Marketers Hope the Odds Are Ever in Their Favor

Against industry headwinds, the country's fastest-growing advertising and marketing companies are nimble, specific, and good at what they do.

- Shareen Pathak

Elon Musk should have tipped people off. Advertising's biggest persona non grata came to Cannes for the Lions Festival in June on an apology tour, but left having ruffled feathers further, telling attendees that AI would probably take their jobs. It was perhaps the truest thing said all week at the marketing world's biggest carnival, where advertising execs meet to sip rosé, make deals, and fête ads on the Côte d'Azur. It's not that attendees thought Musk was wrong. In fact, many came away from Cannes uncomfortable with the lavish excesses on display even as the industry grapples with existential threats.

It's been a rough ride: The pandemic changed consumer behavior almost overnight and upped the stakes of customers' relationships with brands, raising their expectations for everything from delivery turnaround times to ethical stances. Marketing budgets were slashed as growth slowed and the threat of a recession loomed. Platforms such as Google and Meta gobbled up the supermajority of ad dollars. And let's not forget the arrival of AI, which threatens jobs and business models with its promise to do human work at a fraction of the cost.

Against this backdrop, you might be forgiven for thinking the entire industry is tanking. But a review of this year's fastest-growing advertising and marketing companies reveals one thing all 494 of them have in common: They're not household names. Rather, for the most part, they're nimble, specific, and good at what they do.

It's telling that the category this year is populated largely with companies that live in the underbelly of advertising-part of the plumbing that determines the content that people see, how and where they're sold to, and where they buy. They give us a glimpse of how the internet-and modern business-really works.