Digital Marketing Update October 2025

Welcome to our digital marketing update for October 2025. Read on to find out what’s changed in digital marketing this month.

Legislation Updates

AI overviews face formal investigation in the EU

Google’s AI overviews are facing formal investigation. (These are the AI generated summaries at the top of search results). Publishers are saying the summaries use their content without consent. Regulators are evaluating whether AI overviews violate EU laws on competition (the Digital Markets Act) and media diversity (the European Media Freedom Act). 

Direct Marketing guidance enters consultation

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is updating its guidance on direct marketing and PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations). The refresh of the guidance is driven by the new Data (use and access) Act 2025. The guidance is currently out for public consultation with the final version expected towards the end of this year.

Social Media Updates from October 2025

Use of social media for discoverability continues to grow

Rema Vasan (Tik Tok’s Head of North America Business Marketing) has said that 86% of Gen Z now search on Tik Tok instead of traditional search engines. (Helpfully, you can now see the percentage of video views that came from a search query, in Tik Tok analytics). 

Instagram continues to test reels as the main feed

I’ve talked about this one before. But Instagram have since clarified that when rolled out, users will be able to opt in to reels being the main feed – and photos will continue to be part of Instagram for those who want to see them. 

Stronger teen protections on Instagram

In April, Meta began using AI to detect under 18s and place them in ‘teen accounts’. The rollout expanded globally in September. And now Meta have introduced auto-on teen content filters. To be honest, it’s good to finally see Meta taking some responsibility for age-appropriateness of the content on it’s platforms. Too little too late? Perhaps. But progress is better than denial in my book.

Search Updates From October 2025

Rank tracking just got harder

Google has removed the &num=100 functionality in Search. If that means nothing to you, bear with me. It was a parameter that if added at the end of a Google search result url, it would update the results page to show 100 results instead of 10. (Rank trackers will have to run 10 separate queries to get the same results). It was also the parameter that many rank trackers (and LLMs) relied on to do position tracking. As a result, lots of Google Search Console accounts are showing big drops in impressions and large increases in average position.

Advertising Updates from October 2025

Meta’s ad-free subscription hits the UK

Meta has expanded it’s no ads subscription model (previously only available to users in the EU) to users in the UK. A subscription fee of £3.99 a month will mean users can browse Facebook or Instagram without being served ads. If popular, advertisers should expect to see available inventory shrinking, meaning you may have to rethink how to allocate budgets to maximise ROI. 

Chat GPT Ads

Well we’ve all been expecting this one. And whilst it hasn’t rolled out yet, the fact Open AI have been advertising a role named ‘Growth Paid Marketing Engineer’ gives us a pretty good indication that paid ads are coming to Chat GPT. Interested to see how this one plays out. With an audience of 700 million weekly users, will Chat GPT get a slice of your advertising budget in the future?

Google Ads introduced dishonest pricing rules

Google ad’s introduced an update to it’s misrepresentation advertising policy. It’s aim is to stop dishonest pricing. Google say they will suspend ads accounts that repeatedly breach the rules. The new rules (effective from 28 October) mean:

Things can’t be advertised as free when payment is actually required.

Ads cannot advertise a low price and then charge more.

Free trials must state the trial length and when charges begin.

Instagram Ads

Instagram is testing skippable ads on reels (like you get on YouTube). 

View From The Den September 2025

There’s definitely been a nod towards privacy and transparency in this month’s updates, which is encouraging to see.

I hope you found our digital marketing update for October 2025 helpful.

Come back next month for more digital marketing updates from The Marketing Den 😊

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