From Growth to Resilience: Reflections on 2025 and the Changing Media Landscape

Growth in digital media rarely makes a fuss. When it matters, you see it quietly– in patterns that start to repeat, in decisions that compound over time, in the ability to stay balanced while everything around you accelerates.

2025 tested us – and the industry. Technology kept moving at a pace that left little room to pause. Platforms shifted, formats fragmented, and audience expectations became sharper and less forgiving. In that environment, progress rarely came from bold leaps. It came from careful, deliberate steps, without losing focus.

I kept thinking of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast.” For media and AdTech in 2025, that wasn’t a metaphor – it was reality.

Movement, not momentum for its own sake

For Membrana, growth was never about speed alone. It was about direction. We expanded to 17 active markets and grew our network to 900+ publisher sites – almost double from 2024. But these numbers aren’t the point. They show that our model holds up in complex conditions: across markets, cultures, regulations, and business realities. Scale isn’t the goal – it’s the result of staying consistent in a volatile environment.

Running fast and knowing when to pace

The biggest question wasn’t whether to move, but how. Media companies now operate in two modes at once: endurance and acceleration. Sometimes patience wins, sometimes speed is critical. We trained ourselves to run a marathon without losing the ability to sprint when needed.

For our partners, that balance matters. Stability is rarely visible, but it’s deeply felt. Behind our growth is a strategy built for all kinds of “weather”: rapid expansion, regulatory changes, monetization pressure, uncertainty. The goal is simple: let our partners move forward with confidence, even when the world around them feels unsettled.

Video as infrastructure, not experiment

If one area made this approach tangible, it was video. In 2025, we produced 500,000 videos – almost twenty times more than in 2024. But the number itself isn’t the story. The mindset is. Video stopped being an experiment. It became infrastructure: a core layer of how publishers engage audiences and build sustainable revenue – on their terms, on their platforms, independent of external ecosystems.

Designing for attention, not interruption

Audiences are selective. Monetization through interruption no longer works. We introduced Video Stories for mobile-first consumption and Rewarded Ads, where users actively choose engagement and publishers benefit from higher-quality interaction. The principle is simple: respect attention, and it will respond.

Looking ahead

2026 for Membrana is about depth, not expansion everywhere at once: refining products, strengthening localization, investing in formats that balance audience experience with publisher independence.

In an industry that prizes speed, I’ve learned that long-term advantage lies elsewhere: in clarity. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of incentives. Clarity of value creation.

To our partners

Thank you for choosing us. Trust in this market isn’t given once – it’s earned over and over, often quietly, often under pressure. We value that choice and will continue to justify it with strategy, execution, and consistency.

Whatever pace the road ahead demands - marathon or sprint – it’s good to be running it together.