ANA lags ethnic diversity benchmarks despite improvement

The Association for National Advertisers (ANA) has reported modest progress on its diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, but still lags behind its own diversity benchmarks.

Despite the ANA’s ethnic diversity reaching the highest it’s been in the five-year history of the report at 29.1%, that amount is behind both this year’s (32.3%) and last year’s (30.8%) organization benchmarks. The total US population is 42.2% ethnically diverse.

In terms of gender diversity, however, the ANA reported its highest ever female representation both in general and at the senior level.

The ANA breaks down by gender as 68.3% female, 31.6% male, and 0.1% gender non-binary. That is above the organization’s 67.5% female representation benchmark, though seldom progress has been made in further improving female representation over the past five years overall.

However, among the senior level, which is estimated to make up between 5-10% of the total workforce and is defined as the “highest level within the marketing team”, female representation has increased from 45% in 2018 to 57.3% in 2022.

The report includes 81 companies (19 ANA board members and 62 other members) comprising 19,966 marketers across the US.