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Industry Insights

  • Empowering Authentically and Shifting Public Perceptions

    Pulse   October 29, 2024  

    Kandi Pickard is the President and CEO, Michelle Sagan is the Director of Communications & Marketing, and Kayla McKeon is the Manager of Grassroots Advocacy at the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS). They will be speakers at the ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference, November 18-20 in Las Vegas. ANA Director of Multicultural and Diversity Initiatives Karim Amadeo recently sat down with Kandi, Michelle, and Kayla for a pre-conference interview in which they discussed how to advance representation and shift public perceptions by putting people with disabilities at the forefront of their marketing efforts.

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  • Even AI Is Scared of Six Flags’ New Creepy Clown

    Leading Edge   October 29, 2024  

    “Tick, Tick, Tick,” featuring a creepy clown terrorizing an unsuspecting group of housemates, is certainly not for the faint of heart. The latest in the entertainment brand’s annual “Fear Is Waiting” campaign, it looks more like something out of a horror movie than an ad for a theme park.

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  • How Brands Reignited the Olympics Advertising Competition for LA 2028

    Leading Edge   October 28, 2024  

    The Olympics in Paris marked the start of a journey toward a more democratized marketplace for brands looking to reach audiences during tentpole sporting events. By 2028, as the 34th Olympiad begins in Los Angeles, the games should be accessible to a much broader array of advertisers than ever before.

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  • Political Advertisers Have an Untapped Opportunity in Context and Creative

    Leading Edge   October 28, 2024  

    Political ads play a unique role in the media landscape. Every few years, an infusion of political messaging joins the more typical rotation of retail, auto, health and financial services ads. The political messages are more serious, the timing is more urgent, and the outcomes are extremely consequential.

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  • Editor Highlights: B2B, SEO, and Loyalty Programs

    Pulse   October 25, 2024  

    Do you feel like it’s a challenge to keep up with the latest trends, best practices, and marketing strategies? You aren’t alone. Bimonthly, ANA’s Pulse will highlight content within ANA’s resources hub, from Industry Insights, Knowledge Partner contributions, ANA Magazine, case studies, Marketing 101, Tools and Playbooks, and more. This way, the hard work of finding actionable insights, marketing trends, and helpful guides is done for you.

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  • Experimental Campaigns Revitalized These Iconic Brands

    Pulse   October 25, 2024  

    Brands that have been around for ages are familiar with long-lasting success but may be left puzzled when it comes to reaching new audiences and revamping the brand through their campaigns. When planning campaign strategies, an experimental approach might not always be the top of the list. Yet for brands with a long history of success, experimenting with experiences and products is sometimes the best option for reinventing the wheel and staying relevant in today’s world with seemingly limitless brand options available.

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  • How the Brains Behind Comic Con’s In-App Experience Revolutionized Fun Marketing

    Pulse   October 25, 2024  

    How do you bridge the growing gap between capturing customers' attention and maintaining retention? Shawn Swaney, senior director of customer success at Komo, and Derrick Weiss, senior marketing coordinator at ReedPop, revealed how in-app experiences are transforming customer engagement through gamification at the 2024 Marketing Technology Changemakers One-Day Conference, held at Amazon Ads Headquarters in New York City.

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  • How SMBs Are Harnessing AI to Achieve More with Less

    Pulse   October 24, 2024  

    Stu Richards, CEO at Bredin, shared insights from his market research firm about how SMBs are leveraging AI. He also discussed use cases, misconceptions, risk mitigation, and the general sentiment of SMBs as it relates to AI.

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  • Reaching Persuadable Voters During Campaign Crunch Time

    Leading Edge   October 24, 2024  

    The media channels that have already experienced the heaviest levels of political use to date may be over-saturated, facing inventory pressures, or too expensive to be used efficiently from now until Election Day. And, if a campaign's ads need to run in swing states that are the primary focus of most political advertising this year, the situation becomes even more dire.

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  • How to Strengthen Buy-In to B2B Marketing Strategy

    Leading Edge   October 23, 2024  

    Does sales buy into your marketing strategy? How about research and development (R&D)? Weak internal buy-in is a common obstacle to B2B marketing success.

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  • Putting the New General Market at the Center

    Pulse   October 23, 2024  

    Sherina Smith is CMO at American Family Insurance. Chris Crawford is founder and CEO of Elite Media, American Family’s agency partner. The pair will be co-presenting at the ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference, November 18 to 20 in Las Vegas, discussing how targeting key growth segments has become a business imperative. In advance of the event, Sherina and Chris were interviewed by the group EVP of the ANA, Bill Duggan.

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  • Brands Need a Process for Testing and Trusting AI

    Leading Edge   October 22, 2024  

    Most people can grasp the idea that advanced AI is trained on large data sets, which allows it to do cool things. Understanding how AI is actually able to do those cool things is not so easy. Even scientists remain uncertain why deep learning and neural networks are able to do remarkable things like understand math in French while older machine learning cannot. Today, scientists are studying deep learning like a “strange natural phenomenon.”

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  • Advertising Week New York 2024: Key Takeaways from a Future-Focused Industry Gathering

    Pulse   October 21, 2024  

    Advertising Week New York (AWNY) 2024 once again brought together the brightest minds in advertising, media, and technology to discuss the trends shaping the future of marketing. From the surge in connected TV (CTV) to the challenges of misinformation and the increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI), this year's event tackled critical issues affecting advertisers and brands today.

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  • Consumers May Be More Willing to Trade Data for Free Content

    Leading Edge   October 21, 2024  

    The last few years have seen rising industry concerns that greater consumer control over data sharing will result in reduced access for advertising purposes. But is that actually happening?

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  • These In-House Campaigns Showcase Messages of Inspiration

    Pulse   October 18, 2024  

    Engaging consumers through empathy not only prioritizes a human-centric approach to advertising, but also fosters genuine connection and community through relatable and inspirational content. Focusing on positive emotions, and the ways all people can help create a better environment physically and emotionally for themselves and others, can help boost ad recall and brand loyalty. It’s common sense too: Everyone wants to feel good – and feel connected to others around them.

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  • #NoSabo Kids: A Latino Gen Z Movement 200 Years in the Making

    Leading Edge   October 17, 2024  

    In recent years, a curious trend has gained momentum among Hispanic gen Zers: the #NoSabo Kid movement. It has manifested primarily on social media platforms, namely TikTok and Instagram — and it has gained the attention of mainstream news outlets nationwide.

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  • Marketing to Older Generations

    Pulse   October 17, 2024  

    With all the marketing focus trained on millennials and members of generation Z, one might think that baby boomers and older people had vanished entirely — or had at least become an irrelevant demographic for marketers. This cohort, however, remains a sizable one, with needs that organizations can meet in mutually beneficial relationships.

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  • The Evolution Toward Permissioned Data

    Leading Edge   October 16, 2024  

    The advertising industry has been captivated by the notion of "signal deprecation" for a while now. This term, in my view, misses the point. We are not witnessing the death of signals or the loss of something valuable. Instead, we are seeing its evolution — specifically, the evolution toward permissioned data.

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  • Despite the Hype, Marketers Are Still in the First Inning of the AI Cycle

    Leading Edge   October 15, 2024  

    The advertising and marketing industry has always thrived on hype. It’s at the heart of what we do. But the hype has historically been shared across brands, campaigns, agencies, people, new hires, media, and technology. Currently, the spotlight has shifted to AI, which dominates almost every industry conversation.

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  • As U.S. Display Advertising Takes a Turn Towards Quality, Good Things Happen

    Leading Edge   October 14, 2024  

    As a Norwegian who grew up in the U.S. and now goes back and forth between the two countries, it is fascinating to see differences in U.S. versus European advertising. European advertisers contend with small populations that speak different languages, the GDPR, greenwashing laws and a generally slower to emerge CTV landscape. The U.S. on the other hand is a huge wide-open landscape, with opportunities to reach highly scaled audiences, use data targeting, create innovative tech, and generally go further faster.

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