Blue Tiger Engage June 2025
BT Engage: June Newsletter
Welcome to Blue Tigers monthly newsletter Engage, bringing you all the latest news, trends and updates from across the media landscape. In this month’s edition we wrap up Q2 2025 and look at the major news stories that captured the headlines.
Sky, ITV and Channel 4 join forces in fightback against big tech’s ad market dominance
The TV streamers are pooling their advertising services to make it easier for small companies to run campaigns
Sky, ITV and Channel 4 are to fight back against the social media companies Facebook and YouTube by pooling their streaming advertising services to make it easier and more affordable for millions of small businesses to run ad campaigns.The project is an attempt to break big tech’s stranglehold over the UK’s £45bn ad market.
The project is an attempt to break big tech’s stranglehold over the UK’s £45bn ad market.
Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have increasingly dominated the UK ad market and now hoover up two-thirds of the £45bn spent by brands annually.
While this has damaged the traditional TV advertising businesses of Sky, ITV and Channel 4, most of big tech’s ad revenues come from small and medium-sized businesses with smaller budgets that cannot afford to advertise on TV or pay agencies to book campaigns.
Now Sky, Channel 4 and ITV are providing their streaming ad space in one marketplace, allowing smaller advertisers to easily run a campaign across all their streaming services simultaneously.
The broadcast video-on-demand market (BVOD), which includes the streaming services run by traditional UK broadcasters, is worth about £1.1bn annually, according to AA/Warc figures.
As UK broadcasters have increased the scale of their streaming businesses, the BVOD advertising market continues to grow rapidly, helping to offset the decline in spending on traditional TV, which fell to £3.9bn last year.
Is Google about to destroy the web?
Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the “machine web”.
The web is built on a simple bargain – websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That’s how most sites make money.
An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.
This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You’ll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics’ predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web’s business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.
People use Google Search five trillion times a year – it defines the shape of the internet. AI Mode is a radical departure. Unlike AI Overviews, AI Mode replaces traditional search results altogether. Instead, a chatbot effectively creates a miniature article to answer your question. As you read this, AI Mode is rolling out to users in the US, appearing as a button on the search engine and the company’s app. It’s optional for now, but Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, said it plainly when launching the tool: “This is the future of Google Search.”
Here’s the problem critics foresee – AI Overviews already sends much less traffic to the rest of the internet, and many fear AI Mode could supercharge that trend. If this comes to pass, it could crush the business model that’s fuelled the digital content you’ve enjoyed for almost 30 years.
If Google makes AI Mode the default in its current form, it could potentially have a devastating impact on the internet. Some say it will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers, and it will disincentivise content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more. Google holds all the power.
Google says these concerns are overblown. In fact, the company believes AI Mode will make the web healthier and more useful.
“Every day, we send billions of clicks to websites, and connecting people to the web continues to be a priority,” a Google spokesperson says. “New experiences like AI Overviews and AI Mode enhance Search and expand the types of questions people can ask, which creates new opportunities for content to be discovered.”
But Google and its critics agree on one thing: the internet is about to look very, very different. The next year or so will likely mark the end of an era online. The only question is what our world will look like when the dust settles.
Instagram Expands Its Reach with Google: A Game-Changer for Professional Accounts’ Visibility
Starting July 10, 2025, Instagram will begin allowing search engines to automatically display public photos and videos from professional accounts in search results, according to new in-app notifications.
This applies to content that is already publicly visible on Instagram, but now it may appear more broadly across the web, such as on Google, without requiring users to log into Instagram. Creators will still have the option to opt out through their account privacy settings.
Some are saying this is a brand-new feature, but Instagram has quietly allowed creators to toggle this setting on or off for several months. What may be new is that Instagram will now automatically enable this by default and that search engines are beginning to surface more of this content.
Either way, this points to a larger trend. Social platforms and AI-powered search engines are becoming primary tools for content discovery, helping users find products, local spots, creators, and news.
This change gives creators and brands a new opportunity to increase visibility and traffic to their Instagram accounts, especially if they take the time to optimise their posts. Refining captions with relevant keywords could help content rank higher in search. TikTok is often considered the leader in social media search, but Instagram, along with platforms like YouTube, is clearly working to strengthen its own discovery capabilities.
For further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Blue Tiger Marketing, we’re here to help you navigate the changing landscape effectively, leveraging new opportunities while mitigating potential risks.
Sources:
The Guardian
Adexchanger
BBC/Getty Images
The Drum
Marketing Week
