Ad Age’s Business of Brands coverage tracks the world’s most valuable brand portfolios, reporting on valuations, market performance, and strategic shifts across major advertisers. It’s useful intelligence. But if you read it as a guide to what good brand strategy actually looks like, you’ll come away with the wrong lessons. The brands that make headlines…
Influencer marketing in 2025 looks very different from where it started, but many of the same mistakes are still being made. Budgets have grown, platforms have multiplied, and the creator economy has professionalized, yet a significant portion of influencer spend still produces little measurable commercial return. The brands getting it right are treating influencer marketing…
The most important creative trends shaping 2026 are not about aesthetics. They are about what kind of creative actually moves commercial needles, and why the gap between brands that get this right and those that chase novelty keeps widening. Motion, in particular, has become the format where that gap is most visible. Motion creative is…
Brand partnership strategy is the discipline of selecting, structuring, and managing commercial relationships between two or more brands to create shared value that neither could produce alone. Done well, it extends reach, reinforces positioning, and opens revenue channels that paid media cannot replicate. Done poorly, it dilutes brand equity, confuses customers, and wastes resource that…
The Ad Age Tech Power List tracks the executives and companies shaping how advertising technology evolves. It is a useful signal, not a definitive map, of where the industry’s centre of gravity is moving and which platforms, tools, and operators are gaining commercial traction. For senior marketers, the list matters less as a ranking and…
CSR partnerships are one of the most underused acquisition and retention channels in marketing. When structured well, they connect a brand to a cause, a community, and a partner organisation in ways that build trust, generate coverage, and attract customers who share the same values. When structured poorly, they are expensive PR theatre that satisfies…
Digital Content Newfronts are annual presentation events where streaming platforms, digital publishers, and content creators pitch their upcoming programming and advertising opportunities to media buyers and brand marketers. Originally modelled on the television industry’s Upfronts, the Newfronts have evolved into a week-long showcase where the likes of YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, and Snap compete for a…
Multi-channel customer acquisition is the practice of reaching and converting new customers across more than one marketing channel simultaneously, so that no single platform controls your growth. Done well, it creates coverage across the buying experience rather than betting everything on one touchpoint. Done poorly, it becomes an expensive way to be mediocre everywhere at…
Ad Age Leading Women 2025 is an annual recognition programme that spotlights senior women driving commercial and creative impact across the marketing and media industry. The 2025 cohort spans agency heads, brand CMOs, media executives, and growth leaders, and taken together the list offers a useful read on where leadership capability is actually concentrated right…
FTC endorsement guidelines require anyone who promotes a product in exchange for payment, free goods, or any material benefit to clearly disclose that relationship to their audience. For affiliate marketers and the brands running affiliate programs, this is not optional, and the FTC has made clear that “everyone does it” is not a defence. The…
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