2025 challenged many of retail’s long-held assumptions. What looked like familiar patterns often turned out to be something different entirely, and in the process, a few key trends were either missed or misread by brands trying to make sense of shifting shopper behavior. Here are three trends from 2025 that were either overlooked or misunderstood, and why they will matter in the year ahead.

American Express refreshed its consumer and business Platinum Cards, complete with $895 annual fees and an enhanced slate of travel, dining, entertainment, and shopping credits. Amex’s annual fee is creeping closer to $1,000, and the issuer is arguing its fleet of perks—on paper worth over $3,500—more than pays for the price hike. However, cardholders will need to enroll to access many of Amex’s latest offerings, a snag that’s likely to reduce members actual use rate of their perks—eroding Platinum’s value and potentially pushing away the premium consumers Amex is trying to court.

The news: TikTok is experiencing massive growth among older generations, with adoption for users 45+ growing 1,200% between 2019 and 2025, per CivicScience—suggesting its stickiness across demographics and emphasizing older consumers’ buying power. Our take: A successful social advertising strategy will strike a balance: Valuing younger demographics for their growing influence while accounting for the enduring importance of older generations for driving digital purchases as social media adoption skyrockets.

The news: Pause ads are gaining momentum as a promising format that boosts the potential of connected TV (CTV) ads to capture user attention, per findings from a Magna and DirecTV study. Our take: While pause ads promise potential, advertisers must implement strategies that increase their’ appeal to drive measurable outcomes. Viewers across age groups prefer pause ads that offer the ability to save offers/reminders. And younger generations favor pause ads that have clickable buttons linking to the brand’s site or app (53% for Gen Z and 50% for millennials) or that offer scannable QR codes.

The trend: Gen Z adults and boomers are more likely to strongly support vaccines for disease prevention than middle-aged generations. The takeaway: Gen Zers mirror older people’s pro-vaccine stance. This might be surprising, but it also presents an opportunity for brands and marketers who can no longer assume that young consumers are purely skeptical of the healthcare system. Marketers will want to tap influencers and edutainment to make sure accurate information on vaccines and other evidence-based treatments is readily available.

A new poll finds consumers in the US and UK are almost evenly split—Gen Z is upbeat, Gen X is gloomy—amid a cost-of-living crunch and rapid tech gains. The results remind brand marketers that price, value, and purpose now collide at every purchase decision.

Millennials and Gen Zers can finance snow sport luxury with BNPL—boosting Affirm’s non-retail volume.

Partnerships are key to breaking into brick and mortar, but generational mattress-shopping divides could mute the deal’s effectiveness.

Baby boomers are more brand-loyal than US adults across multiple categories, according to Morning Consult. They show the highest brand loyalty (76%) for groceries and household goods.

Over a quarter (26%) of US adults currently or plan to use AI-powered voice assistants on their smartphones, the most popular AI feature among adults, according to a September 2024 survey from YouGov. However, even more (45%) don’t use or plan to use any AI-powered smartphone features at all.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss how much time Gen Z are actually spending on their smartphones, the less discussed places Millennials are spending their social media time, and more. Join host Marcus Johnson, along with analyst Paola Flores-Marquez and vice president of research Jennifer Pearson.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss the social media platform that actually gets the most attention from Gen Z, why millennials are losing their native social app, the one boomers are adding to their smartphones the fastest, and more. Tune in to the discussion with host Marcus Johnson and our analyst Paola Flores-Marquez.

Influencer marketing is often associated with Gen Z and millennials, and for good reason. Nearly half of both generations are more likely to trust an ad featuring an influencer they trust, according to June 2024 data from Captiv8. But 79.8% of US Gen Xers and 53.9% of US baby boomers will use social media this year, per our May 2024 forecast. To ensure marketers seize the untapped potential for reaching these generations, we’ve compiled a generation-by-generation breakdown on how and where to reach them.

For marketers, ‘OK, boomer’ isn’t such a bad phrase after all. Baby boomers (ages 60 to 78) make up 20% of the US population yet control $76 trillion—52% of the country’s net wealth, per the Federal Reserve as reported by The Economist. Despite marketers fixating on Gen Z, boomers wield substantial spending power and have distinct behaviors worth noting.

Online shopping is popular across all demographics, but the where and how differs by age, culture, and interests. Current purchasing behaviors can help retailers and brands target digital shoppers and anticipate new trends.

TikTok users are highly engaged. In fact, they’re more engaged than users of any other social or digital video platform. And a diversifying user base means marketers should lean even further into the TikTok opportunity.

Gaming became a popular online activity during the pandemic. Growth may be slowing, but it’s not shrinking, meaning that the majority of those who picked up the hobby during the pandemic have become long-term users.

They believe their FIs’ security measures are strong, but would like more controls—including biometric—for risky transactions.

The digitally native generation does not watch TV the same way baby boomers, Gen Xers, and even millennials might. Here are five tips we picked up at NYC Advertising Week that marketers can use to engage Gen Z with TV.

US social network user growth has slowed to a crawl, and that means the social platforms will compete fiercely for users and engagement. Marketers should optimize their spending to take advantage of shifting consumer behaviors.