Editor's Picks for ANA Magazine's B2B Department

Mike's Hard Lemonade and Genesis are partnering with Netflix on custom ad campaigns tied to Will Ferrell's golf comedy series The Hawk. The deals signal a growing shift toward branded entertainment as brands seek unconventional ways to reach new audiences.

Most brand owners are falling behind on paid media measurement even as data tools multiply, according to new research from WFA and Ebiquity. The findings may signal a growing competitive divide between marketers who act on evidence and those still relying on vanity metrics.

Marketing measurement is fracturing under the weight of fragmented data, artificial intelligence-driven search, and the collapse of third-party cookies. New approaches — from marketing mix modeling to incrementality testing — may reshape how brands prove their value to the C-suite.

Werther's Original is launching a new music subgenre, Soft Caramel Rock, and a retro sweepstakes to celebrate its soft caramels. The campaign taps nostalgia marketing and may signal a broader shift in how candy brands connect with consumers.

Febreze launches "Can't Wash This," targeting soccer's odor problem as Major League Soccer eyes 47 million new fans from the FIFA World Cup 2026. The Procter & Gamble brand's partnership with Trevor Noah and four MLS clubs could reframe how consumer brands tap into surging U.S. soccer culture.

The artificial intelligence advertising market is projected to reach $14.12 billion in 2026, up from $11.17 billion in 2025. A new ResearchAndMarkets.com report finds programmatic advertising and personalization are driving growth that could push the market to $36.34 billion by 2030.

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.

Mike's Hot Honey debuts a short film starring Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter of The Roots as the centerpiece of a nationwide campaign. The effort shifts from awareness to ambassador recruitment, inviting fans to join a commission-based community that could reshape how the brand drives sales.

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.

TikTok unveils Symphony Agent at Cannes Lions 2026, bringing agentic artificial intelligence to ad creation, creator discovery, and content scaling. The tools may reshape how brands engage with the platform's more than 1 billion users.

The National Basketball Players Association launches PLYRS UNTD, a collective NIL venture giving more than 500 NBA players direct stakes in licensing, content, and brand partnerships. The move signals a broader shift in how athletes are claiming ownership — and what that could mean for sports marketers.

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

The CMO-CFO partnership is essential for proving marketing's strategic role. Fragmentation is the obstacle that holds back growth and erodes trust. Companies that adopt unified measurement systems will not only restore credibility but establish marketing as a profit center.

Meeting a company's strategic goals depends on ensuring every commercial activity is aligned with driving the best incremental business results. It's not about revenue or profit alone, but how marketing teams maximize the value of their brands' products, services, and business operations.

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.