Earlier this year at POSSIBLE 2025, some of the brightest minds in marketing, media, and technology came together to chart the industry’s next frontier. Among them was CRAFTSMAN+ Founder and CEO Alex Merutka, who sat down for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of advertising with Bria Bryant, CMO at Assembly, from the evolution of creative formats to the rise of AI agents.
As always, the big question wasn’t just what’s changing, but what to do about it. Below, we’ve pulled three top takeaways from Alex’s session, each pointing to a marketing trend that’s reshaping 2025.
“If you could demo an app before you download it… that was kind of the initial premise of the company.”
—Alex Merutka, POSSIBLE 2024
CRAFTSMAN+ was built on a simple but powerful idea: what if ads felt more like experiences than interruptions? That insight became the foundation of our approach to creative.
At a time when attention spans are shrinking and digital fatigue is rising, interactive ads aren’t just a nice-to-have, they’re table stakes, especially if your audience includes the largest, most lucrative, and most expensive generation to capture: Gen Z.
Interactive formats, like mini-games, quizzes, AR experiences, and playable previews, transform passive ad consumption into active engagement. And it works: studies show interactive ads drive 47% more time spent than traditional formats and boast a 91% video completion rate. They also offer invaluable first-party data via embedded features like polls or sliders, making them powerful tools for insight and acquisition alike.
As Gen Z leads the way in demanding authenticity, personalization, and play, brands must move beyond static creative. Platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram have leaned into this shift, prioritizing formats that invite users to swipe, tap, shake, and explore.
TL;DR: Interactive ads deliver results, and gamification is the hook. CRAFTSMAN+ was built on this insight. It still drives everything we do.
“Advertisers are using interactive ads to test what works before they build the product.”
—Alex Merutka, POSSIBLE 2024
Call it reverse engineering, or better yet, pre-validation. Increasingly, smart brands are flipping the funnel: instead of launching a product and then advertising it, they’re using ad creatives as test beds for product development.
This is the power of creative testing. By experimenting with different visuals, messages, and user interactions, marketers gain immediate insight into what resonates. Which color scheme gets the most clicks? Which story arc drives engagement? Which call-to-action drives lift?
Testing interactive ads early in the product cycle not only improves campaign performance, it minimizes risk and maximizes ROI by making sure the product lands with its intended audience. This approach enables brands to spend budgets more wisely and scale with confidence.
TL;DR: With creative testing, ads don’t just promote your product, they help define it.
“In three to five years, it’s going to be marketing toward bots.”
—Alex Merutka, POSSIBLE 2024
We’re entering the age of B2A: Business to Agent. As AI agents become embedded in daily life, shopping on our behalf, planning trips, filtering content, the next buyer a brand encounters might not be a person. It could be their AI assistant.
These agents will parse product specs, compare price-to-value ratios, assess trust signals, and optimize for user preferences. They won’t respond to vague branding or clever taglines, they’ll respond to data.
Marketers will need to rethink everything, from how value propositions are structured to how product information is encoded for machine readability. This means:
It’s a radical shift, but also a huge opportunity. Brands that adapt will not only win new kinds of customers, they’ll lead the next wave of advertising evolution.
TL;DR: In tomorrow’s world, you won’t just pitch to people, you’ll pitch to their AI. Get ready to market to the decision-maker behind the decision-maker.
From gamified ad formats to data-powered product validation to AI-mediated purchase journeys, one thing is clear: the future of advertising is interactive, intelligent, and increasingly agent-driven.
At CRAFTSMAN+, we’re helping brands stay ahead of the curve with creative technology that isn’t just innovative, it’s actionable. Whether you’re looking to boost engagement, run smarter tests, or prepare for an AI-first future, we’re building what’s next.
👉 Ready to future-proof your brand? Work with CRAFTSMAN+ to tap into the creative strategies that drive growth in 2025 and beyond.
🎥 Want the full conversation? Watch the complete interview with Alex Merutka and Bria Bryant here.