Thank you

A note from Ad Age's Editor-in-Chief, Jeanine Poggi

Jeanine Poggi, editor-in-chief, Ad Age

Thanks for welcoming Ad Age to Substack; it's been great to see.

For a long time, we didn’t have to think much about whether Ad Age was known. We were part of the fabric of the industry. Taught in classrooms. Passed around in early jobs. Jimmy Fallon has talked about reading Ad Age in college. If you were coming up in marketing or advertising, you likely crossed paths with us at some point.

That’s a very different assumption than it is today.

The way people build knowledge—and where they build it from—has changed pretty dramatically. A lot of it now happens in feeds, through creators, in short-form videos, often from people you may not know all that well.

Everything is more immediate. More fragmented. More self-directed.

At some point, a new generation of marketers, creators and operators will need what we do. They’ll need reporting. Context. A clearer understanding of how this industry actually works.

The question is whether we’ll be known to them by then.

Not just recognized, but relevant. Not just a brand they’ve heard of, but one they already trust and return to.

That’s a very different challenge than it used to be. It’s also not unique to us.

It came up in a recent conversation I had with Oliver McAteer, partner and head of development at Mischief @ No Fixed Address, who put it pretty simply: there are thousands of agencies and only so many opportunities to be covered. So they have to build their own platforms and own their narrative.

That logic is starting to apply more broadly.

Being known before you’re needed isn’t a given anymore. It’s something you have to actively build.