The global digital content creation market size is expected to increase from $32.26 billion in 2024 to $36.68 billion by 2025 and $117.51 billion by 2034—a compounded annual growth rate of 13.8% during this period.
Good content has always been the cornerstone of an effective and sustainable marketing strategy. Content has served as a toolkit to project a trustworthy brand, connect with potential customers and also serve as a lead generation mechanism.
So why are we discussing the role of content in 2025? And why are brands increasing their budgets for content marketing in 2025? Finally, what types of content are most effective now?
This article will discuss these key questions in detail.
Shift in Consumer Preferences
The digital marketing landscape in 2025 is more dynamic than ever before. As consumers demand greater authenticity, personalization, and value from the brands they engage with, content marketing has moved to the forefront as a core strategy for building trust and developing meaningful relationships.
In response, businesses are aggressively ramping up their content marketing budgets—offering it as much more than a profitable strategy for visibility and loyalty but more as a sustainable driver for business growth.
In today’s marketing landscape, personalization means more than inserting a first name into your email. As consumers interact with your brand across channels, they expect you to know their behavior, preferences and engagement with your brand. And any good marketer knows the importance of profiling the user behavior and capturing their preferences and delivering content that speaks to them.
This means strategic content creation that is strategic enough to speak to your customers along their purchase journey has become more important than ever.
The Rise of Owned Media
Banner blindness and the prevalence of ad blockers have rendered many display ads irrelevant, whereas earned media like press mentions or influencer shoutouts are harder to control and more expensive to sustain. While CPMs and CPCs continue to rise on channels like Meta, Google, and TikTok, brands are asking themselves if the long-term ROI of rented visibility is worthwhile.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, the average CPC rose by 10%, reaching $4.66. Notably, according to PPC Land, 86% of industries experienced cost increases, with some sectors seeing rises of over 25%. Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) has also see rapid increases. In Q2 2024, display ad CPMs surged by 47% compared to the previous year, indicating a significant rise in costs for visual ad placements (PPC Land).
The cost to “rent” attention—whether through paid or earned media—is simply too prohibitive without guaranteed returns.
This changing landscape is taking brands to owned media—content assets that live on properties such as blogs, email newsletters, communities, podcasts, and first-party data-driven sites. Not only do these owned media offer inexpensive, long-term value, but are also powerful brand-building and performance marketing assets. A content ecosystem that is well-crafted gives utility, builds trust, and builds prospects throughout the entire buyer’s journey without relying on capricious ad platforms.
Rise of AI Overview and Zero Click Searches
The introduction of zero-click content and AI-powered search interfaces (e.g., Google’s Search Generative Experience aka Ai Overview) is reducing traffic to sites from traditional SEO sources. Users are being increasingly provided answers on search pages themselves, with fewer opportunities for clicks and conversions through organic search.
This may sound counterintuitive. If zero click searches are on the rise, why are we seeing a renewed emphasis on content?
This is because Google’s AI Summary bases its overview on high-quality online content. If your content is well-ranked or widely cited by authoritative sources, there’s a good chance it will be included in the AI-generated summary, even if users don’t click. This means, brands are investing in high quality content generation and content marketing to build brand trustworthiness.
So what kinds of content improve your chances of appearing in AI searches? Use these strategies to make your content discoverable by AI.
- In-depth, high-quality content written or reviewed by subject matter experts. This works because AI systems give priority to content pieces that demonstrate experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E.E.A.T).
- Well-Structured FAQs & How-To Guides. This works because clear, step-by-step or Q&A format is easiest for AI to parse and summarize.
Be careful though. Just creating well-structured FAQs is not enough to be featured by AI. It requires a consistent and cohesive content creation & marketing strategy that signals authority & trustworthiness.
- Original Research & Data-Backed Insights. This includes first-party studies, surveys, or internal benchmarks shared publicly. Although resource-intensive, first-party data backed content formats are highly sought after, both by human and AI. Both seek unique, verifiable content over generic content.
- Platform / Product comparisons and Buying Guides. AI and humans both seek expert opinions, objective and detailed comparisons between products, platforms and services. As these buying guides have a structured format along with supporting a high commercial intent, it’s a win-win for both AI chatbots and humans looking to make an informed decision.
- How-to Guides & Troubleshooting Content. This usually includes technical walk-throughs, fix guides, and developer-oriented content. This works for AI and humans because AI tools are looking for authoritative content to answer how-to questions. Humans, on the other hand, are also looking for experts to help them answer complex technical questions.
At Webtage, we follow a two-pronged content creation strategy to increase authority & trustworthiness of our client brands while also creating content in structured formats that allow for easy synthesis of commonly asked questions or answer complex technical questions. The two-pronged strategy involves a mix of:
- In-depth thought leadership content on trending topics that is enriched with expert insights, pointers, data & actionable takeaways to build credibility & trust
- Structured, user-intent-driven content t that directly answers questions that the prospective buyer is interested in.
We also extensively use schema markups for FAQs, reviews, how-tos, use authorship attribution with bios, internal and external links to valuable sources, and structured, user-intent-driven content t to make content easily digestible.
E.E.A.T. Still Matters
As mentioned above, as much as AI-driven overviews and zero-click answers disrupted conventional search behavior, one basic fact remains: Google continues to require quality content to understand and fulfill user intent. Brands that invest in expert-backed, trust-establishing content continue to derive long-term visibility and compounding organic value.
Google’s emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) has only become increasingly important in the AI era. Content that distinctly conveys these qualities—be it written by experts, has first-hand experience, or has original research supporting it—is likely to be incorporated into AI summaries, top of SERPs, and embraced by users.
Thought leadership pieces—such as opinion posts, in-depths, and industry report card articles—are no longer branding pieces alone; they’re now necessary for organic visibility.
Further, as Google’s algorithms increasingly aim for semantic understanding and topic clusters, content that provides answers within context to users—rather than keyword repetition—has a better chance of ranking. This means brands need to create comprehensive, interconnected content systems rather than isolated blog articles.
Content Still Fuels the Entire Funnel
Some things don’t change. Content still reigns supreme and forms the foundations of a strong marketing strategy. Content is no longer limited to blog posts and SEO. Omnichannel reuse of core content ensures consistency in messaging, maximizes ROI on content investments, and keeps the brand top-of-mind across touchpoints—even when organic search visibility is limited.
From top of the funnel high-visibility content formats like blogs, short-form videos, or insightful social media posts that introduce the brand, build awareness, and drive traffic to middle of the funnel content formats, such as case studies, gated assets, and even webinars, to bottom funnel content pieces, such as, product demos, explainer videos, product comparisons etc., a strategic and interconnected content system is a brand’s biggest asset in today’s digital landscape.
According to an NP Digital survey, 63% of participants plan on increasing their content budgets, another 33% plan on maintaining their budget, while only 4% plan to decrease their budgets. The most common reasons cited include increased budget to keep up with all content format types needed for all the platforms (as well as for different stages of customer acquisition). Second, despite the advantages of AI created content, human created content offers better ROI and human created content costs more than AI content at this time.
In our experience, a hybrid approach to content creation works best but that’s a blog topic for another time!
To Sum It All Up…
In 2025, content marketing has evolved from an important activity to a fundamental brand strategy. As traditional advertising continues to decline and digital ecosystems move toward AI-powered search, privacy-first platforms, and zero-click engagement, brands are reacting by investing more in high-quality, strategic content. The rising cost of paid and earned media has turned owned content into a cheaper, more manageable, and longer-term asset.
From building trust and credibility with thought leadership fueled by experts to capturing demand with learning videos, blogs, and curated content for search by AI, brands are embracing a holistic, full-funnel approach. Visibility is not enough with content anymore—it’s about providing value, relationship-building, and driving performance along the customer journey.
As we move ahead, the successful brands will be those that treat content as a cost item of a campaign rather than as a continuing business investment—one that accrues value and impact with every publication.
