Editor's Picks for ANA Magazine's B2B Department

Fan engagement is moving off the field as brands chase audiences through social media, docuseries, and multiyear athlete deals. Shifting sports consumption habits may be reshaping how marketers reach — and retain — younger and female fans.

Creator budgets are surging and AI is reshaping how brands reach audiences, putting digital strategy under pressure. Marketers may need to rethink platform relationships and brand clarity to stay competitive.

Marketers sharpen data governance to build trust, improve AI performance, and adapt to fast-changing privacy expectations and attribution models.

The challenge for brand managers will only get more pronounced as AI pervades a growing number of aspects of marketing, and advertising and consumers sharpen their antenna for content they view with a jaundiced eye.

A "confident marketer" doesn't refer to a personality trait, but rather someone who is "extremely" or "very confident" in their ability to measure marketing's impact on financial performance, according to a recent ANA report. But there is a significant gap, with just 39 percent of the marketers surveyed falling into the category.

It's a window into the not-too-distant future of marketing. No dashboards. No manual switches, prompts, or interventions. Systems speak and act almost entirely on their own, thanks to machine-to-machine, which is poised to change how marketers strategize, plan, and measure their ad campaigns.

In a year characterized by high tariffs and economic uncertainty, a boost in B2B marketing budgets for 2026 signals confidence in marketers' ability to spike the top and bottom lines, at least on paper. However, a closer look reveals a more complicated story.

Gen Zers are increasingly informing brand marketing strategy, with their spending power expected to grow to $12 trillion by 2030. The challenge is how to connect with gen Zers, the first cohort of digital natives who are skeptical of traditional advertising and — despite an insatiable appetite for digital content — remain elusive consumers.

Despite recent fluctuations, marketing jobs are fundamentally changing amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). The best marketing job candidates for the AI era demonstrate not just curiosity, but impatience, marked by a burning desire to experiment and pursue projects without handholding.

As traditional B2B advertising channels continue to wane, savvy B2B marketers are turning to videos featuring influencers to drive engagement and build brand trust. Most B2B marketers (81 percent) have dedicated influencer-marketing budgets, says a new survey, while another 9 percent plan to follow suit this year.

B2B marketers consider brand advertising important, says a new study, but most of them are still in the preliminary stage of developing a branding strategy. The gap between rhetoric and reality carries major risk as an increasing number of younger buyers attuned to branding enter the market and demand more original content.

While immensely popular with consumers, gaming commands less than 5 percent of global media spending. That's starting to change, as brands like Jack in the Box, Jägermeister, and Lowe's ramp up their investments in the sector either by creating their own online venue or partnering with big gaming platforms.

Marketers who trust their data are three times more likely to report revenue growth, according to a new report from Anteriad. The report, based on a survey of 450 B2B marketing leaders, found that 39 percent of marketers use intent data, while marketers reporting strong revenue growth are 62 percent more likely to use it.

Search engines fueled by artificial intelligence, or zero-click search, are starting to eclipse traditional search. That's leading marketers to reevaluate their search engine optimization strategy from keyword-stuffing to context-crafting.

Generative engine optimization (GEO), a digital marketing strategy centered on ensuring a brand's name is featured in the top answers provided by platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, and other large language models, is starting to accelerate throughout the marketing and ad sector.

Social media continues to be a critical marketing channel for SMBs, yet many companies struggle with creating enough content to feed the maw and measure ROI effectively. To close the gap, SMBs are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence (AI), which can spur content creation and personalize messaging, new surveys reveal.

Ricky Abbott, president of global B2B marketing agency Transmission, thinks the status quo is untenable for B2B advertising and says marketers needs to embrace more of an entertainment model to serve both existing and emerging customers.

Justin Thomas-Copeland, who was recently named CEO of the 4As, says the ad agencies best positioned to thrive in the current climate are flexible, fast, and have a large window into their clients' business.

B2B events are on the upswing this year, according to a recent survey. However, while B2B marketers recognize the necessity of events in an increasingly fragmented media environment, they can't rest on their laurels and need to produce events that cater to attendees' rapidly changing expectations.

Account-based marketing (ABM) has been a tough sell in the past few years. But the tide may be turning, with 87 percent of marketers saying they expect their organization's ABM budget to increase in the next 12 months, with an average bump of 9 percent, per a recent study.