5 Strategies to Grow Brand Awareness in 2025
If 2024 was the year brands tried to be heard, 2025 is the year they must be remembered. Consumers scroll faster, skip more, and trust lesa. Yet they also reward the brands that feel present, useful, and unmistakably themselves. Below, a clear, reported playbook for leaders who want their brand to be the one people think of first (and last).
1) Programmatic advertising (the awareness engine you control)
Programmatic has matured from “cheap reach” to the most controllable way to build recognition at scale, across CTV, online video, display, in-app, audio, and DOOH, without torching frequency or brand safety.
What works now:
Quality over quantity. Prioritize premium, verified supply and contextual + attention signals to reach real people in receptive moments (not just “impressions”).
Tight frequency discipline. Awareness rises with smart, staged exposure.
CTV as a memory multiplier. Pair CTV with mobile video and display to reinforce recall across screens.
Brand safety and suitability. Pre-bid controls, fraud filters, and post-campaign verification are table stakes for protecting hard-won equity.
Proving it. Track branded search lift, direct traffic, attention/active time in view, ad recall surveys, and brand mentions. These are stronger awareness proxies than raw reach.
During Amazon’s Prime Day, the company uses programmatic and retail media to surround audiences across devices for weeks before the event. Prime Day isn’t just a sale, it’s an engineered awareness cycle that dominates attention worldwide (About Amazon – Prime Day Recap).
Blasto’s full-scale ecosystem — SSP, DSP, and Ad Exchange — was built to make brand growth measurable and safe. Advertisers access premium, verified inventory; publishers get fraud-free demand; both sides get transparent reporting and frequency governance that respects people and budgets.
2) Social-first creative and creator partnerships (culture, not just content)
Social has become the primary way people keep up with what’s new. Treat it as a first-run channel, not a dumping ground for TV cut-downs. Lean on creators, especially niche experts and micro-influencers, to translate your brand into the vernacular of each community. Large marketers shifting half of their budgets into social and influencer activity aren’t chasing fads; they’re following attention and credibility.
How to do it well
Co-create formats native to each platform (hooks, pacing, captions).
Give creators room to be themselves; over-controlling scripts kills trust.
Measure for saves, shares, and completion rate — signals of resonance that predict recall.
Duolingo’s TikTok strategy transformed a language-learning app into a global pop-culture brand. By embracing humor, memes, and community storytelling, Duolingo built millions of organic impressions and brand recall (TikTok for Business Case Study).
3) Thought leadership with newsroom discipline (own the conversation you want to win)
People remember the brand that explains the world to them. Publish consistently useful perspectives: field data, benchmarks, teardown posts, and short explainer videos. Package them like a newsroom (tight headlines, scannable structure, clear takeaways). Map every piece to a question your ideal buyer actually types or asks.
Editorial guardrails
One thesis per asset.
Evidence before opinion.
Visuals that teach (not stock filler).
Distribute where it will be discovered — search, email, LinkedIn, partners.
Apple’s product keynotes are a masterclass in thought leadership. Each September, the world stops to watch. Apple doesn’t just announce specs, it educates, narrates, and builds anticipation months in advance (Apple Newsroom – iPhone 17 Launch).
Your brand doesn’t need a billion-dollar stage, just a consistent editorial rhythm that builds authority and trust.
4) Partnerships, events, and moments (borrow memory, then earn it)
Sponsorships, pop-up labs, and category collaborations still punch above their weight when they’re relevant. Tie your brand to a moment your audience already anticipates, industry weeks, cultural drops, or seasonal rituals, and use programmatic to surround the moment before, during, and after.
The goal isn’t logos on step-and-repeats; it’s distinctive mental availability: the cues that make people think of you, fast.
Spotify Wrapped turned personalized data into a global cultural event. Each December, users flood social media with their “top artists” lists: millions of people voluntarily promoting Spotify’s brand identity (Spotify 2024 Wrapped).
Brands can recreate this by finding annual rituals that people want to share and owning the narrative through community participation.
5) Measurement that respects how memory forms (and budgets behave)
Awareness can feel fuzzy. It isn’t. Blend behavioral, search, and survey signals:
Direct traffic & branded search volume (trend lines via Analytics/Search Console).
Social engagement quality (shares/reposts and meaningful comments outrank likes).
Brand mentions & sentiment (social listening).
Ad recall/consideration lift (quick pulse surveys on exposed vs. control).
These metrics are widely recommended in current practitioner guides and social analytics research and they tie the “invisible” work of branding to visible movement in traffic and conversion efficiency.
Gymshark used influencer marketing and data-driven tracking to build a $1B business in under a decade. They measured brand lift through social mentions, engagement rate, and branded search spikes around launches (House of Marketers Case Study).
Final Thoughts: The New Shape of Awareness
In 2025, the brands that win won’t be the ones that shout the loudest — they’ll be the ones that understand attention as a finite, earned resource.
They’ll use programmatic technology to reach the right people, creators to speak their language, stories to teach instead of sell, and measurement that values memory over clicks.
At Blasto, we believe awareness and performance aren’t opposites — they’re partners.
Our SSP, DSP, and Ad Exchange form a transparent ecosystem where advertisers grow safely, publishers monetize confidently, and both build trust through verified, data-backed results.
Discover how Blasto helps brands grow through trust and transparency.
Visit Blasto DSP.
