Media Leadership Committee

The Media Leadership Committee is for members with a senior-level role leading integrated media strategy within their organizations. The committee will take a holistic, channel neutral approach to media with a focus on the media types of most interest to members. We will drive industry thought leadership, share best practices and expertise, and facilitate discussion and topics to inform better decision making. The committee will provide a forum for members to elevate themselves and their respective organizations via interaction with their peers (i.e., the media leaders at some of the most important companies in the world!), as well as an outside perspective from invited guests.

This committee helps program the annual ANA Media Conference, June 16-18, 2021. Presentations and event recaps from the 2021 ANA Media Conference can be found here.

Committee Co-Chairs:
Ben Jankowski, SVP Global Media, Mastercard
Jennifer Gardner, Senior Director Media, North America, Unilever

The ANA staff members managing the Media Leadership Committee are Mark Stewart and Leah Marshall. 

Discussion Topics 

• Media transparency
• Media measurement
• Data
• Emerging media opportunities (e.g.: VR, AR, AI, etc.)
• Digital media trends
• Programmatic media buying
• Content marketing
• Video
• Media agency relationship management
• Organizational structure for internal media management
• Global media issues

Leadership Initiatives

Data Sources for Media: A Buyer’s Guide
A tremendous amount of money is spent on data for media buying decisions, specifically third-party audience data. This paper recommends criteria for advertisers to focus on when evaluating data and provides a checklist to use when considering a new data partner. This is an initiative from the Trust Consortium, launched by the ANA in partnership with Reed Smith, the ANA’s outside legal counsel.

The State of Connected TV Report 2020
ANA and Innovid have partnered on a new study, “The State of Connected TV Report 2020.” Seventeen major marketers participated, running a total of 60 million impressions. Key findings: connected TV significantly extends reach, provides more interactivity and increases earned time over standard ad experiences.

Issues that Contribute to the Breakdown of Trust in the Advertising Ecosystem
The ANA launched the Trust Consortium in partnership with our outside counsel, Reed Smith, to help address the issue of trust between marketers and the advertising ecosystem. To identify future focus areas for the Trust Consortium, a survey asked client-side marketers to rate a number of issues on how they contribute to the breakdown of trust.

Media Agency Compensation Practices
Given the rapidly changing digital, social, and programmatic media landscape, the ANA fielded this survey to delve into the topic of media agency compensation practices and the related issues of performance incentives, programmatic compensation/transparency, as well as rebates, discounts, and principal based buying. ANA is well known for our triennial reports on agency compensation, which cover all types of agencies. Our last such report was in 2019. This year, given a number of member requests to our Marketing Knowledge Center, we conducted a deep dive specifically on media agency compensation.

2018-2019 Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising
For the fourth time, ANA and White Ops have partnered on a study to measure the among of fraud in the digital advertising ecosystem. Fifty ANA member companies participated in study. Results show that the war on ad fraud is succeeding and measures designed to block fraudulent impressions are working. Economic losses due to bot fraud are expected to total $5.8 billion globally in 2019, but for the first time even more fraud will be stopped than will succeed. The monetary losses, while significant, are an improvement over the $6.5 billion reported in the previous study released in 2017. The 11 percent decline in two years is particularly noteworthy considering that digital ad spending increased by 25 percent between 2017 and 2019. The report includes a number of recommendations for marketers.

How ANA Members Are Using Influencer Marketing
The term influencer marketing was cited from eMarketer and defined as "marketing that identifies and activates individuals who can sway the brand preferences, buying decisions, and loyalty of the broader population using their own opinions, beliefs, and/or marketing channels. The ANA released new research in April 2018 on how ANA members are using influencer marketing, which revealed that 75 percent of member companies currently employ the discipline and of those respondents not currently using influencer marketing, 27 percent indicated they plan to do so in the next 12 months. 

The Digital Transformation of Video Advertising Arrives
This report from the ANA and Forrester will help marketers plot a course to an omnichannel TV and video strategy, establish new processes, and upgrade their planning and buying skills. The research indicates that television advertising is at the cusp of significant change as marketers are incorporating the data-driven approaches of addressable and advanced TV into their plans.

The State of Programmatic Media Buying
Programmatic media buying has been a rising trend in the marketing industry over the last few years, and 2017 was no exception. Research conducted by the ANA shows that 85 percent of our members are now conducting programmatic initiatives, either in-house or with an agency. One of our most significant findings is that more than a third of our respondents (35 percent) are relying on their in-house media buying capabilities and as a result have reduced the role of external agencies that previously performed the same function. The 35 percent figure marked a notable increase from a 2016 ANA/Forrester report that found only 14 percent of ANA marketers were reducing the role of their external agency as a result of in-house expansion.

One Year Later: How ANA Members Are Addressing Media Transparency Issues
Sixty percent of ANA members have taken action steps in the past year to address media transparency issues. The most common action step related to the advertiser/agency contract. Audits and changes to programmatic buying practices also received attention.

Programmatic: Seeing Through the Financial Fog
With the rapid adoption of programmatic media, the supply chain has quickly become complicated — with agencies, trading desks, demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, data management platforms, exchanges, and publishers. To many, the result is a financial "fog." ANA, ACA (Association of Canadian Advertisers), AD/FIN Solutions, and Ebiquity PLC commissioned a study that provides practical solutions to help advertisers take greater control of their programmatic investments and to investigate the costs and economics of the programmatic ecosystem.

ANA Members on Walled Gardens: Overwhelming Support for Independent Audits by MRC
Facebook and YouTube have announced that they would break down their "walled gardens" and allow independent audits by the Media Rating Council. In an era of concerns about transparency in the advertising supply chain, these are very positive developments. The ANA calls on other large digital enterprises which have not yet undergone (or announced support for) such independent audits to embrace transparency and "break down their walled gardens" by allowing independent audits by the Media Rating Council.

Media Transparency 
ANA has been active on the issue of media transparency since 2011 when discussions on transparency began on a grass roots level in ANA committee meetings, including the Media Leadership Committee.  Those efforts paid off in 2016 with the release of the following:

• The report “An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry,” which concluded that non-transparent business practices were pervasive in the U.S. media ad-buying ecosystem.
• “Media Transparency: Prescriptions, Principles, and Processes for Advertisers,” which outlines recommended responsibilities for advertisers and agencies.

Sourced Traffic: Buyer Beware!
The concept of sourced traffic, or traffic sourcing (any method by which digital media sellers acquire visitors through third parties) is unique to digital advertising. Marketers investing in digital advertising need to understand sourced traffic, the issues associated with it — including lack of transparency and high levels of bot fraud — and the action steps required to safeguard investments and optimize spending.

Programmatic Transforms Digital Media Buying
Programmatic buying remains a huge opportunity as marketers are allocating a greater proportion of their media spend to programmatic while expanding its use well beyond online display to include all media types. While programmatic offers the benefits of targeting and efficiency, it also has many challenges including a lack of transparency and higher levels of fraud. This ANA/Forrester Research survey provides a view on the "current state of programmatic" among the client-side marketing community. (Available to ANA members only.)

Brands Working With Startups
ANA conducted research, "Brands Working With Startups," in conjunction with the CTA (Consumer Technology Association). The purpose was to explore marketers' perceptions, attitudes and behaviors toward engaging the startup community in the marketing and advertising space. Specifically it examines how brands work with startups, approaches to using startups, activities associated with startups, pros and cons of using startups, experience with startups and expectations with startups.

The Critical Need for Accredited Third-Party Measurement for Viewability of Digital Advertising
ANA conducted a member survey on the issue of independent third-party measurement for viewability of digital advertising. Some large digital media owners do not allow third-party measurement vendors to report viewable ad impressions to their clients and instead, rely on internally derived metrics that have not been independently verified. This means marketers must trust the viewability metrics provided by those digital media owners, without any independent verification, to determine if their ads performed as contracted. Key survey findings include (a) an overwhelming 97 percent of marketers believe that the larger digital media owners should allow their inventory to be measured by a third party and (b) 61 percent of respondents would shift their spending elsewhere, if a digital media owner does not provide third-party measurement.

The Connected TV Opportunity
Connected TV refers to when a television is connected to the internet. This includes Smart TVs where the connection is built into the TV, or any IP-connected over-the-top (OTT) device/box such as Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, PlayStation, Roku, or Xbox that brings an array of content apps directly to a TV screen. ANA and BrightLine teamed-up to research how the overall ANA member community is using connected TV/OTT devices. The large majority of total respondents believe connected TV is an opportunity for the television advertising industry, with audience targeting cited as the top benefit.