In case you're looking to segment American consumer audiences based on their streaming subscription preferences, the Middleburg Managers at Magid and Claritas will have a new tool for you starting with the New Year.

Erwin Ephron taught me there is no perfect form of media research. And as good as neuromarketing, biometrics, and computervision are in unlocking some of the mysteries of our brains may be, we still need to apply our brains to interpret what those outputs actually mean.

Inspired by an ARF initiative using ChatGPT to summarize 152 of Ephron's newsletters, I asked it to distill his entire body of work into 500 words. It gave me more.

The most ironic part about the ad industry's "information asymmetry" is that it is NOT the ANA's word-of-the-year. It's ironic, because it literally demonstrates the industry's lack of knowledge.

The biggest challenge in marketing is indifference and convenience is the most powerful factor, bar none. Consumers don't want to change their minds, because they don't want to do the work. Persuasion is hostage to convenience.

There is no doubt made-for-advertising websites was one of the major news items in 2023, but as a term, it was dead last among the ANA's words of the year. That needs to change.

Months after the ANA released initial findings of its blockbuster programmatic transparency study, MFAs have become the industry's cause celebre. This morning, Pixalate adds some fuel to that fire.

"Media buyers currently using an overabundance of websites (40,000-plus) should select 75-100 trusted programmatic media sellers," the ANA said this morning as part of the recommendations coming from the second edition of its programmatic supply chain study.

The shift from "exclusion" to "inclusion" lists is perhaps the most important shift in media planning in recent years. Today, I'd like to propose a new one: the "delusion" list.