Member groups

This Group addresses the challenges of a digitally data-driven marketing and advertising ecosystem and supports advertisers navigating legislative and regulatory compliance, plus provides a wide discursive forum to explore the growing importance of digital data governance – including ethics – in all aspects of marketing and advertising.

Working closely with the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) to provide Data Ethics guidance, this group meets to hear from digital governance experts to build and share a solid understanding of how advertisers
need to manage data risk management and ethical deployment of data while helping their businesses maximise the efficiencies gained by adopting new technologies. The online forums are designed to appeal to multiple functions within members’ businesses. Personal and consumer data (1st, 2nd and decreasingly 3rd party) is used across marketing and advertising operations and responsibility for legal compliance and the ethical management of data does not lie with any single team. ISBA designs its forums to educate and inform a wide range of backgrounds, and members are encouraged to share details of relevant Forum events with colleagues.
Overall the Forum seeks to share an understanding of how to understand and mitigate risks associated with the use of data in marketing and advertising both internally, and with partners across multiple media
supply chains

This group would be of interest to senior marketers, performance leads, privacy officers, governance professionals, procurement specialists, legal officers and corporate affairs.

2025 Priorities

• Legislative and regulatory update
• Understanding risk management implications of integrating multiple tech partnerships across the supply chain
• Establishing practices and standards for new technologies (such as clean rooms and generative AI)

This group is made up of senior representatives from all market sectors, sharing their expertise, insight and challenges working within this rapidly developing media environment.  The group develops best practice across digital channels while keeping a clear focus on innovation, measurement and changes in the media landscape. 

This group would be of interest to senior marketers who are specialists in digital marketing. 

2025 Priorities

• Digital complexity and media measurement
• Digital creative production and process
• Transparency and better auditing 
• Future proofing audience strategy

This group has been at the forefront of the debate on some of the most
controversial changes proposed by government in recent years – and will
continue to be a major focus for ISBA in the months ahead.

As Ministers sought to ban ads for food and drink products high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS), this group became the key industry forum for advertisers to align on their response, and to support ISBA’s engagement activity. Its members helped to secure amendments to the legislation, as well as a crucial delay in the implementation of the new ‘less healthy’ food and drink (LHF) restrictions.

The group’s attention is now focused on the details of how the new law will work– as well as on the industry’s long-term approach to food education and physical activity. It is also looking at issues such as the Scottish Government’s proposed changes to alcohol marketing.

This group will be useful to any ISBA members who are food and drink product manufacturers, with responsibility for marketing campaigns and/or public affairs activity.

A forum for members to discuss key challenges around the in-housing journey, understanding what the right operating model is in order to get the best commercial results e.g. understanding and controlling data, retaining talent and skillsets required, in housing vs agency”. 

Members are invited to share learnings from different operating models, gain different perspectives and hear from industry thought leaders in all areas from platforms to people to processes. 

This group is of interest to all levels with an interest in operating models. Topics also include AI, automation, integration of media & creative, integration of Media & CRM. 

The ISBA Inclusion Network is working with ISBA members and the wider marketing communications industry to ensure all marketing and media communications and advertising produced is representative of contemporary society. 

The group is made up of individuals with varying responsibility within their organisation from marketing director to diversity, equity and inclusion lead highlighting the impact that DE&I has across all levels within our members. 

This group is of interest to all levels with an interest in incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion within their marketing, marketing comms and advertising.  

2025 Priorities

• Educating and advancing the industry to ensure Ads are accessible to all
• Building the business case for DEI 2.0
• Regulation and further guidelines, e.g. defining the role of AI in creative and inclusive practices

This group works to engage with, understand, and harness the phenomenon that is influencer marketing – a still-evolving aspect of advertising that brings challenges and opportunities.

We engage with regulators to discuss the latest requirements on ad disclosure, with influencers themselves, and with those who are building new ways of measuring reach and demonstrating ROI, to help our members stay ahead of developments.

The group has led the industry with the publication of a Code of Conduct for
brands, talent agencies and influencers – ensuring regulatory compliance, backing greater diversity, and enabling our members to employ authentic and effective influencer marketing.
 

This group is aimed at members from across disciplines with involvement in
influencer marketing, from legal officers to social media managers and marketers who manage their brand’s influencer relationships.

With brands under greater pressure than ever to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of their media investments this group addresses key challenges such as cross-media/ channel measurement, balanced attribution solutions and long-term vs short term. 

This group is ideal for senior marketers with an interest in media effectiveness and keen to work with other members to develop best practice. 

2025 Priorities

• Communicating effectiveness to leadership 
• Future proofing measurement metrics
• In-housing measurement technology
• Bettering data literacy and tool ownership

Exploring innovations and seeking solutions to key communication issues encountered by ISBA’s Marketing Procurement community; we work together to collectively develop the marketing procurement function and its effectiveness; both internally within member companies and across the agency landscape.

We do this by sharing best-practice information; producing best-practice guidance; hosting virtual meetings; and tackling industry issues.

This group would be of interest to any member involved in agency management, procuring agency or media services.

2025 Priorities:

• Agency management and remuneration 
• Digital media and technology
• Marketing effectiveness
• Procurement influence and sustainability

This group champions the needs of UK advertisers by working with media owners, tech vendors and other industry bodies to achieve transparency, accountability, consistency in measurement and greater brand safety in media.

This group would be of interest to senior marketers who are senior budget holders who have an interest in the broader media market.

2025 Priorities

• Responsibility of the media industry to attract and retain talent
• Organisational design to reduce silos 
• Positioning marketing as an investment, not a cost 
• Navigating industry regulation 
• Evolving creative practices

This group of mostly FMCG ISBA members was collated in response to the rapid growth and increasing fragmentation of retail media offerings. Recognising many wide-ranging challenges across priority areas of transparency, transformation, technology, and talent.

The first and significant output was the UK’s first Responsible Retail Media
Framework - the result of a year-long industry-wide collaboration of brands, retailers and their tech and consultancy partners driven by brands’ need for standardisation in this space.
 

Addressing the lack of basic, foundational, elements required to run successful digital advertising activity, the framework should be viewed as an important first step in setting the building blocks for future Retail Media success. Setting out standards guidance across minimum viable, mid-term and long-term goals, ISBA have established a baseline from which positive movement within the industry can now be measured against.

This group is mostly relevant for members who spending on retail media platforms.

ISBA’s Strategic Policy Action Group provides our members with a public affairs and corporate communications forum for cross-cutting conversations with influential figures, commentators and politicians.

The Group is open to ISBA members across disciplines and sectors who are
striving to meet – and shape – the political and reputational issues confronting advertising and marketing in the UK.

This is a forum which not only focuses on public policy, but which also takes a wider view on trends in our industry and strategic challenges.

The Group would be useful to any ISBA members who have an interest in
political, legislative, and regulatory developments.

This group works to understand the questions, concerns and barriers that ISBA members face in moving their advertising operations toward net zero. The outputs from this group will help to inform ISBA’s position on issues of environmental sustainability and climate change, and creates a forum for feedback between ISBA members and wider industry initiatives, including those led by Ad Net Zero and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).

ISBA is a signatory of the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, which include a commitment to halve emissions by 2030, and achieve net zero by 2050. ISBA has also signed the WFA Planet Pledge, a global commitment to make marketing teams a force for positive change both internally and with the consumers who buy their products and services. The Pledge seeks to find a clear role for marketing as a positive force for environmental change.

This group would be of interest to ISBA members across sectors and disciplines, who have an interest in issues of climate change, environmental sustainability and net zero, and are seeking practical measures to deliver industry action.

The TV industry is fundamentally changing both in the way TV is consumed and delivered with an increasingly fragmented landscape. This group, made of up of senior media leads, seeks to ensure there is knowledge to allow our members to navigate this new AV world whilst at the same time, relentlessly challenge the marketplace so that advertisers’ interests are protected, and the effectiveness of their campaigns can be truly measured. 

This group would be of interest to senior marketers with an AV budget and an interest in the evolving landscape

2025 Priorities

• Improving planning skills in agency and brand teams 
• Transparency/ clarity on media buying 
• Media + Creative collaboration in strategy and planning 
• Fostering long-term investment and brand building