Committee Thought Leadership

Increasingly, ANA committees play thought leadership roles in addressing key industry issues. Examples include:

• The Power of Supplier Diversity
  A supplier diversity program is a proactive business program which encourages the use of women-owned, ethnic/minority-owned, veteran-owned, LGBTQ-owned, disability-owned, and small businesses as suppliers. This report covers the findings from quantitative and qualitative research conducted by the ANA. The purpose was to gain an understanding of the incidence of supplier diversity programs as well as benefits, challenges, spend, goals, measurement, influence, and more.
  
  

• 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.
  
  

• Payment Terms: Current Practices for Marketing Services
  Given member interest resulting from coverage in the advertising/marketing trade press regarding changes in payment terms being implemented by a handful of companies to some suppliers, ANA initiated research to determine if such changes were isolated examples or reflective of a broader trend. The answer is clear: payment term changes, notably extended terms, are reflective of a broader trend. The services noted most for extended payment terms are agency fees, research, and production. The majority of respondents who have extended their payment terms have done so to derive better cash flow.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• A Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry
  This 2019 report from ANA's Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM), based on three separate studies among ANA members, concludes that client-side marketers continue to make significant progress in achieving gender equality among CMOs, but in stark contrast, there has been little headway made in improving ethnic diversity.
  
  
• U.S. Multicultural Media Forecast 2019
  For years, a number of smart companies have marketed to multicultural audiences. This report identifies a clear opportunity for more marketers to engage multicultural consumers to drive business growth, and is especially notable for encouraging those marketers still "sitting on the sidelines" to now "get in the game." In what is perhaps the most significant finding in this study, multicultural media revenue – meaning advertising and brand activation revenues (for both above- and below-the-line media) – significantly under-indexes the general population. Multicultural consumers now comprise almost 40 percent of the total population, yet multicultural media investments comprise only 5.2 percent of total advertising and marketing revenues. The study was conducted by PQ Media on behalf of the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM). 
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Enhancing Trust Between Marketers and Agencies 
  There has been recent discussion and debate about the level of trust in the advertising industry today. To determine exactly where things stand, the ANA fielded a survey focusing on the current level of trust between client-side marketers and advertising agencies, and asked if trust has changed versus two to three years ago and how it can it be enhanced going forward.
  
  
• 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 2017. This year, given a number of member requests to our Marketing Knowledge Center, we conducted a deep dive specifically on media agency compensation.
  
  
• Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising (2018-2019)
  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.
  
  
• Managing In-House Agency Creative Content and Legal Concerns
  ANA partnered with the Boston Consulting Group and Reed Smith to understand the top concerns in-house agencies have for both creative content development and legal issues.  This study identifies four primary issues in-house agencies have with creative content development: attracting top-tier in-house agency talent, keeping in-house agency talent energized, applying key marketing processes, and having healthy creative tension. Further, 16 legal issues were identified related to in-house agency work. This study also provides strategies to address the concerns.
  
  
• In-House Agency Fact Book 
  The ANA In-House Agency Fact Book is comprised of some of the best client-side marketer in-house agencies in the world. The ANA In-House Agency Fact Book highlights the structure, capabilities, and operations of in-house agencies at ANA corporate member companies. The fact book serves as a reference point for other in-house agencies and those looking to learn more or start their own in-house agency. Each fact sheet explores an in-house agency's capabilities, organizational chart (where provided), and other key data points. Updated: June 2020
  
  
• ANA Members Oppose Addition of Citizenship Question for 2020 Census
  ANA members widely oppose the addition of a "citizenship" question to the 2020 census. The question asks, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" The key concern among ANA members is that the addition of a citizenship question would depress response among both non-citizens and their families (even if family members are indeed citizens). Inaccurate census data would lead to misallocated marketing resources.
  
  
• Marketing Word of the Year
  ANA committee members selected "Personalization" as the 2019 ANA Marketing Word of the Year.
  
  
• The Continued Rise of the In-House Agency
  A new ANA study concludes that the number of marketers with in-house agencies has grown substantially and workloads for those agencies are increasing. In-house agencies provide a range of services, including strategy, creative for traditional media, creative for digital media, and media planning/buying. Services that have grown significantly in recent years are content marketing, creative strategy, data/marketing analytics, media strategy, programmatic media and social media.
  
  
• Improving Sponsorship Accountability Metrics
  The ANA and MASB (Marketing Accountability Standards Board) have partnered on a project to provide greater insight and guidance into sponsorship measurement. As an important first step, a survey was fielded to ANA members to better understand current practices in sponsorship measurement. Marketing expenditures on sponsorship have increased considerably over the past several years, but progress in measuring and assessing sponsorship's business impact has been marginal, according to the study.
  
  
• 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.