Trump tariffs are here. And, so is the pressure to make media spend smarter

Few marketers will admit to pulling the plug on campaigns just yet — but there’s no denying it: the ad world is bracing itself in light of the news last week.

President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, officially announced April 2, triggered the biggest drop on the New York Stock Exchange since the height of COVID. With new tariffs slapped on nearly every country, the ripple effect on digital marketing budgets is already being felt. 

Forecasts are falling fast. I read in Digiday this morning, that Madison and Wall slashed their 2025 US ad spend growth projection from 4.5% to 3.6%. MAGNA followed suit, trimming from 7.3% to 6.3%. Both cite tariff-induced economic uncertainty as the key reason.

And we’re only getting started.

The end of “Business as usual”

CMOs are now navigating two urgent challenges: protecting budgets and proving ROI. With inflation rising and recession threats looming (did we ever come out of the last one?!), many media plans built in January are already out of date. 

But this isn’t just about cutting down on spend - it’s about transforming strategies.

For a long time now, marketers have actively had to rethink how they buy media. And this latest news has certainly given them an extra push. They’re doubling down on value, not volume, giving new momentum to strategies focused on efficiency, like curated media buys and direct publisher deals - areas where @curate has always championed smarter, cleaner, more accountable ways to invest.

As Greg MacDonald, CEO of Chelsea Strategies, put it: “Clients are even keener than usual to explore the levers for media efficiency.”

Curation: A pretty positive future in a pretty crap era.

Let’s be clear: media curation isn’t new. But it’s now a necessity.

With every dollar under the microscope, brands are asking tough questions about supply paths, vendor fees, and wasted impressions. In that context, curation - the process of assembling premium inventory packages powered by data and transparency -  is moving from niche to mainstream.

“Everyone’s looking to go more direct,” says Jeremy Whitt of Hanson Dodge. “We’re going to curate our inventory lists even more because we can get better value on higher-quality inventory.”

While direct deals bypass some of the ad tech middlemen, they come with trade-offs in time and scale. That’s where tech-driven curation offers a compelling alternative: the ability to reduce waste, maintain control, and drive outcomes without rebuilding media plans from scratch. All with the needed transparency and efficiency that AI-powered tools can bring.

Do more with less. Again, please.

Marketers aren’t just dealing with economic chaos (for which feels like an eternity). They are contending with CFOs eager to tighten the purse strings. And marketing budgets are, as always, among the first to go.

This creates a perfect storm: a high-stakes environment where media waste simply isn’t an option anymore. Brands must do more with less. A sentence I think we’ve all become accustomed to over the last decade. 

For too long, inefficiency in media buying has been tolerated because the cost of change felt higher than the cost of staying put. But with tariffs and recession risk shaking the table, that calculation has flipped.

In other words: the game has changed. Marketers no longer have the luxury of buying bloated impressions through inefficient pipes. They need better outcomes - and they need them now.

What’s next?

The truth is, nobody knows how long the tariffs will last, or how deep the economic impact will go. But one thing is clear: every marketer needs to revisit their media strategy and ask, “Is this the smartest way to spend our budget?”

The winners? They’ll be the ones who lean into efficiency, embrace transparency, and finally ditch the layers of complexity and cost that have long plagued the digital ad ecosystem.

At @curate, we’ve always said media buying should be simpler, smarter, and more accountable. Now, it has to be.

Let’s grab a coffee (don’t worry, we’ll absorb the inflation) and chat more.