Advertising Age spotlighted ANA CEO Bob Liodice, who will step down from his role at the end of 2026, prompting the search for a successor.
The ANA declared, “The next CEO will build on ANA’s scale and influence while advancing its role as the industry’s guide through the most significant shift in modern marketing—where artificial intelligence is reshaping how value is created, measured and sustained.”
Sounds like a perfect opportunity to innovate toward the inevitable.
That is, replace Liodice with an AI platform.
It’ll even offer nice alliteration and decent logo potential: ANA AI
ANA CEO Bob Liodice to step down
By E.J. Schultz
Bob Liodice will step down as CEO of the Association of National Advertisers at the end of the year, ending a more than two-decade run as leader of the nation’s largest marketing industry trade group.
The ANA has hired a search firm to find a new CEO. The organization declined to name the firm but confirmed the process will be overseen by ANA board chairman Dean Aragón, who is CEO and vice chair of Shell Brands International, and Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, the prior ANA chair.
“The next CEO will build on ANA’s scale and influence while advancing its role as the industry’s guide through the most significant shift in modern marketing—where artificial intelligence is reshaping how value is created, measured and sustained,” the ANA shared in a statement.
Liodice, 70, has been with the ANA for 31 years, serving as CEO since 2003. ANA credited him with growing the organization’s membership from 188 companies to more than 1,600, representing over 20,000 brands and 50,000 marketing professionals worldwide.
In an interview, Liodice pointed to recent work done to restructure the ANA into what he described as eight “mini associations” spanning specialty areas: brand, media, data, technology, measurement, talent, inclusive marketing and business-to-business marketing. “Each of these business teams are now focused in on what we consider to be the primary drivers of growth for our unique members,” he said.
With the reorganization complete, it is time “to turn over the ANA to the next generation of leadership, whoever that leader is, whether they be sourced internally, but most probably externally,” he added.
Fixing a ‘broken organization’
Liodice, who earlier in his career held marketing and sales roles at Grupo Televisa and Kraft General Foods, joined the ANA in 1995 as a senior VP. He stepped into the CEO role eight years later, succeeding John Sarsen. It was a tumultuous time, as ANA dealt with financial challenges, as well as criticism for letting media sponsors program its flagship conference that often resulted in thinly veiled sales pitches from the stage, Ad Age reported at the time.
“We stopped that,” Liodice recalled this week. “It was distasteful to many of our brand marketers.”
The ANA at the time was “somewhat of a broken organization,” he said. “We were a hairbreadth away from being out of business,” he added, recalling that when he took over in January 2003, the ANA had $28,000 in the bank and was “nearly bankrupt.”
The ANA, which is a tax-exempt nonprofit, reported $80.4 million in revenue for 2024, up from $65.6 million in 2023, according to its latest tax filings. Expenses grew to $82.2 million from $64.3 million. Liodice’s compensation was listed as $1.5 million as of the 2024 filing. The ANA employs about 200 full-time employees today, according to a representative.
Liodice said the group’s recent jump in expenses was partially due to costs related to its recent formation of Aquila, an ANA-backed cross-platform media measurement venture designed to help marketers reduce wasteful media spending by eliminating excess frequency.
Dealing with agency tensions
Improving the media supply chain for brands has been among Liodice’s key priorities. The ANA drew widespread attention in 2016 when it published a report prepared by investigative firm K2 alleging that media agencies were benefiting from non-transparent practices, including collecting cash rebates for media deals not disclosed to advertisers. While specific agency names were not listed, the report still drew complaints from agency players, including agency trade organization 4As, which at the time accused the ANA of taking a “one-sided” approach.
It was an example of how the ANA and 4As over the years have vacillated between being allies and opponents, depending on the issue.
Liodice, in this week’s interview, said the K2 report came at a “very challenging time.”
“Relationships were, in fact, damaged at that stage,” he said. But he suggested that tensions eased after Marla Kaplowitz took over as 4As president-CEO in 2017, succeeding Nancy Hill. “She and I got along famously, and we made it our joint commitment to repair whatever damage and work harmoniously together,” Liodice said.
Kaplowitz departed 4As in 2025 and was succeeded by Justin Thomas-Copeland.
Growing ANA membership and dealing with rising event competition
The ANA’s membership growth during Liodice’s tenure in part stemmed from the acquisition of five industry associations: Brand Activation Association, Business Marketing Association, Advertising Educational Foundation, Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association and the Data and Marketing Association. Those acquisitions are helping fuel attendance at the more than 60 conferences the ANA puts on each year, including its flagship Masters of Marketing conference held in Orlando every fall, which drew about 2,500 attendees in 2025.
But the ANA has had to deal with rising competition from newer events put on by other marketing and media organizations. That includes the Possible conference, held in the spring in Miami Beach, which last year drew 5,400 attendees (albeit with some complaints about top executives being secluded behind closed doors).
“We honestly feel like we don’t compete against Possible,” Liodice said. He suggested the ANA’s differentiation from that and other events is its singular focus on brand marketers. Its global CMO Growth Council, for example, “continues to expand and has about 500 active CMOs,” he said.
Aragón, in a statement, credited Liodice for expanding the ANA’s influence and playing a “central role in advancing the standards and practices that define modern marketing.”
As he steps away, Liodice said he is looking forward to getting “a little more balance in my life.” He estimated that he has been traveling 15 to 20 weeks each year, including this week, when he attended the ANA’s Masters of Data conference in San Diego.
Bob’s final message to CMOs
On stage, Liodice is known for asking presenters what message audience members should take back to the office with them on Mondays. Ad Age turned the tables on him, asking him for his final piece of advice for chief marketing officers:
“Drink in as much as you can drink in— and to let your common sense prevail,” he said. “We lose sight of the value of common sense and try to sometimes get overly prescriptive in making decisions. But I do believe a CMO has achieved that stature because of their not only their integrity and their ethics, but their ability to navigate these complexities with incredible common sense and decision making that has been honed over the years.”
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