4 Content Licensing Trends To Watch in 2025

As 2024 comes to a close, EVG Media (and many of you, we’re sure) is already well into our 2025 planning. While it’s impossible to predict the future, we can take cues from industry news, emerging trends, and our own insight to tell us what’s going to be the most talked about topics in the year ahead. So, before we officially flip the calendar, let’s take a look at our top four licensing trends to watch in 2025.

Trend 1: The Rise of AI

By now you’ve probably seen AI listed as a “trending topic” across every industry, and content licensing is no exception. Publishers have often taken issue with how Google uses their information in search results, including their AI results, with minimal attribution. Some publishers and licensing companies have agreements with AI companies like OpenAI to allow the use of their content with attribution. This allows AI to have great content to use in the answers they provide users while allowing publishers to maintain the rights to their content and monetize it within the AI platforms.

This is still in early development, so we’re certainly keeping an eye on it!

Trend 2: Using Licensing to Build Your Brand Authority

Building your brand is always important, but it’s especially important now because of shifts in the way people are searching for information. In the image below from SparkToro, we can see that social media is increasingly a starting point for searchers, and AI Overviews in search engine results pages have increased zero-click queries (where users get their answer on the page instead of clicking on a result). In short, there is a lot of competition for users’ attention, so you want them to have your brand in mind.

Here’s where licensing comes into play. If your brand has been recognized in some way, it’s imperative to promote that as much as possible. That includes licensing badges and awards materials that announce your accolades to your potential customers. If you’ve been recognized as the “best pizza in Austin,” let everyone know!

Trend 3: Authenticity in Product/Brand Recommendations

You may know how Google has been coming down hard on Parasite SEO, the practice of using a domain’s authority and ranking potential to try to get other content to rank by publishing it on the high-authority site.

An example of the types of content that have been particularly abused is product reviews and recommendations. When the content offers fluff and no real value, and especially when the content has nothing to do with the purpose of the main site. For example, a subdirectory of coupons on a site dedicated to world news.

In order to provide value and comply with Google’s policies, content needs to be on-topic to your brand, helpful, and authentic. It should demonstrate the brand’s expertise on the topic, for example, baby product recommendations by the Motherhood brand.

Trend 4: Building Authentic Relationships

Above all, people matter most, and while AI can help with efficiency and processes, it doesn’t replace the importance of building trusted partnerships with people who understand your brand and your goals.

We always view our clients as our partners, and our licensing team has decades of experience creating successful programs for brands that want to stand out.

Are you looking to delve into content licensing in 2025? Get in touch with our team and let us help you get started.