The advertising industry has long prided itself on being a people business, which makes the latest census from Ad Age something of a contradiction in terms.
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By StuAIrt Elliott
· June 16, 2026
The advertising industry has long prided itself on being a people business, which makes the latest census from Ad Age something of a contradiction in terms.
The pharmaceutical industry has long understood that awareness campaigns work best when they appear to be selling nothing at all — or, more precisely, when they are selling the category while leaving the brand name to be discovered later, perhaps in a doctor's office.
The business of knowing the right people has always been valuable on Madison Avenue, though the definition of "the right people" has shifted somewhat since the days when that meant knowing which creative director to call at Doyle Dane Bernbach.
The British government, faced with a generation that has come to view the teaching profession as something one settles for rather than reaches toward, has decided to reframe the pitch entirely: teaching, the new campaign suggests, is where you go to feel alive.
The line between an athlete endorsement and a digital billboard continues to blur, and a company called MOGL is now offering to erase it almost entirely.
The history of celebrity likeness disputes is long and often absurd — Bette Midler once sued Ford Motor Company over a sound-alike singer in a commercial, and won — but the latest chapter may be the strangest yet.
The World Cup, which begins next month in stadiums across the United States, will also be contested on a smaller pitch: the screens of mobile phones, where social media platforms are competing for the attention of fans who increasingly experience major sporting events through the filter of their fee
There is a particular kind of authority that comes from having built something enormous, lost it under murky circumstances, and then immediately started building something else.