are increasingly taking steps out of our hands, CPCs are rising faster than inflation, but are becoming irrelevant metric, as algorithms are increasingly optimizing for business goals and click prices alone no longer say anything. Creative This makes it a decisive differentiating factor. At the same time, uncertainty in measurement is growing — Safari updates and fragmented data make a Single Source of Truth Like our OwaPro™ Indispensable. One topic that received too little attention at the trade fair is AdFraud: Up to 30% of traffic is fake — a billion-dollar problem that we have with AdsDefender address. My conclusion: Winners combine platform AI with own intelligence, data quality, creatives and fraud protection.
My impressions of DMEXCO 2025: Between buzzword overload and real levers
I was at the DMEXCO 2025 in Cologne. Two days, a full program on numerous stages — and one topic that stood above all else: Artificial intelligence.
AI was omnipresent. Everyone was talking about it, everyone wanted to show something. At the same time, many things seemed like déjà vu: more Buzzword overload as a business value. It reminded me of the blockchain conferences a few years ago — spectacular demos, but hardly any directly usable applications.
At the same time, it is clear: AI is no short-term hype. Rather, the situation reminds me of Mobile Or even Programmatic. Topics that initially seemed similarly abstract and overloaded, but which later fundamentally changed entire business models and working methods. The difference: With AI, this curve is likely to happen much faster.
AI & Data — Between Buzzword Overload and Real Leverage
Especially in the area personalization There were impressive demonstrations at the trade fair. An example: IBM iX, together with Adobe, presented how a complete sneaker campaign can be generated with WatsonX — including personalized creatives — in just 30 seconds. That was spectacular on stage and shows the direction in which things can go. But: There is a massive integration effort behind this. We are still a long way from “plug & play”.
The same is true for Agentic AI and co-pilot concepts. Zero UI, AI agents, MCP protocols — it's all exciting. I also believe that we will see various AI systems automatically orchestrate our execution in the future. But in reality, we're not ready yet. While Copilots work surprisingly well when writing emails, generating images, or videos, things look completely different when it comes to spreadsheets, analytics, or slides. There are high error rates — 40-60% of incorrect results are not uncommon. And in controlling, “roughly right” just isn't enough.
First-Party vs. Zero-Party
Another big topic was, of course, data. It is clear that: First-party data remain the currency of the future. Anyone who has clean CRM, clear events and conversions is ahead. But I also find it exciting whether we might not go one step further — towards Zero-party data. Startups like sleap.io experiment with wallet logins, which may replace the email address at some point. Users share data consciously, voluntarily and portably. This could create a new quality of consent. But realistically speaking, this is still a niche today. I think payment players such as PayPal or credit card companies have greater opportunities here because they already have reach and trust.
A sentence that stuck with me on DMEXCO:”Who trusts their analytics data?“— barely a hand went up. That is significant. Meta shows one number, Google Analytics shows another, and ERP or CRM says something else again.
Safari makes the problem even worse: 30-40% of traffic goes via iPhones. With the latest updates, click IDs such as gclid or fbclid removed, Google Tag Manager is no longer loaded at all under certain settings, IP addresses are regularly obscured.
Ironically enough, I doubted myself until recently whether our own OwaPro™ Tag Manager could even have a USP in the age of Google Tag Manager. But it is precisely this development that could prove to be real added value — if GTM is increasingly blocked in the future, our approach can suddenly become a decisive advantage for customers.
In the end, this means that an ever larger proportion of traffic can no longer be measured properly. That's exactly why we need a Single Source of Truth. Our journey at hurra.com™: We have OwaPro™ developed a system that makes data operationally usable — not quarterly, but daily. More about this can be found on our website at hurra.com/technologies/marketing intelligence. There, we'll show how OwaPro™ combines first-party tracking, CRM data, and MMM/Robyn to manage budgets based on facts.
The platforms are taking more and more screws out of our hands. Targeting options disappear, manual intervention is restricted. I understand the reason: Excessive optimizations destroy learning phases of the algorithms. But at the same time, there is a conflict of interest — the less we can intervene, the more control Meta, Google & Co. have.
The result: CPCs are rising. Loud Search Engine Land In many industries, click prices have risen faster than inflation. Our own data confirms this. Campaigns are increasingly running “on edge.”
And what else do we have left as a lever? Creatives.
Meta now recommends renewing creatives every 5-7 days, and TikTok even faster. With AI, production costs are so low that we are moving towards “intraday creative trading”: Assets are replaced, tested and optimized daily, perhaps even hourly.
For me, this means that anyone who doesn't invest in creative systems today — guiding ideas, hooks, formats, tests — will lose decisive leverage tomorrow.
Media & channels — growth yes, management no
In addition to AI, DMEXCO also included Retail Media and CTV/ATV the big issues. Retail media is turning from a niche channel into a full-fledged ecosystem: on-site ads, off-site ads, supermarket screens. At the same time, streaming is exploding — but with extreme fragmentation between platforms and providers.
The problem: Each channel comes with its own KPIs, data, and currencies. As long as you look at silos, you optimize channels against each other — and not the overall goal. My conviction: Without models such as MMM and tools such as OwaPro™ Real control is barely possible.
Commerce & Martech — Buzzwords vs. Reality
“Composable Commerce”, “Headless”, “DXP” — omnipresent at the trade fair. Many providers promise “the next big thing.” But my experience is: A complex MarTech stack is of no advantage if it is not integrated. The decisive factor is not how many tools you use, but whether they work together. This is where the buzzword façade is separated from real added value.
Creativity & Strategy — the human lever remains
Many sessions were about AI in the creative sector: AI filmmaking, creator economy, corporate influencers. Exciting, but my learning remains: AI can provide variants — the guiding idea, story and brand codes come from people.
This also confirms my work: We are now building creative systems that use AI as a booster — but the brand DNA, the story and the emotionality must come from us. Customers expect more and more Transparency and speed. With hurra.ai We have therefore created an interface that makes our knowledge available 24/7 — for teams internally and for customers.
A topic that surprised me: AdFraud Although present, he was not nearly as well represented on stages as his impact deserves. Astonishing for me, because we're talking about billions in losses here.
Figures presented at DMEXCO (Pixalate Research) are alarming:
- On the web, 18.6% of clicks are invalid.
- In apps, as much as 28.5%.
- Even CTV is 17.8%.
With AI, the problem is worsening. Bots can be trained more and more realistically, fake sites and content farms generate massive amounts of traffic, and huge amounts of invalid traffic are generated in the CTV sector.
We at hurra.com™ saw the problem early on. That is why we have AdsDefender.com initially developed for ourselves and has now licensed it as a SaaS solution for large direct customers and agencies. Even with Google, it's easy Save 10—15% trafficwithout sacrificing efficiency. And that's just the beginning — social, apps, and CTV offer significantly more potential.
In times of increasing CPCs and growing measurement gaps, fraud prevention is not a “nice-to-have” for me, but a duty.
In times of increasing CPCs and measurement gaps, Fraud prevention mandatory.
Further DMEXCO 2025 topics — a brief overview (additional block for breadth & SEO)
- Retail media: For many retailers, this is the way to compensate for falling e-com margins — either through their own retail media capacities or consistently via marketplaces.
- CTV/Total TV: Amazon is positioning itself strongly with its DSP, combining reach (Prime, first streaming integrations) with E-com data. youtube remains an independent heavyweight. Amazon Tech is still partly immature — Fragmentation & Measurement There are still construction sites. Nevertheless: an ecosystem that hardly any other DSP currently offers in this breadth.
Attention instead of CPC:CPC loses importance. Advertising that attracts attention and at the same time efficiently delivers reach is decisive (CPM). Attention does not guarantee conversions — but without attention, there is no performance.
Conclusion: My dmexco summary
- AI dominates, but much remains a buzzword.
- Creative, data & measurement are the real differentiating levers.
- Media is growing, but only controllable with SSoT & MMM.
- AdFraud affects up to 30% of traffic — and is becoming even bigger thanks to AI.
- Tools are booming, but integration > stack explosion.
My learning: The winners are those who don't blindly trust platform AI, but trust it with own intelligence, clean signals, creative systems and one clear fraud protection combine.
If you're interested in how we practically integrate AI, data and creatives into marketing setups — here is our short DMEXCO follow-up offer: hurra.ai/dmexco-offer
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