By Rich Murphy, CEO
At AAM’s 2026 Annual Business Meeting, I was joined by AAM Board Chair Brenda White to share the results of our board election, highlight key initiatives from the past year and provide a look at AAM’s priorities for 2027.
From new ways to showcase AAM members and their audiences to assurance solutions addressing emerging media, our work continues to support an ecosystem built on trust, transparency and accountability.
Here’s a recap of what we discussed and what’s ahead.
AAM Board Election Results
We kicked off the meeting by announcing AAM’s director election results. Congratulations to the following directors who were re-elected:
Representing advertising agencies:
- Edward W. “Ted” Boyd, Current International
- Jeanne Finegan, Kroll Notice Media
- Johanna Jarvis, Assembled Intelligence
- Brenda White, Publicis Media
Representing news media:
- Lori Catron, USA Today Co.
- Gregg Fernandes, The Washington Post
Representing business media:
- Tagg Henderson, BNP Media
- Cheryl Ng, WebMD
- Rosheen O’Donovan, American City Business Journals
2026–2027 Board Officers:
- Chair: Brenda White, Publicis Media
- Vice chair: Erica Krauss, Publicis Media Luxe
- Vice chair: Steve Crowe, People Inc.
- Secretary: Jeanne Finegan, Kroll Notice Media
- Treasurer: Rosheen O’Donovan, American City Business Journals
2026 Highlights
Throughout the year, AAM advanced initiatives to increase the visibility of AAM members. Since the launch of the Assurance List last year, traffic to AAM’s client listings has tripled. AAM also introduced a new cross-channel audience reporting solution to support publishers’ growing portfolio of media solutions and integrated audiences. These new solutions are helping media buyers discover, evaluate and verify new media opportunities.
AAM also expanded assurance into emerging areas. AAM’s Ethical AI Certification is now included in AAM publisher membership, and Editor & Publisher recently became the first publisher to achieve certification. In commerce media, AAM introduced its Incrementality Certification with DoorDash among one of the first companies certified.
We continue to collaborate with industry partners to solve media measurement and transparency challenges. We were proud to contribute our expertise to industry research addressing retail media measurement, programmatic transparency and creator marketing.
Looking Ahead: AAM’s 2027 Roadmap
As the media landscape evolves, AAM will continue to develop programs to serve members while addressing emerging areas where independent measurement and assurance are needed.
Our 2027 roadmap focuses on three key areas:
- Increasing member visibility: Updating AAM’s website and infrastructure to improve member discoverability
- Improving the member experience: Developing new client solutions to make collecting, auditing and distributing member data more efficient for our members
- Solving emerging measurement challenges: Helping the industry solve measurement concerns in agentic AI, creator marketing, CTV, digital out-of-home and more
While media channels and consumer consumption habits evolve, AAM’s role remains consistent: working with members and industry partners to develop solutions that strengthen trust and transparency across the media ecosystem.
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