Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2025. Read them in this 17th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
With 2024 chock-full of AI advancements, what’s in store for the year ahead? Leaders at CallRail share their AI predictions as well as what else they expect in 2025 – from martech industry transformations to the impact of partnerships and more.
Those Solving for AI Fatigue Will Dominate the Market
In 2024, we saw an explosion in AI tools – and enterprises are now faced with the daunting task of figuring out which solutions are best suited for their needs. Marc Ginsberg, CEO of CallRail, believes that in the year ahead, those prioritizing developing AI solutions that simplify the experience for users will dominate the market:
“Over the next year, the biggest differentiator the market will see will be ease of use. Today’s businesses are constantly being overwhelmed by the explosion in AI tools, which is causing a growing need to reduce AI fatigue. Those that focus on developing practical products that can seamlessly integrate into current workflows and offer tangible business benefits will come out on top next year.”
The Year of Conversational AI
Ginsberg also anticipates that with small businesses trying to keep pace with the rapidly evolving needs of consumers, conversational AI will play a critical role in the year ahead:
“The star of 2025 will be conversational AI. Consumers are increasingly seeking more personalization during their interactions with businesses across channels – from texts to calls and beyond – and the best way to support these interactions will be through conversational AI.
In the year ahead, AI will go beyond just analyzing conversations to instead, actually having these conversations. This rise in conversational AI will bring an increase in AI agents. They will become an essential part of small businesses by offering personalized customer interactions to ensure businesses never miss a customer.”
It’s Time to Take AI Seriously
While 2024 may have felt like the year of AI, there was a heavy focus on the hype vs. actual impacts of the technology. This will change in 2025 according to Elliott Wood, Chief Technology Officer at CallRail:
“While AI’s initial glow will start to wear off in 2025, the tech will remain a major focal point in the year ahead. We’ll see the mindset around AI shift away from it being a ‘cool party trick’ to being viewed as a serious business tool with the power to impact a broader set of the economy. This will be largely driven by continued advancements resulting in larger, more powerful models which will allow AI usage to finally move beyond its early adopter stage.”
Convenience will Drive Enterprise Spending
Wood also believes that with enterprises drowning in software solutions, many will place their investments behind solutions that offer a simplified experience:
“It may not always be easy to predict what the year ahead will have in store, but one thing is for certain: 2025 will be the year of software simplification. Today’s enterprises have an influx of software tools in their toolbelts which has caused them to develop strong expectations around the tools they actually want to use. With a growing appetite for software tools that are easy-to-adopt, enterprises’ decision making process for software purchasing will be driven with convenience in mind.”
According to Wood, “the companies who prioritize offering solutions that serve a broad set of needs in a single package while also minimizing any necessary learning curve will be the winners in 2025.”
Striking Balance With AI Innovation and Concerns
What kind of AI advancements can we expect in the year ahead? Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail, believes we’ll see everything from AI agents to new security concerns:
“While 2024 felt like the year of AI, this momentum shows no signs of slowing down in 2025.
Looking to the year ahead, the continuation of rapid AI advancements will have broad impacts on everything – from how we engage with the tech to some more concerning potential scenarios – including:
- AI Agents: Despite AI agents already generating buzz in 2024, next year we’ll actually begin to see the power that they can bring through a myriad of use cases. We’ll see more connected experiences that allow users to not only create vacation itineraries but also offer the ability to book flights, hotels, and experiences all without having to leave the AI tool they’re using.
- Search Engines: All signs point to OpenAI launching a new search engine that’ll compete with the likes of Google. While in Beta, there are growing signals of OpenAI popping up all over as a source of referring traffic.
- Security Concerns: Since AI has been thrust into the spotlight, there have been murmurings about when – not if – we’ll see a big security breach. With bad actors’ continual focus on leveraging AI to their advantage – from using the tech to help their attacks to using it as an attack vector – we can expect that a breach is on the horizon for next year.
- The Impact of a Highly Competitive Market: Unfortunately, not every AI company will end up a winner – especially given how tight the competition has become in the market. We’ll likely see some companies begin to fold as they struggle to find product market fit while spending a good chunk of their budget to do so.”
We’re Not Running out of Data Anytime Soon
While we’re witnessing growing discussions around what will happen when AI models run out of data to train on, Sean McCrohan, VP, Technology at CallRail believes that this won’t be a concern we’ll be facing in 2025, or anytime in the immediate future:
“While 2024 heard rumblings of concerns about foundational models running out of data to train on – especially with the rapid pace the AI community delivered the advances in these models – the reality is these advancements are moving faster than we’re able to apply them. This gap between model advancements and the actual rate at which applications are happening will only continue in 2025. As this rapid pace continues, there isn’t a near-term threat due to foundational models as we’re already at a point where, should these advancements halt, we’d still be able to come up with new business use cases for years with current existing capabilities.”
Competition in the AI Market Will Mount
McCrohan also believes that the market will see increased competition among companies with AI offerings with those with prior experience dominating the space in 2025:
“In the year ahead, we can anticipate that the market for AI-powered products and features will see a drastic shift. No longer will the market be impressed with AI for the sake of it being AI, instead there will be a heavy focus on business value, with the solutions that are actually solving real-world problems coming out on top.”
“We’ll also see the market become increasingly dominated by those with substantial experience with other products in the space. These players have already worked with AI products and have seen them work, and other times fail, making it easier for them to pinpoint the best use cases for AI to drive value for businesses in 2025.”
The Shift from AI tools to AI Platforms
The explosion in AI tools that we saw in 2024 won’t continue into 2025 according to Kristin Marsicano, VP of Engineering at CallRail. Instead, Marsicano predicts we’ll see companies shift from solely having AI products or feature and instead developing their own AI-powered platforms:
“There has been an ongoing race to create well-trained, powerful AI models that don’t overfit. In the year ahead, this race will drive further demand for an increase in options of “off the shelf” models/tools that enable development teams to quickly deliver AI-powered products without having to invest in building their own models from scratch.”
“From this demand, we’ll also start to see more software companies move away from just having an AI product or feature to instead offering their own AI-powered product suite and platform. With increased use of these AI-powered platforms, companies will also see a shift among internal engineering/product teams. These teams will move away from just using AI-powered tools to enhance their development operations to using AI as a tool to build software that solves customer problems across their domains – from LLMs to pattern recognition engines and more – bringing new value to customers that they previously weren’t equipped to.”
Using AI to Power More Personalized Experiences
When it comes to AI, enterprises are now shifting their focus away from advancing their capabilities to the actual experiences the tech can offer. Megan McKean, VP, Customer Experience at CallRail, anticipates that in 2025, enterprises will leverage AI to offer customers more personalized experiences:
“With the focus of 2024 centered on advancing AI capabilities, in 2025 we’ll see the focus move to the actual experiences that AI can offer. Now equipped to actually bring their customers AI capabilities, companies will now be closely looking at ways they can use the tech to further enhance experiences for their customers. We’re already starting to see this with AI agents as many companies are rolling out more capabilities to ensure their solutions are offering seamless experiences that provide complete resolutions.”
“Companies will also be increasingly placing resources behind leveraging AI’s personalization and predictive capabilities. These capabilities are empowering companies to take a more proactive approach to the customer experience – which in turn can help them to reduce churn by providing customers with the experiences they want before they inquire about it and in some instances, before they may even know they want it.”
AI in Marketing Will Power Business Growth
We’ll continue to see AI’s impact across industries in 2025 and Emily Popson, VP of Growth Marketing at CallRail, believes that the marketing industry in particular will undergo a transformation:
“In 2025, the role of agencies will undergo a transformation. We’ll see agencies move away from being an extension of teams, to taking on a new role of professional business coaches.”
“With the rise in AI tools, agencies now have access to solutions that can take on the brunt of tasks that are typically tedious, allowing marketers more time to focus their efforts on driving the creative aspects. Along with the time back to focus on creative ideation, the use of AI-powered tools is also equipping agencies with unique insights that they can use to help drive more value for their clients – like easily identifying the area where leads are being lost. These insights allow agencies to go back to their clients with actionable next steps to address existing gaps or challenges so they can maximize their ROI.”
“Agencies will be increasingly viewed as professional business coaches as they leverage AI’s valuable insights to offer clients data-driven guidance that will drive business growth.”
Uncovering AI’s Real Value in Marketing
Laura Beussman, SVP of Marketing at CallRail, also believes AI will to transform the marketing industry – with tech marketers actually using the tech to market better:
“Marketers will create a virtuous cycle of marketing AI and using AI to market. While nearly every tech marketer is promoting the AI capabilities of their platform, they’re not all actually using AI themselves to market better. The more marketers learn to promote AI, the more they will realize the ways AI can benefit their own marketing engine, whether creating content, finding trends and themes of feedback in conversations, or creating code for their website.”
Further, in the year ahead, as tech marketers are selecting their marketing tech stack, their learnings from promoting AI will help them separate AI fluff from real value-adding AI capabilities.”
AI’s Will Increase Accountability for Marketers
Beussman also expects that AI will increase responsibilities for marketing teams:
“With AI making lead handling easier, marketing accountability will increase. AI has made insights into lead handling more visible for marketers. With this newfound visibility into the lead journey – from lead handling to conversions – allowing marketers to optimize leads further into the funnel, we’ll see marketers continue to be more accountable for new revenue/units.”
The Growing Collaboration Between Partnership Leaders and CROs
In 2024, we saw an uptick in partnerships between major companies. With industry collaboration taking center stage, Mike Stocker, VP, Partnerships at CallRail, believes that CROs will increasingly rely on partnership leaders in the year ahead:
“The role of partnership leaders will evolve in 2025. With a broader industry shift among sales organizations to identify ways to incorporate more around partnerships, it’s imperative for partnership leaders to become tightly aligned with sales.”
“This is creating additional responsibilities and expectations for partnership leaders including driving partner-sourced deal flow and revenue as well as demands for more partner co-sales. As partnership leaders take on more, they’re becoming an important force in driving businesses’ growth strategies and CROs are taking note of the impact they’re bringing. In 2025, we’ll see more partnership leaders reporting into CROs as the line between partnerships and what used to be channel sales becomes increasingly blurred.”
Why Integrations are the Future for Martech
Enterprises are struggling to balance a surplus of tools and Stocker believes that in order for martech companies to thrive in today’s current landscape, they must prioritize integrations to bring a more simplified experience to customers:
“Martech companies that aren’t prioritizing integrations will fall behind in 2025. For those making software purchases, partner integrations have become a major factor in the decision-making process when selecting marketing solutions. Buyers are seeking solutions that can help make their lives easier, and partner integrations enable a seamless fit into existing tools that they’re already leveraging. These integrations also equip teams with valuable insights that can be leveraged across applications.”
“Companies who aren’t placing efforts behind integrations run the risk of falling behind as buyers continue to seek solutions that offer them a simplified experience in the year ahead.”
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