The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) represents the

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to empha ...

community in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. Its headquarters is in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

and it has another office in Washington, D.C. ANA's membership includes over 600 companies with 25,000 brands that collectively spend over 400 billion dollars in marketing communications and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

. A mid-2018 joint announcement with the Data & Marketing Association (''theDMA''), stated as "to be completed as of July 1, 2018" and having as its goal "the single largest trade association in the U.S. devoted to serving all aspects of marketing" had not materialized as of the projected date. A 1999

Advertising Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in mu ...

opinion page headlined "Who gets what in ANA's drive to enlist shops?" asked "does agency membership in the ANA serve the times?"

History

Early years

The Association of National Advertisers, Inc., the U.S.

advertising industry The advertising industry is the global industry of public relation and marketing companies, media services and advertising agencies - largely controlled today by just a few international holding companies ( WPP plc, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, I ...

’s oldest

trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific Industry (economics), industry. An industry tra ...

, was founded on June 24, 1910, in Detroit, Michigan, by 45 companies. Founding members include the

Burroughs Adding Machine Company The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many ...

, Glidden Varnish Company, Macey Company,

Sherwin-Williams Sherwin-Williams Company is an American Cleveland, Ohio–based company in the paint and coating manufacturing industry. The company primarily engages in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of paints, coatings, floorcoverings, and related ...

, and National Lead Company. Originally known as the Association of National Advertising Managers, in 1914 the association officially adopted the name it now bears. At the time of its formation, ANA’s objective was to promote cooperative relationships between regional and national advertising industries, manufacturers and dealers, and advertisers and agencies. Other issues that the advertisers sought to address concerned accurate audience measurement and the establishment of national standards for measuring advertising results. The Audit Bureau of Circulations was formed in 1914 to verify publication circulation figures and track media rates. Twenty years later the Traffic Audit Bureau was created to effectively measure outdoor media. In 1936 the

Advertising Research Foundation The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is a nonprofit industry association for creating, aggregating, and sharing knowledge in the fields of advertising and mass media. It was founded in 1936 by the Association of National Advertisers and the ...

– a spin-off of an ANA committee – came into being with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of marketing and advertising communications through advertising, marketing and media research. The War Advertising Council was formed in 1942 to bolster the sale of

war bond War bonds (sometimes referred to as Victory bonds, particularly in propaganda) are debt securities issued by a government to finance military operations and other expenditure in times of war without raising taxes to an unpopular level. They are ...

s, later becoming The Advertising Council as it took on other public service issues.

1950–1999

In 1963 the ANA helped establish the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) for Broadcast Talent Union Relations, which negotiates contracts with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and the

American Federation of Musicians The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM/AFofM) is a 501(c)(5) labor union representing professional instrumental musicians in the United States and Canada. The AFM, which has its headquarters in New York City, ...

. The efficacy of advertising can only be maintained by responsible advertising, and for the purpose of

industry self-regulation Industry self-regulation is the process whereby members of an industry, trade or sector of the economy monitor their own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a third party entit ...

concerning matters of truth, taste, and social responsibility, the ANA, working in conjunction with the AAAA,

American Advertising Federation The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest national advertising trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry ...

(AAF), and BBB National Programs launched the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) in 1971. The NARB acts as the appeals board for the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs. The NAD investigates matters of honesty and accuracy in advertising and issues of taste or social responsibility are addressed by the NARB. In 1986 the ANA, AAAA and AAF formed the State Advertising Coalition to monitor state legislative and regulatory issues that threaten advertising. Later, in 1988, ANA worked in concert with other industry trade associations to form the Advertising Tax Coalition to combat federal advertising tax proposals. The ANA has fielded numerous studies and helped develop advertising measurement systems from its inception to the present: from the Crossley rating system, developed in 1930, which established national standards by which radio audiences could be measured, to the recently introduced Ad-ID, a system that assigns a unique and permanent code to each ad with 360-degree application. The Family Friendly Programming Forum, whose goal is to increase prime time television programming that can be viewed by the entire family, is a member initiative begun with the support of the ANA in 1998. In addition to providing a script development fund and scholarships for students working on family friendly programming, the televised Family Television Awards are held to recognize outstanding family programming.

More recently

Developed by ANA and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Ad-ID is a web-based system accessible 24/7 worldwide that generates a unique identifying code for each advertising asset, creating a capability to identify them across all media. Using Ad-ID, and promoting the use of its webservices, greatly improves workflow between agency, advertiser, distributor and medium. Ad-ID upgrades the previous ISCI commercial coding system and replaces other methods used to identify advertising assets. Ad-ID is the industry standard identifier for all related forms of media. In 2014, ''ANA'' acquired: * (May): the 1911-founded Brand Activation Association * (October): the 1922-founded Business Marketing Association, owner of ''marketing.com''.

Subsidiaries

ANA Trade Association
ANA Educational Foundation
SAG/AFTRA Fund
Alliance for Family Entertainment
Alliance for Inclusive & Multicultural Marketing

CRIDO

Together with many major associations and companies, the ANA founded the ''Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight'' (CRIDO), that opposes the rollout of

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespac ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

expansion program. CRIDO fights ICANN's proposed program, citing its "deeply flawed justification, excessive cost and harm to brand owners, likelihood of predatory cyber harm to consumers and failure to act in the

public interest The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. Overview Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefore ...

History

Early years

1950–1999

More recently

Subsidiaries

CRIDO

References

External links

Further reading