Industry Insights
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The Evolution of DOOH: From USB Sticks to Real-time Targeting
Leading Edge March 16, 2026In the not-so-distant past, an honest summary of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising would have been that it stretched the definition of “digital.” The processes behind making an ad appear on a digital billboard or screen were decidedly manual – someone physically plugged a USB stick into that screen, uploaded a file, and hoped everything worked as planned.
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The Power of Investing in Marketing Technology During a Recession
Leading Edge March 13, 2026The message from study after study on recessions is clear: Companies that invest in marketing, evolving media, and technologies during downturns emerge from economic uncertainty stronger than their competitors.
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ABX Identifies the Super Bowl’s Standout and Struggling Ad
Leading Edge March 11, 2026The ANA’s Inclusive Marketing practice and the Advertising Benchmark Index share insights from their Super Bowl 2026 analysis, revealing widespread declines across key creative KPIs, major gender based performance gaps, and the few brands — like Toyota — that delivered meaningful cultural and emotional impact.
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What Advertisers Should Rethink About Audio Heading into 2026
Leading Edge March 11, 2026In 2026, media plans are being shaped with greater discipline than in recent years. Budgets face closer scrutiny, planning cycles are more defined, and accountability expectations are clearer. After an extended focus on short-term performance, many advertisers are moving toward a more balanced approach to growth that values brand building alongside efficiency. That shift is already changing how channels are assessed across the media mix.
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Dave Lew of the American Cancer Society on Brand, Performance, and Trust in Mission-Driven Marketing
Pulse March 10, 2026Ahead of his session at ANA’s members-only conference, From Data to Action: Powering The Intelligent Marketing Engine, on March 24 in Atlanta, we spoke with Dave Lew, chief marketing officer at the American Cancer Society, about the evolving relationship between data, brand, and performance in modern marketing.
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Creating Brand Value That Endures
Pulse March 9, 2026Explore what makes brands truly iconic at the 2026 ANA Brand Masters | ICONS Conference, with insights on brand distinctiveness, financial value, and navigating an AI-shaped marketplace.
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Why CTV and Social Media Work Best Together
Leading Edge March 9, 2026Today’s consumer journey is fluid, multi-screen, and often simultaneous. To drive meaningful brand impact and business outcomes, marketers must design strategies that acknowledge this behavior, especially when it comes to CTV and social media.
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Prototypes Made Possible: Unlocking Innovation with AI
Leading Edge March 6, 2026Learn simple ways to use prototypes — from sketches to AI‑generated demos — to communicate ideas and refine assumptions with stakeholders.
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What Do Data Privacy Protection and World Series Championship Teams Have in Common?
Leading Edge March 6, 2026Data privacy protection is a lot like a World Series-winning baseball team — triumphant in the face of changing rules and disruptive new technologies. On winning teams, the best players don’t sit on the sidelines. Home runs and grand slams power success, and there’s always a lot at stake.
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AI Becomes the Operating System of Marketing
Leading Edge March 4, 2026Improving organizational and team efficiencies does not just hinge on technological advancements but also stems from structural and creative strategy. While it may be tempting for team leadership to enhance consistency and optimization through artificial intelligence and martech solutions, fostering and developing an agile team is key.
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Inclusion Drives Impact: How Black Audiences Are Shaping Media and Brand Performance
Leading Edge March 4, 2026Nielsen data shows how authentic cultural representation drives Black consumer engagement, loyalty, and brand impact across media and advertising.
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Four Ways to Deepen and Enhance the Customer Experience
Pulse March 2, 2026Marketers elevate customer experience through personalization, trust, transparency, and data-driven improvement to drive loyalty and long-term growth.
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Audience Strategy in the Age of AI and Instability
Leading Edge February 27, 2026So far in 2026, organizations are operating in an environment shaped by multiple, overlapping sources of uncertainty. For many sectors, and particularly for nonprofits, this convergence is influencing how decisions are made, budgets are allocated, and risk is assessed.
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Maria Givens of Bayer Discusses In-House Media and AI
Pulse February 27, 2026Bill Duggan, group EVP at ANA, chatted with Maria Givens, VP and head of media & digital platforms for consumer health at Bayer, ahead of the 2026 ANA Media Conference from March 25 to 27 in Nashville.
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Three Ways to Fuel Your Algorithms with High-Velocity Intent
Leading Edge February 25, 2026The marketing industry has spent two years obsessed with the "black box." We’ve watched as Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max (PMax) took the wheel, automating everything from bidding to creative rotation. The promise was simple: provide your budget and first-party CRM data, and the AI will find your customers.
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Survey: The Key Skillsets Marketers Need to Succeed in 2026
Leading Edge February 24, 2026From October through December 2025, select ANA members were invited to answer a brief survey on talent development and future skills.
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DJ Perera of Ad Council on Leveraging Sports Platforms to Destigmatize Mental Health
Pulse February 23, 2026DJ Perera is CMO of the Ad Council. She will be speaking at the ANA Media Conference, March 25 to 27 in Nashville, Tennessee. ANA SVP of media practice Julie Weitzner recently sat down with DJ for a pre-conference interview to discuss how sports storytelling, and the media ecosystem that supports it, can destigmatize mental health and move culture forward.
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The Marketing Stack Is Being Rewritten Upstream
Leading Edge February 23, 2026For years, marketers have debated which platform should sit at the center of the marketing stack. The assumption has usually been that the answer lives downstream, inside a marketing cloud, a customer data platform, or a growing constellation of SaaS tools designed to collect, unify, and activate customer data.
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Findings from ANA’s New Programmatic Supply Chain Report
Leading Edge February 20, 2026ANA has now released the follow-up report, Understanding the Role of Direct Contracts In the Programmatic Supply Chain. The purpose of this work was to go deeper on the issue of programmatic media transaction costs to reduce those costs – which could also help reduce loss of media productivity costs.
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Artificial Intelligence Gets Down to Business: From Experimentation to Infrastructure
Leading Edge February 19, 2026A look at how AI is shifting from experimentation to essential marketing infrastructure, reshaping workflows, governance, and organizational readiness for scalable impact.
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