A world view of advertising: What’s keeping brands awake at night?

Opinion

The ISBA Media Leaders group kicks off its monthly column with an introduction by Bobi Carley on the key themes to expect from some of the UK’s biggest advertisers.

With a collective media spend of £6.2bn per year, ISBA’s members sit at the heart of the UK ad industry.

Brand advertisers are ultimately why our industry exists, and that’s why it’s vital that ISBA and everyone in the advertising ecosystem understand the challenges those who hold the media purse strings are facing, and most importantly, what they need from us.

In a world where trust and brand safety are paramount, advertisers must increasingly focus not only on how much they spend, but also on where their campaigns appear and the consequences when they lack full visibility or control.

That’s why this year, The Media Leader has asked the ISBA Media Leaders group to write a monthly column sharing perspectives and insights from across their world.

The ISBA Media Leaders group is made up of senior marketers with responsibility for their marketing department’s media planning and buying decisions.

This group champions the needs of UK advertisers by working with media owners, tech vendors and other industry bodies to achieve transparency, accountability and consistency across the media supply chain.

So, what is keeping this influential group of ISBA members awake at night? Over the next 12 months, you will hear more details from individuals working at some of the UK’s biggest brands. As an introduction, I wanted to share the key themes you can expect to read about.

Effectiveness in fast-growing channels

The hardy perennial is effectiveness. Advertisers are under growing pressure to prove business impact, not just media efficiency. With economic volatility and AI-driven complexity reshaping planning and buying, we see a renewed urgency around key asks.

Reframing ‘brand vs performance’ into a full-funnel narrative that procurement and finance can get behind. The misleading labelling of certain activities as brand and others as performance has put marketers under pressure from the C-suite to shift media budgets to channels that deliver immediate results. There is a lack of understanding of how different media support different outcomes and how they work together to take a potential customer from awareness to purchase.

The view from the top is often echoed by those new to media planning. A generation that has grown up with media consumption habits very different from those of earlier generations. Equipping them with the essential skills to understand the full media mix is essential. 

Understanding effectiveness in fast-growing channels is an important part of this process. 

Retail media, influencer marketing, and new video formats require evidence demonstrating how they contribute to a successful media plan.

Advancing cross-media measurement and MMM understanding across marketing organisations is also critical. We now have compelling case studies from ISBA’s ambitious cross-media measurement platform, Origin.

There is a real need for more meaningful measurements like this. Advertisers want to make media-buying decisions based on all relevant data. There is also a need for support in making a compelling business case for responsible media, not treating it as a ‘nice to have’ but a driver of business success. 

Online trust and supply chain standardisation

Trust is a key component of effectiveness, and for our Media Leaders, nowhere is this more apparent than online.

Since 2017, ISBA has, on behalf of its members, challenged social media platforms to address the safety of their environments.

Advertisers need to understand what policies and practices the platforms have in place to protect users. They have been vocal supporters of the Online Safety Act and want action taken when platforms fail to protect their users from exposure to harmful content.

Next, our Media Leaders tell us they still don’t have full transparency across their media supply chains. They need clarity, simplicity and standardisation. They need to understand the implications for them around media owner and agency mergers and the impact of AI-driven planning, buying, and reporting.

The ISBA and PwC Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study with the AOP in 2021 led to positive industry action, but data access and independent verification remain challenges.

The industry’s skills challenge

And then, of course, there’s talent, more specifically, closing widening skills gaps. 

The industry faces a skills challenge, plain and simple. Teams can’t keep pace with the demands of measurement, AI, sustainability, and channel diversification. The traditional training grounds for new talent are being eroded by the adoption of AI to automate basic tasks. There is a need for a new route for the next generation of media leaders to develop the core skills they need. 

I realise this is a long list, but I hope that by highlighting what’s needed over the next 12 months, everyone in the industry can understand how they can play their part.

Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I have to end this on a positive note. There are many examples of how the industry has come together to deliver positive change.

Something I am particularly proud of is our work with Union des Marques in France to lead the Ad Accessibility Network, under the auspices of the World Federation of Advertisers, to make advertising accessible to all. 

Over the last few years, we’ve been measuring 70 ISBA member brands’ progress on accessibility. As of 2025, an incredible 95% of those we tracked now use subtitles in their advertising.

From 1 March this year, Channel 4 will require all new television adverts and sponsorship idents to include closed caption subtitles as standard across both its linear TV and streaming platforms. 

That’s what progress looks like. Change does happen when you push hard enough.

Bobi Carley is the director of industry relations and the inclusion co-Lead at ISBA. Bobi’s role is to drive industry change on key advertiser challenges. She also leads the Media Leaders working group. The group is chaired by Lisa Walker of Vodafone Three UK and supported by deputy chair Stuart McDonald of Aviva.