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Yearly, I maintain myself accountable for my earlier predictions by scoring them.
This 12 months, I received three misses, two combined outcomes, and 5 hits:
1. Agentic LLM Fashions Attain +100 Million Customers
Rating: Miss
Thought Course of: Once I made this prediction, I assumed that after fashions improved at reasoning, utilization would shift from chat to motion, and brokers would turn into the plain subsequent step.
Actuality: Whereas normal LLM utilization (like Gemini and ChatGPT) cleared +800 million weekly customers, true autonomous agent adoption, the place the AI performs advanced actions like “shopping for a product” with out oversight, remained a distinct segment power-user function with very wonky efficiency.
- Google’s “Challenge Mariner” and OpenAI’s agent options solely entered broad public beta in mid-2025.
- Most shoppers nonetheless use AI for info (chat) moderately than motion (brokers).
I over-weighted the pace of productization and consumer belief, and under-weighted how sluggish individuals are to let software program spend their cash or act with out supervision.
2. Extra AI Victims
Rating: Hit
Thought Course of: Right here, I zoomed out from early alerts like Chegg and Stack Overflow and handled them as the primary seen cracks in a broader margin collapse. My guess was that each time AI sits between consumers and a labor-intensive business, the center layer will really feel the ache first.
Actuality: By Q3 2025, main name heart outsourcing corporations confronted a disaster as enterprise shoppers switched to “AI Voice First” assist layers. Translation companies continued to shrink as browser-based, real-time AI translation turned native to OS updates.
- In RWS Holdings’ (translation companies) 2025 half-year report, Adjusted EBITDA plummeted 41%, and revenue earlier than tax fell practically 60%.
- Chegg continues to crumble.
- In September 2025, Concentrix shares dropped ~9% in a single day after lacking earnings expectations and slicing its full-year steering. Enterprise shoppers aggressively switched to “AI Voice First” layers. As a substitute of hiring 100 brokers for a assist queue, a consumer may rent 10 brokers for advanced points and use an AI voice agent for the remaining. This destroyed the standard “per-seat” billing mannequin that BPOs depend on.
3. AI Automation Turns into The Default For Advertising Groups
Rating: Hit
Thought Course of: This name got here from watching shoppers quietly sew collectively AirOps, Make, Zapier, and customized scripts whereas headcount stayed flat or shrank. I anticipated financial stress plus higher tooling to push advertising and marketing towards “techniques pondering,” the place workflows matter greater than channels.
Actuality: “System constructing” turned the first ability on advertising and marketing job descriptions in 2025.
- Recruitment knowledge from Ashdown Group (2025 Advertising Job Market Report) confirmed that roles involving marketing campaign automation and AI software integration commanded a 7-9% wage premium over generalist advertising and marketing roles.
- A 2025 HubSpot State of Advertising report discovered that 78% of B2B organizations had shifted to counting on advertising and marketing automation as their main infrastructure.
With advertising and marketing budgets remaining tight, the reliance on “Crew of One” constructions powered by automation chains (Make, Zapier, customized AI workflows) turned the business normal.
4. AI Overviews Evolve
Rating: Hit
Thought Course of: I learn AI Overviews as an experiment, not a completed product, and assumed Google would iterate towards extra personalised, richer SERP codecs as soon as multimodal fashions matured. The underlying perception was that Google needed to change the web page itself to defend its moat in opposition to standalone LLMs.
Actuality: Google examined its Internet Information SERP structure extensively as of November. For me (opted into SGE, Search Generative Expertise), it’s nonetheless the default. As a substitute of a typical listing of blue hyperlinks or a single AI reply on the prime, “Internet Information” breaks the whole search consequence web page into AI-generated “buckets” or headlines.
- In June 2025, Google started embedding YouTube Shorts and timestamped video clips instantly into AI Overviews.
- In December, Google began integrating AI Mode deeper into AI Overviews.
5. Reddit Turns into Half Of The Default Channel Combine
Rating: Hit
Thought Course of: I assumed that after Reddit confirmed up for every part from product searches to troubleshooting, entrepreneurs would haven’t any alternative however to deal with it like a core efficiency channel, not a aspect undertaking. Whenever you examine advert income from Meta and Alphabet platforms with how seen they’re in Search, Reddit’s upside turns into clear.
Actuality: Reddit had a banner 12 months in 2025. Advert income grew 61% YoY Q1 2025 – after which one other +68% in Q3 (to $585M). With Google Search persevering with to prioritize discussion board discussions, Reddit turned an unavoidable placement for advertisers searching for high-intent site visitors.
- Every day Energetic Customers (DAUs): Reached 108.1 million in Q1 and climbed to 116 million by Q3 2025.
- Reddit is the second largest website on Google by visibility (solely Wikipedia is bigger).
- Reddit lastly launched true ecommerce catalog advertisements (Dynamic Product Advertisements → DPA). Early beta checks in Q1 2025 confirmed these advertisements delivered a 2x increased return on advert spend (ROAS) in comparison with earlier codecs, making Reddit viable for “efficiency” entrepreneurs, not simply “model consciousness” groups.
- In fact, Reddit stays probably the most cited platform for many LLMs.
6. Extra Websites Cloak For LLMs
Rating: Miss
Thought Course of: I anticipated particularly B2B websites to maneuver tactically and quick by feeding bots a cleaner, extra structured model of their websites as soon as it turned clear LLMs rewarded that sample. Beneath sat the belief that folks would quietly bend the foundations if there was upside and no apparent penalty.
Actuality: The “Bot-Solely Internet” didn’t emerge by way of cloaking; it emerged by way of APIs and paywalls. As a substitute of making optimized variations for bots (cloaking), most main publishers aggressively blocked bots by way of robots.txt and lawsuits (e.g., The New York Occasions vs. OpenAI persevering with saga).
7. The Present Google Procuring Tab Will Turn out to be The Default
Rating: Miss
Thought Course of: I handled the Procuring tab as Google’s sandbox for a future Amazon competitor, just like how previous tab experiments leaked into the principle SERP. The core perception was that Google would push more durable on shoppable, personalised ends in the face of AI stress and ecommerce progress wants.
Actuality: Google saved the principle search tab distinct. Whereas the Procuring expertise turned extra personalised and AI-driven (typically resembling a feed), Google didn’t exchange the default search expertise with the Procuring tab interface for business queries.
8. AI-Generated Audio And Video Hits Mass Adoption
Rating: Hit
Thought Course of: Right here, I related the dots between quickly bettering generative instruments and the fixed stress on creators to ship extra content material with the identical or much less finances. I assumed that after instruments like Sora, Veo, and ElevenLabs crossed a primary high quality bar, they might seep into manufacturing pipelines even when audiences might nonetheless inform one thing was artificial.
Actuality: 2025 was the 12 months of the “Artificial Creator.” YouTube needed to replace its associate program insurance policies in July 2025 particularly to handle the flood of AI-generated content material. Regardless of the crackdown on “AI slop,” high-quality AI-generated B-roll and voiceovers turned normal for tens of millions of creators.
- On July 15, 2025, YouTube formally up to date its Accomplice Program (YPP) eligibility phrases to incorporate a selected clause in opposition to “Mass-Produced & Repetitious Artificial Content material.”
- The coverage explicitly demonetized channels that used “templated, programmatic technology” (slop) however protected creators who used AI instruments for “manufacturing help” (B-roll, voiceovers, scripting) so long as there was “clear editorial oversight.”
- 87% of creators now use AI of their workflows.
9. Google And Apple Divorce
Rating: Combined
Thought Course of: I learn the DOJ case as a structural risk to Google’s distribution offers and assumed judges would finally push on the default search preparations. My framing was that even a partial unwind of exclusivity might shift how search energy is negotiated, with out immediately altering who “wins” search. Decide Mehta’s first conclusion sounded so much like he would take a tough stance on cures.
Actuality: The DOJ treatment ruling in September 2025 was disappointing. A toothless tiger. The courtroom prohibited Google from paying for default exclusivity on browsers (Chrome/Safari) and units, however:
- Google can nonetheless pay Apple to be the default, however the contract can not say “Apple should not use anybody else.”
- The decide didn’t implement a “alternative display screen” just like the European Union, which leaves the door open for Apple to voluntarily implement alternative screens or supply options (like ChatGPT or Perplexity) with out dropping Google’s funds totally.
- Additionally, Apple is licensing Gemini for Siri.
So, was it actually a divorce or a compelled transition to an open marriage?
10. Apple Or OpenAI Pronounces Sensible Glasses
Rating: Combined
Thought Course of: This prediction got here from treating sensible glasses because the logical subsequent {hardware} floor for AI assistants, particularly with Meta gaining traction. I assumed that OpenAI plus Jony Ive, or Apple’s want for a brand new machine story, would pull a prototype into the general public eye even when actual adoption stayed years out.
Actuality: On November 24, 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and designer Jony Ive formally confirmed that their joint {hardware} enterprise (underneath the startup “LoveFrom”) had a completed prototype throughout an interview hosted by Laurene Powell Jobs. The machine was described as “screen-free” and “much less intrusive than a telephone,” aligning with the “sensible glasses” or “AI Pin” type issue predictions.
Nevertheless, it’s not but confirmed that OpenAI will publish glasses. It may also be some type of necklace machine. In the meantime, Apple didn’t announce a brand new product and is coping with management points as an alternative. After which, simply earlier than I hit publish on this Memo, Google introduced new sensible glasses for 2026.
My Conclusion: This Is The 12 months “AI Deployment” Started
For these of us in tech and digital advertising and marketing, we’re going to recollect 2025 because the 12 months the AI-driven “pilot packages” ended and official “deployment” started.
Not solely internally throughout our groups, workflows, and tech stacks, however we additionally watched basic search habits (knowledgeable by a long time of human + search engine habits) rework proper in entrance of us.
We didn’t get the sci-fi way forward for brokers shopping for our groceries (Pred No. 1) or widespread sensible glasses (Pred No. 10) simply but.
As a substitute, we received one thing extra pragmatically disruptive: A world the place advertising and marketing groups are half the scale however twice as technical, the place BPO industries (enterprise course of outsourcing) are collapsing, and the place “Googling it” more and more means “Studying a Reddit thread summarized by an AI.”
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
