In a poll of its members, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has selected “transparency” as the single word that would best represent the U.S. marketing industry in 2016. It attributes the selection to the ANA’s June release of a study that highlighted widespread allegations of various non-transparent business activities by ad agencies and media agencies throughout the U.S. media ecosystem.
“It’s no surprise that our members chose transparency as the Marketing Word of the Year,” says ANA CEO Bob Liodice. “Our media transparency study was one of our most important initiatives and it sparked fundamental behavioral changes among marketers and in the industry, here and around the world.”
In August, the ANA formed a Production Transparency Task Force to assess whether there are non-transparent advertising agency practices in production services and to develop recommendations for improvement.
Other top choices in the 2016 Marketing Word of the Year voting were customer experience, content marketing, influencer and programmatic. This is the third consecutive year the ANA has selected a Marketing Word of the Year. Previous winners were content marketing (2015) and programmatic (2014).