Welcome to our new series, “The Breakdown.” Each post breaks down a complex marketing concept and explores its applications—helping you make smarter decisions that drive meaningful results.
How often do you say “grab a Kleenex” instead of “grab a tissue?” Or ask, “Do you have a Band-Aid?” rather than say “I need an adhesive bandage?” What about, “Where’s the Tupperware?” versus “Where are your plastic food containers?”
These are all examples of mental availability—the ease with which a brand comes to mind in a buying situation, whether or not someone is actively shopping—at work. It’s what keeps brands top of mind when it matters most.
Brands can’t be chosen if they aren’t known, but awareness alone isn’t enough. Yahoo remains a well-known name in search, but when consumers need to look something up, they instinctively “Google it.” The critical difference between awareness and mental availability lies in being remembered in the moment of need. Awareness means consumers recognize a brand when they see it, but mental availability means the brand automatically comes to mind in buying or usage situations.
Mental availability builds over time. Brands with more distinctive creative assets and consistent presence have stronger salience. They come to mind easily and often across many category entry points—aka those moments when buyers enter the market, like when someone first thinks “I need running shoes” or “I’m out of paper towels.” Advertising helps drive this mental availability, going beyond brand awareness and keeping a product present in the mind when audiences are making or considering a purchase. Every impression, sound, and symbol compounds to make a brand easier to recall later.
Research shows that advertising awareness directly correlates to mental availability, which in turn results in tangible business outcomes. Specifically, there’s a measurable correlation between mental availability and market share: As brands become more mentally available, market share tends to follow. Familiarity breeds preference, and that preference translates to purchase behavior. The more a brand’s advertising is noticed and remembered—especially across different category entry points—the more space that brand holds in memory and the greater likelihood of being chosen when a purchase decision arises.
A strong example of mental availability at work is Heinz’s “Draw Ketchup” campaign. Instead of claiming to be the standard for ketchup, the brand proved it by asking audiences to draw ketchup. Nearly everyone drew some iteration of a Heinz bottle, and the brand launched a global campaign featuring the activation video as well as the drawings. That deep-rooted mental availability translated directly into business impact: The campaign drove double-digit increases in purchase intent and boosted market share despite price increases and rising competition.
Heinz’s success stemmed from leveraging the mental availability the brand had already built through decades of consistent marketing. The drawings demonstrated that Heinz not only had high brand awareness, but that it had, in fact, become the default mental representation of ketchup itself. When consumers thought “ketchup,” they pictured Heinz. The campaign simply made that unconscious association conscious and celebrated it, reinforcing existing memory structures and demonstrating how by focusing on mental availability, brands can become inseparable from the product itself.
Mental availability is built through consistency. It requires deliberate, sustained investment and effort to connect brands with the moments that matter to buyers.
Advertisers can strengthen mental availability through steady market presence rather than intermittent campaigns, reinforcing distinctive creative assets like colors, packaging, slogans, or sounds, and tracking recognition and recall as signals of future demand.
Brands should also consider multiple buying situations—both the obvious product need, as well as the contexts surrounding it. By seeking to understand where customers are when they need a product, what they’re trying to accomplish, and the emotions at play, teams can craft campaigns that connect brands to diverse category entry points.
In the end, growth comes from owning the moment when consumers think of your category. Advertising drives mental availability by ensuring brands are present in those critical moments.
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Long-term investments in brand awareness are critical for building mental availability. Yet amidst prolonged economic uncertainty, many budgets continue to lean heavily toward short-term performance. In Balancing Performance with Brand in Uncertain Times, we break down key considerations for marketing leaders as they strategize around their media investments.
Along with today’s rapidly changing advertising and marketing landscape, the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is undergoing profound transformation. Once a critical pillar of organizational strategy focused on driving brand growth, the CMO’s scope of work has expanded considerably. Now, CMOs must navigate a steady stream of digital and technological innovation alongside evolving market conditions and a less than predictable consumer. This shift requires CMOs to transform into multifaceted leaders with responsibilities that go far beyond a legacy marketing role.
Today’s CMO is extending their skill set beyond more traditional brand-building expertise. They’re evolving into a cross-functional leader who’s able to unite their knack for strategic thinking with sound business logic to challenge the status quo and drive their brand forward. Brands that recognize and embrace the CMO in this evolving role are best positioned to unlock their full potential.
Historically, CMOs were brand stewards. They developed brand identity and voice, crafted go-to-market strategies, managed paid media efforts, and supported sales enablement while digging into campaign and market data to guide future strategies.
While these fundamentals remain central, the responsibilities of today’s CMOs have expanded to include leading the response to rapidly shifting market dynamics, evaluating when and where to implement new tech while staying rooted in meaningful areas of impact, and identifying which internal and external stakeholders to collaborate with to get the job done.
Indeed, modern CMOs have one of the most complex roles in an organization. They are expected to provide strategic guidance not only within marketing but also to consult across sales, finance, IT, product development, and human resources. And, they must bridge the gap between consumer-facing activities and internal business priorities, ensuring alignment to deliver meaningful results.
A CMO’s ability to manage these expanded responsibilities can differ by industry. For example, CMOs in the B2B space may find themselves uniquely well-suited for this shift, given the demand to unify their strategic backgrounds with their legacy focus on producing business outcomes. Basis CMO Katie McAdams notes, “B2B marketing has shifted from being viewed primarily as a sales enablement and lead generating function to becoming part of the design, implementation, and oversight of the company’s overarching strategy. The role and expectation of marketing today is to bring the product and sales strategies together to build alignment and ensure the implementation of a seamless go-to-market plan.”
An essential part of meeting these expectations for strategic excellence is effective communication with stakeholders. To communicate strategies and their outcomes effectively, CMOs must zero in on the most impactful stories they can tell and support them with meaningful data.
“The amount of data we can access across all our campaigns can be overwhelming, and it takes time to understand what to focus on," says McAdams. "Picking a few critical KPIs to prioritize and speak to regularly is key. Otherwise, you’ll end up overwhelming your team and other internal stakeholders with so many data points that they’ll just check out.” Establishing a shared source of truth—through common success metrics or a curated dashboard that the broader organization relies on—keeps everyone aligned on what success looks like.
Ultimately, today's CMO has evolved from a functional marketing expert into a strategic, multidisciplinary leader balancing a dual mandate: leveraging marketing expertise while taking on broader business leadership responsibilities that are integral to the organization’s success.
But as expectations rise, alignment across the C-suite hasn’t kept pace, limiting marketing’s influence at the highest levels.
The CMO’s evolution into a multifaceted business leader should, in theory, strengthen their position at the executive table. Yet paradoxically, even as organizations demand these broader capabilities from their CMOs, a troubling disconnect has emerged within executive teams. By one measure, the gap between CEOs and CMOs has widened by 20% in recent years, creating misalignment that directly impacts growth potential.
This disconnect shows up in multiple ways across organizations. For instance, 64% of CEOs say they feel comfortable with modern marketing, yet only 31% of CMOs think their CEOs actually are. Even more concerning, just half of CMOs participate in strategic planning sessions with their CEOs—despite evidence that companies involving marketing executives in such planning see 1.4 times higher revenue. Compounding this issue, many leaders believe marketing is underfunded even as investment as a share of sales has declined, creating a mismatch between growth expectations and the resources required to achieve them.
The divide extends beyond individual relationships. Executive teams have grown by 50% over the past five years, fragmenting customer ownership across multiple C-suite roles. Companies with a single, integrated customer-centric executive achieve 2.3 times the growth of those with overlapping responsibilities, yet many continue adding chiefs of digital, revenue, and customer experience alongside CMOs—blurring accountability and diluting marketing’s voice at the strategic table. This fragmentation stems from a critical gap in organizational infrastructure: Without common success metrics that all executives track and trust, each C-suite member defaults to their own measures and timelines for judging impact, making true alignment nearly impossible.
This fragmentation has left CMOs increasingly vulnerable. Despite the promise that an evolved CMO presents, the same conditions that have made today’s CMO a dynamic leader with a diverse toolkit have also put the role at risk.
Uncertainty surrounding the necessity of a CMO in today’s business climate has become evident as lines between the responsibilities of a CMO and those of other C-suite executives like the CFO and CTO have blurred. At the same time, profitability and cost-cutting demands have put the role under heightened scrutiny in several major companies. In recent years, Fortune 500 companies like McDonald's, UPS, and Johnson & Johnson have eliminated their CMO positions, often merging the role with other senior leadership roles like COO, and dividing out the responsibilities to address shifting business priorities in response to new technological and consumer demands. As a result of this trend, CMOs today must continually prove the value of their teams and their role within the organization. That scrutiny often shows up in budgets, where reduced investment can make it harder to demonstrate impact, further reinforcing questions about marketing’s seat at the table.
While the outlook may seem grim, the deeper truth is that businesses’ critical need for CMOs hasn’t disappeared, it’s just recalibrating to meet the evolving challenges of the landscape. Considering that just 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have a marketing background and only 41 of Fortune 1000 companies have a marketer on their board, this scarcity underscores the critical need for CMOs to provide the marketing expertise necessary for organizational success. If left unfulfilled, organizations will be left to feel the detrimental voids created by their absence.
A silver lining to the recent scrutiny? As brands reimagine or even reinstate the CMO—for example, McDonald’s quickly walked back their decision to eliminate the role—we’ve seen more hiring of first-time CMOs, particularly those promoted from within, to usher in a new era of leadership with the skillsets to match. Women have also been edging ahead, making up the majority of marketing leadership in six out of the nine industries analyzed by eMarketer.
The increasing complexity of the marketing ecosystem has placed a premium on technology. To maximize ROI, CMOs are increasingly investing in martech and adtech tools to improve efficiency and drive better results. However, these investments often fall short of their potential—not because they’re ineffective, but because the people using these platforms haven’t been adequately trained to do so. In fact, companies use just 56% of their martech investments, and 34% report that those tools underperform.
This underutilization underscores the importance of aligning technology with talent. CMOs should not only ensure their teams are equipped with the right tools, but also that there’s a plan in place to develop the skills to use them effectively. Upskilling and ongoing training are critical to closing the gap between tech investment and outcomes.
Adding to this complexity, the rise of AI is reshaping marketing team structures. As AI capabilities advance, some marketing roles are being replaced with the technology, making it crucial for CMOs to assess when to invest in talent development versus AI tools. This challenge of determining which capabilities remain uniquely human and which can be effectively automated makes strategic talent investment a critical priority for marketing leaders.
CMO spending priorities reflect this recognition. When asked how they would allocate an additional $1 million in 2024, CMOs most commonly said they would invest it in talent development. This reflects a growing understanding that people—not just technology—are key to unlocking the full potential of marketing innovations.
Finding the optimal balance between technology and talent is essential. CMOs who succeed in this area will drive both innovation and efficiency, ensuring their organizations stay ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Bridging the C-suite gap also requires CMOs to think beyond marketing metrics and tie their strategies directly to business outcomes. The pressure to deliver measurable business results is at an all-time high, with brands often prioritizing short-term revenue growth over long-term brand-building strategies. Caught in the middle are CMOs, whose legacies lie in carefully crafted long-term brand strategies but are now primarily tasked with producing revenue gains. The pandemic accelerated this trend, with the percentage of CMOs reporting that marketing is primarily responsible for revenue growth jumping almost 9% from February of 2020 to March of 2023. Alongside this, 75% of CMOs now rank short-term company commercial growth as their top priority.
However, this shift has come at a cost. A reported 41% reduction in brand-building spend from spring 2023 to spring 2024 indicates that CMOs are diverting resources from long-term initiatives to meet immediate performance goals. This creates a tension between achieving short-term wins and safeguarding the brand’s future equity—and long-term job security.
To navigate this challenge, CMOs must collaborate closely with CEOs, CFOs, and other senior leaders to align marketing strategies with broader business objectives. Agreeing on a small set of shared metrics—including revenue or margin growth—makes the business connection explicit and strengthens trust across the leadership team. By advocating for the critical needs filled by marketing and demonstrating the impact of marketing on both short-term revenue and long-term growth, CMOs can secure the resources and support needed to strike this delicate balance.
Rather than retreating under pressure, many CMOs are embracing a challenger mindset to redefine both their role and the industry around them.
Modern CMOs have a unique opportunity to challenge outdated practices and redefine industry norms. As change agents, they can ask bold questions, rethink legacy strategies, and drive transformative initiatives that set their organizations apart. This approach requires CMOs to push boundaries, disrupt the status quo, and champion innovation—all while maintaining alignment with organizational goals.
“Basis has embraced large-scale brand initiatives as part of its repositioning strategy,” says McAdams. “The success we’ve seen showcases how a challenger mindset can lead to significant market differentiation.”
To succeed as challengers, CMOs need strong support from key stakeholders within their organizations. Disruption often involves risk, and having the necessary backing is essential to ensuring these efforts lead to meaningful progress. McAdams says that her partnerships with Basis’ President, CEO, and CFO are critical: “Aligning the full leadership team with our go-to-market plan—and the investments required to make the big splashes we’ve envisioned—has allowed us to move faster and capitalize on opportunities as they present themselves.”
Ultimately, CMOs today can benefit from acting as disruptors. But to do so effectively, they'll need to cultivate the internal relationships necessary to ensure that their disruptive strategies can succeed.
Marketing has always been a tool for differentiation, but the modern CMO will elevate it into a strategic force that drives measurable business outcomes. By embracing expanded roles as cross-functional leaders, CMOs are uniquely positioned to unify internal priorities, align with organizational objectives, and deliver value in an ever-changing landscape.
Success for today’s CMO hinges on their ability to balance innovation with talent development, short-term gains with long-term growth, and tradition with transformation. As the business landscape continues to evolve, CMOs will remain the lynchpin connecting brand, customer, and company strategy—driving the future of both marketing and organizational success.
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The CMO’s evolution from marketing expert to strategic business leader brings opportunity alongside mounting pressure. As economic uncertainty tightens budgets, today’s CMOs must balance their expanded responsibilities while proving marketing’s impact on the bottom line. Our article, 3 Ways CMOs Can Cultivate C-Suite Buy-In Amidst Economic Uncertainty, explores how leaders can navigate this balance.
What hasn’t the world thrown at agencies of late? Years of economic instability: Check. Tariffs and declining consumer sentiment: Check. Mounting signal loss, compounded by Google flip-flopping on third-party cookies for half a decade: Check. The explosion of generative AI, rising rates from media partners, reduced client budgets, and media fragmentation: Check, check, check, and check.
Despite these pressures, most agency leaders remain optimistic, with 76.8% feeling confident about the future of their businesses—though, notably, this marks a slight decline from last year's 82.4%. But the ongoing upheaval is taking its toll on agency staff: Over three-quarters of agency professionals say their jobs have gotten harder in the past two years, and six in 10 say that digital advertising in general has grown more difficult in that same time span.
However, periods of change often provide opportunities for growth and innovation, and agency leaders can leverage the forces reshaping the industry to gain a competitive edge over those who may be more hesitant to embrace those shifts. The question is, how can they approach this evolution thoughtfully and strategically, despite the many unknowns?
To find out, we spoke with five industry veterans about what agency leaders need to know in this moment, and how they can situate their organizations to not only adapt as the industry transforms, but thrive in this new environment.
April Weeks | Chief Investment & Media Officer - Basis: The biggest pressures facing agencies today are driving business growth while simultaneously finding operational efficiencies and meeting increasing client demands. Economic uncertainty, declining consumer loyalty, and rising labor costs have only intensified these challenges.
Many organizations now view artificial intelligence as a potential solution to these pressures—particularly through agentic capabilities—and the expectation for time and cost savings through automation and AI solutions is increasingly top of mind for clients, though in some cases it’s outpacing the reality of where agencies are today. This is forcing agencies to reevaluate traditional approaches to winning and retaining business and explore new models for how they support the business cost efficiently, all while delivering the desired business outcomes.
Katie McAdams | Chief Marketing Officer - Basis: Fragmentation and the proliferation of platforms required to execute and manage media have advanced at a pace agencies are struggling to keep up with. At the same time, agencies are under pressure to drive profit, growth, and media spend.
Along with this, there are a variety of challenges agencies are facing related to AI adoption. There’s still a lot of uncertainty around how AI is going to impact how agency teams will be structured, so leaders are assessing where to add headcount versus where AI can lead. These are big questions they’re grappling with around the role AI will play in this new environment versus where people are most effective. Adding to the complexity, the market has been flooded with new AI solutions and leaders are trying to weed through to see what’s real and what’s vaporware.
Ryan Manchee | SVP, Brand Marketing - Basis: Agencies are being asked to do more with less. Client demands have increased, and relationships are shifting from AOR to project-based, challenging the economics of the agency model. Savvy agencies are creating new revenue streams—from data plays for enhanced addressability to advanced analytics that prove outcomes—but many are still struggling to stay ahead and effectively grow their businesses.
Compounding these pressures, the rise of AI and automation is rapidly changing what brands need from their agencies and how agencies deploy their teams. Many agency leaders are hesitant to hire more employees until they understand how these new tools and processes will impact their business.
Michael Olson | EVP, Client Development – Basis: The rise of AI and increasing complexity in the media landscape are two major forces pushing agencies to evolve.
When it comes to AI, agencies are trying to find the balance between what AI can and cannot replace in terms of human labor. The market has shifted from revenue at all costs to profitability, so companies don’t want to add any incremental employee costs if they don’t have to. But on the flip side, many agency contracts with brands are still in the FTE model—so those are opposing forces.
At the same time, the media landscape is growing more complex. The rise of retail media networks across all verticals, agentic AI, and competition between DSPs and SSPs are fragmenting the space. RMNs and agentic AI also adding walled gardens to advertisers’ media mixes. Other channels are rapidly evolving as well: For example, Comcast recently introduced programmatic advertising for linear TV through FreeWheel, and I think we’re going to see a real shift in 2026 of linear dollars increasingly being bought through ad tech platforms.
Overall, there’s just so much change happening in the industry on the tech side, and it’s a real challenge for agencies to keep track of and adapt to while pitching new business and ensuring the balance sheet is strong.
AW: Agencies should be evaluating their approach to technology and how they deliver value to clients. Waiting to see where the industry goes next and specifically how to integrate automation, whether through AI or other technology solutions, will only make the agency more vulnerable in the future. As the rate of change continues to increase, agencies should embrace a test and learn approach, take smart risks, learn quickly, fail fast, and remain agile.
KM: One major way agencies can stay competitive and future-oriented is by understanding and embracing brands’ desire for transparency. Agencies should be building their cost structures in a way that anticipates client expectations for transparency in everything from pricing to cost of paid media to cost of data and beyond. Brands know there are platforms out there that provide that level of transparency, and they’re only going to demand it more and more.
RM: As an industry, we’re often too focused on innovation of technology over the importance of intersecting with culture. Brands hire agencies for a variety of reasons, one of them being their ability to stay on top of what’s new and what’s coming up ahead. This can be a key differentiator: Agencies can help increase brand memorability and drive culture by aligning a brand's products or services with key moments, from tentpole sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Cup to breakthrough moments in pop culture. The agencies that keep this aspect of their service in focus have been and will stay competitive and successful.
MO: The number one priority for agencies these days is top line growth while maintaining healthy and growing EBITDA margins. In general, employee growth and employee experience have taken a back seat to profitability. And of course, making sure revenue turns into profit is incredibly important, because if you don’t do that you can’t provide an environment for organizational culture to thrive.
However, to drive this growth, agencies cannot lose sight of their talent. There’s an old adage that says, “Your most valuable assets get in the elevator and walk out the door every day.” Agencies must maintain focus on their talent, because ultimately, those are the people who are going to help them keep their clients and win new clients to make that top line growth happen.
Part of maintaining focus on talent means preparing employees for an evolving industry. That means it’s critical for agency leaders to ensure their teams are learning how to work with AI. AI will come for some jobs, but in most cases, it's not going to be AI that replaces people—it's going to be people who are better at leveraging AI.
Lauren Johnson | Client Strategy & Effectiveness Lead - Basis: When I'm thinking about how agencies need to evolve, I think about how they need to be able to answer the hard questions.
Brands will continue to push agency partners to validate both their investment decisions and their creative decisions. They’re focused on understanding the business outcomes of their media investments. That's why agencies' creativity needs to be rooted in a place of effectiveness: shaping strong POVs for testing and learning, developing experiments to validate decisions, and creative problem-solving across investments both small and large. Creativity, new ideas, thought leadership, and effective media plans that build client confidence should be focus areas.
At the same time, agencies exist to help brands grow, and in today's landscape that means they must embrace change and try new things by leveraging technology—from AI to modeling technology to automation—to find new solutions to the same problems.
AW: CMOs are under a tremendous amount of pressure. They are expected to be a Swiss Army knife when it comes to knowing what is happening across their business, the industry, the next emerging trend, and how to outsmart their competition—and often with far less budget than what they need. The expectation to show meaningful business outcomes and justify every dollar is higher than ever.
Agencies need to recognize these pressures and come to the table with solutions that highlight marketing as a revenue generating function versus a cost center. Doing this requires a true partnership with clear agreements on the business problems to be solved, the performance expectations to be met, and a plan to do so. Agencies also need to help brands understand and navigate the evolving media landscape, and in turn, brands need to support agencies with appropriate staffing and timelines.
RM: Many agencies have embraced expertise they’ve gained working with brands in certain categories or verticals. This has helped them differentiate and enabled them to go deeper with their existing and prospective clients.
With economic turbulence and supply challenges, many brands are also scaling back their long-term planning. This may help them to stay nimble and see short-term positive results, but it will have an impact on their brand-building efforts that take time, investment, and smart planning. Agency teams who can balance the short- and long-term planning, while leaning on their growing expertise, will see the biggest gains.
LJ: Brands’ marketing teams are more stressed than ever. They don’t have the budgets they need to meet their goals, they are expected to be experts on all things media, and they are under pressure to navigate the noise of an increasingly complex landscape.
This stressed state means brands are looking for more than just agency partnerships that can activate media with efficiency. They are looking for strategic partners that make them smarter and more confident in their marketing decisions. At the same time, they want smart, simple solutions that cut through the noise and resonate at the executive level.
Moving into 2026, agencies must commit to providing meaningful business-level partnerships that help clients navigate through all the complexity and upheaval that characterizes the industry today. Forward-thinking agencies will be using every engagement to share how advertising is impacting their clients’ business, offering up new solutions backed by innovative thinking, and elevating client conversations beyond lower-level topics—such as short-term KPIs and allocating budget into different media channels—that don’t hold weight with bigger business conversations.
AW: Driving business growth and creating efficiencies are certainly top of mind. How can agencies deliver more value cost efficiently? What are the mechanisms to generate cost savings and efficiency within their business, while balancing increasing labor costs with economic pressures? As a result, many agencies are looking for bigger client wins, ways to outsource some functions, or offload less profitable accounts.
MO: The following topics are forefront in agency leaders’ minds: Offsetting costs and growing revenue with AI tools, systems and platforms; ensuring they have the right talent that knows how to leverage those tools, systems, and platforms for efficiency and gain; reducing the cost to pitch and win new business; navigating the ever-changing landscape of media activation, reporting, and reconciliation; and ensuring they have the right outcome-based partnerships with all their vendors and platforms to provide strategic value back to their brands.
In terms of how agency leaders are thinking about evolving, it all comes down to getting clear on what their business excels at, and then doubling down with smart tech and good talent. Leaders should also reduce efforts to try and boil the ocean, which tends to end with results that are just OK.
AW: AI and agentic solutions are reshaping how deliverables are created, as well as their associated timelines and costs. Work that currently requires multiple teams is being condensed to fewer people and shorter timelines.
KM: Gen AI is now being used across every part of the digital media process. But for many agencies, that constitutes a variety of stitched-together point solutions, which results in a significant amount of complexity. Considering this, the smartest agencies are working to figure out how to reduce that complexity and weave gen AI as seamlessly as possible into their existing tech stacks.
At the same time, clients are going to be asking how agencies are using AI to drive effectiveness and efficiency, so the ways agencies are integrating gen AI—and agentic AI as well—into their operations needs to be part of their pitch.
RM: Mitigating the mundane and monotonous to free up time for the fun and fantastic. As AI and automation deliver on that promise, agencies will be well positioned for growth, and for their team’s growth.
Through automation, there’s an opportunity to reevaluate where talent is best utilized and to shift employees’ time to high-value tasks. Within the last six months, we’ve also seen the emergence of agentic AI that can impact day-to-day business operations, allowing teams to rethink how they prioritize their time and efforts.
MO: Humans should not be completely removed from the equation. The magic place we want to get to is a beneficial blend of AI and humans to ensure efficiencies throughout the agency. Shifting employee responsibilities from low-value work to high-value strategic work will not only empower them to grow, but also allow businesses to reduce costs needed to pay people for low-value activities that machines can do quickly and accurately.
When it comes to AI, agencies also need to be able to see through the fluff. There’s a lot of vaporware in the market right now, and a lot of shiny new toys. It’s going to be critically important for agencies to be able to evaluate which tools can offer real value.
Being able to move faster and achieve more is what’s most important. The agencies who figure out how to integrate their AI in a way where 1+1=5 will be best positioned for success. I could argue that with how rapidly AI is accelerating code development, any agency can build custom technology with minimal financial investment to help usher their agency into a new era.
AW: Agencies should take an agile approach to their organization design based on where AI can deliver efficiency. As media continues to converge and more channels can be executed programmatically, agencies will need to work to remove siloes to more effectively deliver holistic recommendations focused on achievement of business outcomes.
In terms of the next generation of agency professionals, I believe that curiosity will remain a highly valuable skillset. Remaining open to new ways of planning and activating will be essential, as agentic AI’s ability to automate tasks will fundamentally reshape advertisers’ workflows. In general, embracing AI tools and solutions to support new ways of working will be an expectation for all agency professionals. As certain responsibilities become automated, the next generation of agency advertisers will have the opportunity to reshape where they spend time to drive value.
KM: Agency leaders should be curating teams that can keep up with a rapid pace of change and seeking out the kind of people who are going to run towards change versus resist it. Employees who are resistant to change can hold the whole team back.
This is about creating a culture where embracing change is the norm. Leaders should be thinking about how to curate an environment that is conducive to people seeing change as a growth vehicle for themselves rather than something that they should be afraid of. They might even think about incentivizing that kind of behavior.
AW: We’re experiencing a period of rapid evolution. The agency of the future will have technology and AI as a crucial point of all operations, with talent well-versed and comfortable using AI tools to derive solutions. Creative and content, influencer marketing, and media will become more tightly connected and we will continue to see convergence of media across planning and activation, leading to hybrid roles within agencies.
KM: The agencies that are going to win new business in this new era of advertising are those who have figured out how to integrate gen AI and agentic AI into their operations in a way that constitutes a kind of “secret sauce” that sets them apart from other agencies.
MO: There are so many tech-related evolutions happening in the industry right now, but agencies need to keep their focus on acting as trusted advisors to their clients to achieve their desired outcomes.
I also think that an agency’s ability to provide excellent service is going to be a differentiator. Chatbots and agentic AI are increasingly being used to streamline communications—which can be incredibly valuable—but providing that human touch and stand-out service is absolutely critical.
While the best approach to evolution will vary based on each agency’s characteristics, strengths, and goals, there are a few north stars leaders can follow to ensure they aren’t left behind. These include maintaining focus on the wellbeing and retention of agency staff, as well as investing strategically in AI- and automation-driven tools designed to make teams more efficient. By leaning into these strategies, advertising leaders will position their organizations to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, stay ahead of competitors, and foster a culture of innovation that keeps their teams engaged and their clients satisfied.
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There’s so much more to explore when it comes to the current state of advertising agencies and how they’re set to evolve in the coming years. To dive deeper, we surveyed advertising industry professionals from across the US to find out how they feel about their jobs, their agencies, and the current trajectory of the digital advertising industry. Discover all the top insights in our 2025 Advertising Agency Report.
See how CloudControlMedia launched new digital campaigns with CTV for Abilene Christian University, resulting in a 42% increase in spend year over year.
CloudControlMedia (CCM) is a performance-based digital marketing agency with expertise in higher education and home services, serving clients including Abilene Christian University, The New School, and others. They offer a full suite of digital marketing services, including SEM, SEO, email, social media, CRO, content development, creative services, and analytics.
CloudControlMedia’s higher ed clients leaned on lower-funnel tactics. The CCM team needed to prove that CTV, OTT, and display could drive conversions and close major attribution gaps along the way.
CloudControlMedia turned to Basis to launch new digital campaigns for its client, Abilene Christian University.
CloudControlMedia partnered with Abilene Christian University to shifted dollars from pure lead gen-oriented tactics into awareness campaigns that proved bottom-funnel impact.
The results:
With Basis, CloudControlMedia closed attribution gaps, proved CTV’s impact, and powered new growth:
"The Basis team was prompt, thorough, and went above and beyond with all the requests we had, from serving as a reliable research partner to looping in their team of SMEs for insights on any high-level programmatic strategies." - CloudControlMedia
The past five years in media and marketing have been marked by both progress and paradox. As the industry races ahead, it’s also circling back: revisiting old predictions, re-evaluating what didn’t land, and rethinking what innovation really means.
In this webinar, Noor Naseer and Kaitlin O’Brien from Basis’ Media Innovations & Technology team will take a clear-eyed look at the forces shaping 2026. Rewind to Fast Forward will explore how advertisers are returning to long-standing challenges and unfinished innovations that now define forward momentum. As sophistication replaces scale, the next wave of growth will come from mastering quality, precision, intelligence, and authenticity—not just chasing what’s next.
Register to gain a grounded perspective on the trends that will shape 2026—and how to translate them into meaningful, measurable impact in the year ahead.
What happens when media, ethics, and performance finally align?
Chad Hickey, CEO of values-based advertising solutions company Givsly, joins host Noor Naseer to unpack why investing in responsible media makes sense not only ethically, but strategically. From evolving consumer expectations around brand responsibility to the ways advertisers can turn purpose into measurable ROI, this conversation explores the future of values-based advertising.
Caitlin Clark broke viewership records. Simone Biles became the most decorated US gymnast in history. Ilona Maher built a social media following larger than any rugby player in the world. These athletes, among many others, have dominated their fields and fueled a rise in women's sports viewership, opening new pathways for advertisers to reach highly engaged audiences and key demographics.
Women's sports have experienced unprecedented growth in recent years: Average ratings for the WNBA regular season have skyrocketed, with the latest season marking the most-viewed ever on ESPN networks; the 2024 NWSL Championship set a new viewership record for the league, with audiences increasing by 18% compared to the 2023 championship; and more than 1.3 billion people worldwide tuned in to watch women's events at the 2024 Paris Olympics. At the same time, a new generation of athletes is reshaping fan engagement, with stars like Coco Gauff and Paige Bueckers using social platforms to build personal brands and connect directly with audiences—and creating valuable opportunities for brand partnerships in the process.
The bottom line? Women's sports audiences are growing rapidly and rewarding brands that show up. Here are three key things advertisers need to know about this audience to craft podium-worthy strategies:
The audience for women's sports is deeply invested. Half of avid fans demonstrate strong loyalty to individual athletes, and this group is 27% more likely to purchase from brands that partner with popular female athletes.
This brand-responsive behavior extends across the broader fan base. In fact, nearly one-third of all women's sports fans say they're more likely to buy from brands that support women's sports or partner with female athletes. Among female fans, that figure climbs to 36%.
Beyond direct purchases, women's sports fans are 53% more likely than the average consumer to recommend products to others. This turns brand loyalty into powerful word-of-mouth marketing that continues well beyond the initial sponsorship investment.
Put simply, women's sports fans aren't just watching. They're actively rewarding brands that show up authentically in the space.
While women’s sports fans span all generations, they skew younger. People between the ages of 16 and 24 are 18% more likely than average to follow women's sports, and the 25-34 demographic represents the largest portion of the audience. WNBA fans exemplify this trend: Nearly half fall within the 18-34 age range, while 32% are ages 35-54, and 21% are 55 and older.
Gen Z is particularly —and increasingly— engaged: In 2025, over half of 18-to-24-year-olds report interest in watching or attending women's sporting events, up from 41% in 2022. These younger fans also follow their favorite athletes across social platforms, with at least 40% of Gen Z US sports fans following women’s sports and athletes on social media.
This younger, digitally native audience represents a significant opportunity for advertisers looking to build long-term brand loyalty. Advertisers should consider campaigns that reach these fans on Instagram and TikTok while also leveraging live CTV, where audiences of all ages are increasingly tuning in.
While some might assume otherwise, women’s sports fandom extends well beyond female viewers.
Men and women watch women's sports at nearly equal rates, with roughly three-quarters of each demographic tuning in at least a few times annually. Male fans watch more frequently, however, with 23% viewing weekly or more, compared to 15% of female fans. When it comes to the WNBA specifically, men make up the majority (56%) of fans, though women represent a still-substantial 44% of the fan base.
These viewership patterns highlight an important strategic consideration: Women's sports audiences are more diverse than many assume. Advertisers should base their targeting strategies on actual viewership data rather than demographic stereotypes.
Women's sports has evolved into a robust media ecosystem with engaged, brand-responsive audiences. The combination of rapid viewership growth, high fan engagement, younger demographics, and gender diversity create a compelling case for advertisers to invest in this space.
With momentum and brand investment accelerating, now is the time to build meaningful, lasting connections through women’s sports.
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Looking for more insights around how to harness the live sports opportunity? Check out Going Deep on Live Sports Advertising Opportunities for actionable insights on maximizing your investment.
As the final quarter of 2025 takes shape, marketers face a paradox: Consumer spending appears resilient, yet caution is everywhere. Inflation is proving sticky. Tariffs are driving up costs. And confidence in the economy is slipping.
Still, the holiday season—one of the most critical revenue periods of the year for many brands—is underway, and will offer a real-time read of where demand is holding and where it’s softening. It’s an ideal time to focus less on what consumers say they’ll do and more on what they’re actually doing, a distinction that will be increasingly important heading into 2026.
While this mix of signals can make planning feel uncertain, it also offers valuable insight into what’s ahead. The trends taking shape now will help set the tone for 2026. While no forecast is perfect, paying attention to a few key indicators can help marketing leaders cut through the noise, anticipate shifts in consumer behavior, and refine how they allocate budgets as they look to the new year.
Inflation may have cooled from its 2022 highs, but it has remained persistent throughout 2025. Prices continue to hover around 3.0% higher year-over-year (YoY), and new tariffs are adding another layer of pressure—raising the cost of both consumer goods and the equipment businesses rely on. Many companies are passing those price increases along to consumers, eroding purchasing power and testing price tolerance across income groups.
Because many of the new tariffs only took effect in the past few months, their full impact has yet to be felt. As these costs work their way through supply chains, pricing pressures will likely intensify in 2026.
For brands and marketers, this means price sensitivity isn’t likely to fade anytime soon. “Consumers are spending more carefully,” says Kelly Boyle, SVP of Strategic Business Outcomes at Basis. “However, that doesn’t always mean less. They’re asking whether what they’re paying for is really worth it and focusing on quality and value.”
Keeping an eye on monthly inflation reports, developments around tariff impacts, and how competitors adjust pricing can help teams understand where consumer budgets are tightening and which audiences are feeling pressure first. Those insights can reveal where to adjust messaging around value, quality, and necessity as consumer priorities continue to shift.
Consumer confidence has remained weak throughout 2025. The Consumer Confidence Index has stayed below the 80-point threshold that often signals recession risk since February, and it declined again in September. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment shows a similar pattern: It held nearly flat at 55.0 in October 2025 (vs. 55.1 in September), down 22% YoY, while consumer expectations fell more than 30% during that period.
Despite confidence slipping, spending hasn’t yet followed suit. “A lot of research shows consumers saying they’re going to spend less, but we’re not actually seeing spending go down yet,” says Boyle. “People might plan to spend less, but when they see the product, the price, or the deal in front of them, that’s when the real decision happens.”
For marketers, that means these dips in confidence are important to track, but not always predictive. Watching real behavior—like changing shopping cart sizes, shifting web traffic patterns, or slowing engagement—can give marketers a truer picture of demand. In many cases, confidence data reflects emotion more than genuine intent, so interpreting it alongside behavioral evidence can reveal whether concern is translating into real restraint.
Despite declines in confidence, consumer spending has stayed strong through 2025. However, that foundation is starting to shift. Recent data shows that growth is increasingly driven by higher-income households, while job openings are decreasing and hiring is slowing. The number of people voluntarily quitting jobs has fallen to its lowest level since December, a clear sign that confidence in finding new opportunities is waning.
Younger consumers are feeling the strain most. Gen Z spending fell 13% between January and April of this year, and Zoomers plan to cut 2025 holiday purchases by 23%. Unemployment among new entrants to the workforce—many of them Gen Z—remains elevated, and more than 40% report running out of money each month. Taken together, the slowdown in hiring and Gen Z’s spending pullback point to a growing generational divide in consumer resilience. Boyle notes that brands should dig deeper into what’s driving those shifts rather than assume every cutback signals disengagement. Understanding whether younger shoppers are trading down, delaying purchases, shopping secondhand, or spending on experiences versus products can reveal where opportunity still exists.
Tracking labor trends by income and age throughout Q4 can help marketers anticipate where confidence, and eventually spending, may weaken first. If employment continues to cool, discretionary categories and younger shoppers are likely to feel it soonest.
Economic uncertainty often drives caution. Earlier this year, 94% of US advertisers expressed concern around the impact of tariffs, and 45% said they planned to reduce their budgets as a result. Those adjustments are now starting to surface as the effects of tariffs flow through supply chains and margins tighten.
But history shows that brands that maintain visibility during downturns tend to emerge stronger. Monitoring competitors’ share of voice and promotional activity through Q4 can help marketing leaders spot where attention is up for grabs. Discovering opportunities to leverage relative advantage—investing in audiences, channels, and timing where competitors leave space—can help teams stretch budgets while gaining ground.
At the same time, Boyle notes, “If competitors start pulling back, a brand’s share of voice naturally increases—even without upping spend. That’s often when it’s worth holding your ground or leaning in a bit more if the timing is right.”
Continuing to invest strategically during periods of retreat not only preserves awareness but also builds momentum that compounds once conditions improve. Marketers who stay alert to these shifts can shape their 2026 plans with clearer visibility and stronger positioning.
Each of these indicators can guide practical planning for 2026. Keeping a close eye on rising prices, shifting consumer sentiment and behaviors, changes in the relationship between spending and the job market, and evolving competitor strategies will help leaders navigate the market more effectively. By paying attention to these signals throughout Q4, teams can refine priorities for the year ahead based on consumer and competitor behavior. Treating these signals as ongoing inputs—rather than one-time data points—will help ensure plans are crafted as strategically as possible.
“When things feel uncertain, the best thing you can do is stay clear on your strategy and your audience,” says Boyle. “The teams that succeed amidst turbulence are those who stay focused on what matters most to their business.”
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Looking for more insights on how marketing leaders can navigate economic uncertainty? Basis’ CMO Katie McAdams shares her expertise in How Marketing Leaders Can Earn Executive Buy-In During Economic Turbulence.
Picture this: The weekend is finally here, it’s game time, and you’ve got your homemade nachos all set to go (your secret ingredient: home-pickled jalapenos!). You plop down on the couch, crack open your first beer, turn on the big screen and...shoot. Where’s the game? Didn’t you read something about Amazon securing the rights for this season? No wait, that was Peacock...or was it Apple TV+? ESPN+? Maybe TBS? Or TNT? One of the Ts? Fox? CBS? Hulu? YouTube TV? Is this one of the games on Netflix? Why can’t you find it?! Was there ever even a game today? THE NACHOS ARE GETTING COLD!
Tuning in to live sports used to be so simple. And we’re not even talking about 50+ years ago, when that meant “going to the game” or “turning on the radio” for 95% of your live sports consumption. As recently as the 2000s, when it came to sports broadcasts, there were the major networks, ESPN, an occasional game on one of the Turner channels, and that pretty much was it.
Today, sports leagues are scattering their broadcast rights around like digital Johnny Appleseeds, adding to an already-complex CTV and streaming video environment and creating new challenges for advertisers and consumers alike. The clear reason for this shift? Money—big money. US sports TV and streaming rights are forecast to reach $30.5 billion in 2024 and are forecast to reach nearly $35 billion by 2027—almost double what they were just a decade earlier. All this has taken place in the face of (or, perhaps, helped fuel) cord cutting that drives essential revenue away from traditional broadcasters and into the pockets of streaming services.
In light of these dramatic shifts, how can digital advertisers effectively reach and connect with sports fans? And is navigating the disparate live sports landscape worth all the trouble? (Spoiler alert: yes, yes it is!) Read on to learn all about it.
First off, let’s look at some of those new (or, at least, new-ish) sports broadcast partnerships, an area that’s seen some significant departures from the “old normal” in recent years:
The fact that so many major American sports entities have granted exclusive broadcast rights to streaming platforms marks a significant shift in the industry. And with digital live sports viewership surpassing linear TV in 2023—a gap that’s only widened since—it’s clear that the streaming-first revolution in sports broadcasting has arrived.
Just as meaningful is the price those companies paid for their live sports streaming rights: $200 million per year from Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and NBCUniversal for WNBA games; $5 billion over the next ten years from Netflix for the WWE “Raw” programming; $1 billion per year from Amazon for their weekly regular season NFL matchup; a reported $2+ billion per year from Google for Sunday Ticket; and $150 million from Netflix for its two Christmas day NFL games in 2024.
To make up for these kinds of skyrocketing costs, linear broadcasters and streaming video platforms alike are turning to two main revenue sources: subscription price hikes and—you guessed it!—advertising. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how (and why) advertisers can make the most of this evolving landscape.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans are sports fans. And people who watch sports aren’t going to catch a replay of the game once it hits Netflix in a few months—they’re going to watch it live. This is a valuable “guaranteed” audience upon which platforms and advertisers alike can place outsized value compared to other broadcasts (no wonder sports tend to dominate lists of the most-watched US broadcasts year after year). When brands want to ensure they are meeting a large, built-in audience all at once, there are few opportunities quite like live sports.
Which is not to say that brands can’t benefit from advertising against other sports content, such as highlights, clips, and replays (more on this in a bit!). Those often represent prime contextual advertising opportunities, whether via contextual partners like Comscore and DoubleVerify, or with specific publishers such as the AP, Gannett, or (of course) ESPN.
On the more local level, no matter what embarrassment, scandal, or years-long losing streak might afflict their favorite team, fans tend to “root root root for the home team” through thick and thin. For advertisers that want to geotarget, sporting events often post remarkable ratings in specific markets—and fan loyalty can translate to brand loyalty. No wonder organizations of all kinds pay out top dollars to be the official beer, official pizza, official bank, official cryptocurrency platform, or even official HR/payroll provider of your hometown team.
Another key factor that’s fueling sports viewership? Gambling, which has gone from being largely prohibited under federal law (except in Nevada) before 2018 to being all over American sports coverage today. After the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban that year, individual states began legalizing sports betting, and total consumer spending on gambling has since skyrocketed—surpassing $100 billion for the first time in 2023, and expected to exceed $200 billion in 2027.
This growing excitement around sports betting is delivering new, passionate audiences to live sports, with over a fifth of US adults reporting that they have personally engaged with sports betting within the last year. And if someone is spending money on the game, they’re a whole lot more likely to tune in, with 85% of sports bettors saying it makes them more interested in watching the games.
As for where and how they're watching...
164 million Americans regularly watch live sports—nearly 50% of the total population. Perhaps even more notably, more than 114 million of those viewers currently tune in on digital devices, and that number is projected to rise to 137 million by 2029. Yep: Just like the rest of the video world, the future of live sports advertising is digital.
Of course, as is the case with that larger digital video environment, the increasingly disparate nature of sports broadcast agreements (even in light of new offerings like ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service) is only adding to the complexity and fragmentation that mark the digital video and CTV space. Among avid sports fans, 69% feel it’s a hassle to navigate multiple providers to watch the same sport and 59% feel it’s gotten more difficult to find what they want to watch, and you can only imagine how frustrating that must be when the start of the game is rapidly approaching (and your nachos are getting cold...) And for advertisers, the evolution from a few reliable live sports hubs to numerous broadcasters across multiple channels can mean added complexity in campaigns targeting these audiences. So as streaming becomes the norm for live sports, advertisers and viewers alike are adapting to some growing pains.
That said, to their credit, the big tech companies that have waded into the live sports streaming wars are taking crucial steps toward optimizing benefits for advertisers. Prime Video, now a major home for NBA coverage, is rolling out interactive tools like “key moments,” advanced stats, and personalized bet tracking for NBA broadcasts. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal and Walmart launched integrated shoppable experiences across both linear and streaming sports inventory in late 2024, bringing retail media into live broadcasts. On the measurement front, Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel tool now includes live sports as a core category, and leagues are pushing for streaming platforms to share first-party metrics to support accurate ad pricing.
Even the more traditional homes of live sports have readily embraced the potential of streaming those events for maximum impact. Fox, for instance, included viewership across its broadcast network, Fox Deportes and Telemundo, the NFL's digital networks, and Fox's ad-supported streaming service, Tubi, when it reported the ratings from Super Bowl LIX—the most-watched US broadcast in history. And annual events like the Masters golf championship and NCAA men’s basketball tournament have long had authorized (and ad-filled) streams as part of their overall broadcast packages. As viewers increasingly flock to OTT and CTV for their live sports consumption, brands will have new ways to personalize and target these consumers as part of their cross-channel marketing strategies.
Speaking of which...
The digital evolution of live sports broadcasts goes beyond individual devices.
More and more fans are watching the game on digital platforms, particularly bigger screens like CTV. Sports viewership on YouTube’s connected TV app grew by 30% in 2024—a clear signal that connected TV (CTV) is becoming a major player in sports advertising.
But the real secret weapon for advertisers may be resting in your pocket (or your hand) right now: smartphones. Sports broadcasts present a unique cross-platform marketing opportunity, with viewers often using second screens to look up players and team statistics, use social media to engage with others, watch other games on a separate device, place bets, and more—all while watching live sports at home.
This multi-device behavior creates valuable targeting opportunities that extend well beyond game time. Sports fans are a widely targetable audience segment through private marketplaces (PMPs) like Tapjoy, and they can be further segmented via top data providers like Alliant (golf), eXelate (NBA), and Cuebiq (NHL). These tools help advertisers continue to market to viewers even after the game clock hits 0:00. Put it all together, and sports programming offers a powerful way to consistently reach and remarket to specific target audiences across multiple devices.
Beyond retargeting viewers across devices during and immediately after games, there's also a significant opportunity to build upon the momentum of live sports and continue the conversation long after the final whistle. Sports fans are often ideal audiences for marketers as they are deeply engaged when it comes to their favorite teams. Considering the fact that 41% of fans are already locked into their favorite pro sports team by the age of 12 (and 62% by the age of 17), it’s clear that sports fans are an active, impassioned audience ripe for engagement. By leaning into this passion and connecting with these fans within relevant content related to their favorite teams, marketers can further deepen brand loyalty and drive meaningful engagement.
Whether by running ads alongside clips and replays, within sports shows, or even alongside social media content, advertisers have ever-expanding opportunities to engage with sports fans beyond live events themselves—and perhaps even to persuade more viewers to tune into live games. The power of such placements is underscored by deals like the 2024 NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery agreement which includes the studio show Inside the NBA, as well as other NBA content like Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, a social media network that distributes sports clips and content.
In addition to using ad placements within gameday-adjacent content, brands and marketers can also harness the power of sports by working with athlete influencers. Take, for instance, rugby star and Olympian Ilona Maher. She rose to fame not only for her powerful presence and performance on the field, but also for her active presence on social media—where she now has over five million followers on Instagram and works with major brands like Barbie and Maybelline. Additionally, many athletes have also started their own podcasts (like Angel Reese’s “Unapologetically Angel” and the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights”), offering brands the opportunity to place high-impact ads that connect with fans within their shows.
Sports offer brands a unique opportunity to connect with deeply passionate and engaged audiences, both during and outside of the game. By leveraging gameday-adjacent content and collaborating with athlete influencers, brands and marketers can tap into the enthusiasm of sports fans to build stronger connections, deepen brand loyalty, and drive meaningful engagement across a variety of platforms.
Sporting events are a fixture of American culture. From Super Bowl Sunday every winter to the WNBA Finals every summer, live sports are a reliable way to bring people together in front of their TVs, laptops, and other streaming devices to catch the action (and, of course, the commercials). And even as the way fans consume their sports continues to evolve hand-in-hand with the rest of the video realm, advertisers will look to live sports as a pillar of their omnichannel marketing strategies. In short: It’s a home run opportunity for brands to hit their goals, assist in the revenue-driving process, and score some big wins.
(And yes, there were seven sports puns in that last sentence. Touchdown.)
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The role of CTV in live sports advertising is expected to dramatically increase in the years ahead. Check out our CTV advertising guide for tips on everything from CTV campaign best practices, to safeguards against CTV ad fraud, to effective targeting tactics, and much, much more.
