Ad Age Insider

Ad Age Creativity Editor Tim Nudd breaks down this year's Halloween marketing trends: the move from ads to products and experiences, the blend of horror and comedy, nostalgia and IP tie-ins and a wave of brand-to-brand partnerships. He covers Pringles' burial urn, Rivian's Ghostbusters campaign, Twix's Zombie Claus and Cheetos' horror shorts with Blumhouse, plus the horror-parody trope he'd like to retire.

Host Parker Herren and Tim also get into what marketers can carry past October: dig into your brand's weirdness, use physical marketing to stand out from the scroll and weigh whether IP will outshine your brand. Follow Ad Age Insider wherever you listen so you don't miss the next episode.

See this year's Halloween Marketing Awards winners:

~Hay Day, Haunted Farms (Scariest Ad, runner up)

~McDonald's U.K., Spooky Sauce Face Paints (Best Spooky Product, runner up)

~Pringles, Once You Drop (Best Spooky Product)

~Herb Light, ScareBnB (Most Unique Take, runner up)

~Twix, Zombie Claus (Most Unique Take)

~Rivian, Ghostbusters (Halloween Campaign of the Year)

Bose topped Ad Age's Gen Z brand tracker, ahead of Liberty Mutual, The Farmer's Dog, Electronic Arts and Hollister—what it reveals about humor and nostalgia, in-person experiences, and growing AI skepticism among young consumers. Plus, Dentsu Creative hires Michael Aimette as U.S. chief creative officer; ChatGPT begins running ads alongside AI-generated images; the ANA, 4As and IAB team up on AI, talent and cross-media measurement; 350 Action unveils a life-size gallium statue of Ron DeSantis that melts.

Host Parker Herren breaks down what each story means for marketers navigating Gen Z trust, AI skepticism, agency creative leadership and cross-media measurement. Subscribe for weekly industry news roundups, plus biweekly deep-dive conversations with Ad Age reporters.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~20 brands catching Gen Z's attention right now and how they are doing it

~Dentsu Creative hires Michael Aimette as US chief creative officer to raise creative ambitions

~Inside OpenAI's pitch to brands for ads alongside AI-generated images in ChatGPT

~Inside ANA, 4As and IAB's closed-door talks on AI, talent development and ad measurement

~Ron DeSantis melts down in striking Florida climate change installation

Novig released a second Sydney Sweeney ad after the first drew criticism and tripled trading volume, and what it reveals about celebrity partnerships. Plus, Vice Media named Shannon Washington president and creative leader of Virtue Worldwide; Apple fixed the Safari change that blocked The Trade Desk's ads; Parke, Reale Actives, and Dairy Boy showed how creator-led brands use social listening and community building; Even Realities debuted a 10-part horror series.

Host Parker Herren breaks down what each story means for marketers navigating celebrity risk, platform dependence, agency rebuilds, and creator-led growth. Subscribe for weekly industry news roundups, plus biweekly deep-dive conversations with Ad Age reporters.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~Novig expands controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign as trading volume triples

~Virtue appoints Shannon Washington president as the Vice-owned agency plots a rebrand

~Apple fixed The Trade Desk's Safari ad problem—but broader ad tech restrictions could be next

~3 strategies marketers can borrow from creator-led brand playbooks

~Even Realities microdrama explores the horrors of smart-glasses surveillance

Agentic shopping is already shaping holiday 2026, even though most consumers aren't ready to let an AI agent use their credit card. Brandon Doerrer, media reporter at Ad Age, explains how AI shopping agents like Muse and ChatGPT Dots handle product discovery and consideration, and why brands that ignore them could vanish from gift searches. He covers where to start with product feeds, inventory details and agent access to your website, plus how agentic commerce overlaps with answer engine optimization (AEO), branded conversations and retail media networks.

Host Parker Herren and Doerrer dig into what marketers can act on now including giving agents richer product detail, planning for every agent instead of just one and building on the AEO work you already have. Doerrer also explains why agentic media buying is still more hype than reality. Follow Ad Age Insider so you don't miss the next conversation.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~How brands should prepare for an agentic holiday shopping season

~Amazon launches Branded Conversations at Unboxed 2026—what buyers think

~Media channels are changing rapidly—how to strategize for AI search, social commerce, total TV and IRL

~Enter the 2026 Ad Age CMO Impact Awards

~Listen the the Marketer's Brief podcast

Hertz, Subaru and Liquid Death are building pet-focused campaigns and products to tap into surging pet spending, but marketers warn against forcing the fit. Plus, Chemistry acquires design agency Colossus; Apple's iOS 27 update blocks The Trade Desk's ad tools on Safari; mid-size brands drop follower counts and reconsider linear TV; Herb Light launches ScareBnB, a Halloween contest for cannabis horror stories.

Host Parker Herren breaks down what each story means for marketers navigating category entry, independent agency consolidation, identity-free measurement and outdated metrics. Subscribe for weekly industry news roundups, plus biweekly deep-dive conversations with Ad Age reporters.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~2030 advertising predictions—tracking potential hits and misses, and what's too early to call

~How brands are winning over dog and cat lovers—even when they don't sell pet products

~Chemistry acquires Colossus in an expansion to Boston, which it sees as ripe for a challenger

~Apple blocks The Trade Desk—what marketers must know about renewed anti-tracking push

~Why mid-size brands are rethinking long-established marketing and media strategies

~Herb Light turns cannabis horror stories into 'ScareBnB' stays for Halloween

In the AI era, company culture is the real differentiator. Ad Age's Senior Editor Adrianne Pascarelli breaks down the workforce gap nobody's solved, the AI overhype she's most suspicious of and the influencer disclosure loophole about to blow up in brands' faces. She also shares the three words marketers put in a live word cloud when asked to sum up the moment (humanity, insanity, never-ending change), and the one workforce question she's still trying to get answered.

Listen to the full conversation from Ad Age Insider wherever you're currently listening.

Rich Silverstein is stepping down as co-chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners after 43 years, with an AI hotline trained on his voice now fielding creative pitches in his place. Plus, Burger King turns its own product failures into ad material; Meta's Muse and Anthropic's Claude Commerce Blueprint push brands toward agentic holiday shopping prep; CampStudios, Pufferfish and StudioB pull creator-led work into agency rosters once reserved for traditional shops.

Host Parker Herren breaks down what each story means for marketers navigating agency succession, AI's expanding role in creative work, transparency as a trust-building strategy and the shift toward agentic commerce. Subscribe for weekly industry news roundups, plus biweekly deep-dive conversations with Ad Age reporters.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~Rich Silverstein steps away from Goodby Silverstein & Partners—inside the art director's storied career

~Rich Silverstein's unfiltered wisdom lives on in the AI-powered 'GPT Rich'

~Burger King's CMO on why the chain keeps turning failures into ad campaigns

~How brands should prepare for an agentic holiday shopping season

~Where creator-led agencies are winning work from traditional shops

Marketing budgets are tight across the board, but mid-size brands—companies roughly between $50 million and $1 billion in revenue—have been finding ways to make theirs work harder. Adrianne Pasquarelli, senior editor of CMO strategy and commerce at Ad Age, digs into how these brands operate with fewer resources, fewer layers of approval and a lot more speed. She breaks down what's driving bolder creative risks, how AI is showing up in unexpected ways and what bigger brands could actually learn from smaller ones.

Parker Herren talks with Pasquarelli about why mid-size CMOs are willing to take creative swings that bigger legal departments would shut down, how one baby food brand built an internal AI tool to keep its marketing on-brand without slowing anyone down and why leaner teams often mean less data and more gut instinct. It's a look at what happens when constraints force creativity instead of killing it. Subscribe to Ad Age Insider so you don't miss the next conversation.

Dig deeper on the topics mentioned in this week's episode:

~Introducing the 2026 Ad Age Mid Size Brand Leaders

~How mid-size marketers are turning budget constraints into a competitive edge

~What 15 mid-size brand leaders are prioritizing—and cutting—right now

X&O co-founders Brett Banker and Eric Segal play a game of overrated or underrated, dishing on the holding company vs. independents debate, spec work, content creators and more. Check out Ad Age's full conversation with the duo in the first episode of Agencies on Record, a new quarterly podcast from Ad Age.

Don't miss the full conversation with Brett Banker and Eric Segal

Develop the strategic idea, then step back—the client can take it in-house, hand it to another agency or bring X&O back to build it themselves. That's the split that co-founders Brett Banker and Eric Segal say powers their sprint model: five-to-six-day timelines, a top-to-top rule that puts C-level talent in the room from day one and a hard "no" on pitching for free, even against a strong prospect.

In Agencies on Record, Ad Age's new quarterly podcast, the pair also break down how their model scales into more complex categories, including an eight-week version built for healthcare's regulatory hurdles. Banker and Segal explain why they've stayed deliberately small—capping the agency at roughly 50 people—even as revenue climbed from $4.2 million in 2024 to more than $8 million in 2025, driven by fixed-fee project work with clients including Coca-Cola and Verizon and talent like Heated Rivalry's Connor Storrie.

The duo weigh in on Dentsu's move into the sprint space with its relaunched 360i unit, the challenges of maintaining focus inside a holding company, and why they've trademarked their own answer to the traditional agency-of-record model: what they call "answers on repeat." They also explain their hard line against speculative pitching, even when a prospective client all but promises the win.

Dig deeper

~Read the Small Agency Playbook

~Why agencies are adopting sprint models and how they work

~How small agencies choose the right pitches—and prepare to win

~Agency reviews in 2030—24 leaders predict what the marketing pitch process will look like

~CMO Survival Guide: What CMOs want from agencies—3 ways to improve relations