Industry Insights
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The Sales and Marketing Disconnect: Bridging the Gap
Leading Edge March 12, 2025Before businesses can start bridging the gap between marketing and sales departments, it’s vital to first acknowledge the all-too common disconnect.
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Equity Meets Efficiency: Partnering with Black Creators Drives Impact for Less
Pulse March 11, 2025Equity Meets Efficiency: Partnering with Black Creators Drives Impact for Less Black creators consistently drive greater media value than their non-Black counterpart across social platforms, especially with lifestyle and gaming content. Indeed, research by Group Black and Nielsen found that Black lifestyle creators deliver 10.5 times the media value of non-Black creators ($564,663 versus $53,653), with the gaming/esports sector following a similar trend ($106,390 versus $15,870).
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Women in Tech Are Creating the Industry They Want to See
Leading Edge March 11, 2025The advertising and technology industries are amid an AI-driven transformation. Yet, as we push the boundaries of innovation, one fundamental challenge remains — women are still underrepresented in leadership, particularly in technical and decision-making roles. While progress has been made, the path to truly equitable representation demands intentional action from leaders across AI, ad tech, and martech.
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Beyond the Legacy Agency Model: How to Chart the Right Course
Leading Edge March 10, 2025Ambitious marketers know — the legacy model is broken. Holding companies are designed for the world’s 1 percent of brands and the recent announcement of Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG is the biggest exclamation point to that (what services or capabilities did they really gain, by the way, but I digress). However, this model trickles down, impacting marketing services at all levels and requiring new solutions.
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Editor Highlights: Sustainability, LGBTQ+, and Content Marketing
Pulse March 7, 2025Do you feel like it’s a challenge to keep up with the latest trends, best practices, and marketing strategies? You aren’t alone. Bimonthly, ANA’s Pulse will highlight content within ANA’s resources hub, from Industry Insights, Knowledge Partner contributions, ANA Magazine, case studies, Marketing 101, Tools and Playbooks, and more. This way, the hard work of finding actionable insights, marketing trends, and helpful guides is done for you.
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One Programmatic Ad Is Too Many When It Comes to Child Sexual Abuse Material
Pulse March 7, 2025The recently released Adalytics report alleges that major advertisers had their programmatic ads placed on a website that hosts Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and such activity was not flagged by the brand safety vendors, setting off a wave of industry chatter.
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Taking Stock: Gender Equality in Marketing Right Now
Pulse March 7, 2025With the start of Women’s History Month, it’s a perfect opportunity to take stock of how far gender equality has come historically — and how far it still needs to go. Pausing to celebrate women is just as important as noting the still-existing gender gaps. As with many movements, progress necessitates a continuous approach, rather than “one and done” stagnation.
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The (Necessary) Evolution from Affiliate Marketing to Performance Marketing
Leading Edge March 7, 2025There’s been a fair amount of controversy around the browser extension coupon space, recently centering on whether PayPal-owned coupon company Honey is a scam. This boils down to the difference between harvesting existing demand and creating net-new demand for products and services.
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12 Award-Winning Nonprofit Campaigns That Will Inspire You
Pulse March 6, 2025The Association of National Advertisers’ Nonprofit Federation emphasizes the importance of nonprofits “learning from each other” and “sharing “industry-leading best practices.” One of the ways that the ANA facilitates this circulation of knowledge is through its case study program, which showcases the best and most pathbreaking work of marketers who in many instances are promoting the work of nonprofits.
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Accelerating Equality: Women Leaders in Advertising On International Women’s Day
Pulse March 6, 2025This year’s call to “Accelerate Action for Women Worldwide” couldn’t be more apt when we’re seeing controversy around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This year’s International Women’s Day theme stresses the urgent need to pick up the pace to break down barriers and strive for equality. If not, it will take five generations to reach gender parity.
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AI Plots Path for Measurement in the Coming Creative Explosion
Leading Edge March 4, 2025Creative is king. This may sound odd coming from a media person, but data supports this assertion. A 2017 Nielsen study of 500 advertising campaigns across all major media platforms found that the effectiveness of media tactics like targeting, reach and recency have improved over time. However, 56 percent of advertising’s contribution to sales is still attributable to creative. A similar (updated) study from Data2Decisions in 2023 revealed that creative is the second biggest multiplier of advertising profitability, second only to brand size, and many times greater than targeting.
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These Campaigns Successfully Marketed to Older Generations
Pulse March 3, 2025Marketers often are obsessed with appealing to younger generations, frequently assuming that speaking only to twenty-somethings and keeping up with the latest trends is the only effective way to gain awareness and loyalty.
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Women Drive the Economy — Are Brands Doing Enough to Keep Up?
Leading Edge March 3, 2025As we recognize Women's History Month and prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day, it’s an opportune moment to reflect on how far we’ve come — and how far we still have to go. Brands and businesses have long played a role in advancing gender equality, yet many are now hesitating. Some organizations that once championed equity are reassessing their commitments. Others remain uncertain about how to take meaningful action in an era where progress is increasingly met with resistance.
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The Art and Science of Structuring Ask Amounts for Maximum Impact
Leading Edge February 28, 2025At the heart of every successful fundraising campaign lies a delicate balance between the analytical precision and the intuitive understanding inherent in human intelligence. It is here, at this intersection, that we find the strategic power of a new approach, Donor Science, and its impact on the ask array model.
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9 Case Studies on Successful AI Integration
Pulse February 27, 2025Computer scientist Andrew Ng famously likened artificial intelligence (AI) to electricity, because it holds the power to radically transform not just one industry, but, rather, nearly all of them. Just as agriculture, transportation, communication, and manufacturing were all revolutionized by the harnessing of electricity, so too will they be revolutionized by the advent of AI. Nor is the marketing industry excluded from the potentialities unlocked by AI breakthroughs; indeed, marketers have been some of the first and most forward-thinking adopters of the technology, demonstrating its rich applications for advertisers and promising a rich future of fruitful applications.
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Market Mix Modelling: What Marketers Need to Know Right Now
Leading Edge February 27, 2025For years, MMM was the analytics equivalent of a clunky mainframe computer — complex, slow, and about as agile as a freight train. Marketers would wait months for a report that was practically ancient by the time it landed on their desk. Those days are over.
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Delta CMO Alicia Tillman: Why the Future of Air Travel Looks More Like a Five-Star Hotel
Leading Edge February 26, 2025A great hotel concierge doesn't just make dinner reservations — they orchestrate experiences, anticipating needs before they arise and turning ordinary moments into memorable ones. Now, Delta is bringing this same mindset to air travel, powered by AI. At the 2025 ANA/AEF Future of Marketing Leadership event, Delta CMO Alicia Tillman revealed how this vision is transforming the airline industry, where product differentiation has traditionally been fleeting — after all, every carrier flies similar aircraft and can quickly match new entertainment options or seat designs.
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We’re All Marketers Now: Putting the Customer First
Leading Edge February 26, 2025It’s not often that a business headline captures your attention and then continues to make you think. “Is your entire company thinking like a marketer? It should be.” This simple question and answer appeared in a recent email newsletter from McKinsey, linking to a series of articles. It made me consider how attracting and respecting customers today requires commitment from an entire organization. I also thought about how marketing’s role will continue to evolve as artificial intelligence (AI) recognizes new customer behaviors and instant analytics point to different ways of being relevant.
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Doing Business in the Digital RenAIssance: How to Thrive in the Apex of Innovation
Leading Edge February 25, 2025We are living in extraordinary times, and while some marketers feel as if they are hanging on for dear life, others feel that we were born for this moment. While much of what we are seeing today is new and novel — history is, in fact, repeating itself.
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7 Principles to Move Beyond Consumer Outrage, Rebuild Trust and Realign Purpose
Leading Edge February 24, 2025Brand leaders are confronting a stark reality: Trust continues to fray. Polarization, misinformation and a sense of betrayal permeate public discourse. Institutions once seen as pillars of stability are now viewed with suspicion.
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