The 2026 Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) Advertising Financial Management Conference is coming to Orlando, May 3-6. The conference continues to place a focus on driving value through financial management with nuanced discussions on the state of the industry, critical economic outlooks, and thought leadership discussions from client-side and agency-side thought leaders delivering actionable insights.
Lauren Shukla, global category lead of agency production and channel delivery at Astellas Pharma, will be hosting this year’s conference. The ANA’s Peter Kenigsberg spoke with Lauren about her views of the industry, outlooks for the future of procurement, expectations for the conference, and more.
Peter Kenigsberg, ANA: You’ve experienced both sides of the marketing industry over the course of your career, from agency-side account management to client-side procurement. What was the biggest adjustment for you in transitioning from one side of the industry to the other?
Lauren Shukla, Astellas: The biggest adjustment was recognizing that the steps behind content creation, the campaign process and overall brand strategy development aren’t as intuitive to everyone on the client side as they were to me coming from an agency background. There tends to be a lot of energy trying to put guardrails around agency work without understanding the agency operating model and what “ideal” actually looks like. The real transition for me was learning to step back and become a translator. My role became helping my procurement team and our center of excellence understand the art of the possible with agencies, and to demystify the content creation process in a way that is accessible to people who haven’t lived it.Once we did that, the conversation shifted from policing to partnering.
Kenigsberg: In your 2025 Advertising Financial Management Conference presentation, you talked about procurement’s impact on change management. As part of conducting an effective change management strategy, you said to build trust, “focus on improving, not proving.” Where can procurement find those quick wins to show improvement and be seen as a trusted partner that is not simply looking to prove themselves right?
Shukla: I’m a big believer that the unexciting jobs are the ones that earn you the most credit. It’s not always about the headline savings or the flashy negotiation win. The most trust-building work looks like chasing down a PO that’s holding up a campaign, or working through a change order or pushing hard on SLAs to make sure partners are held accountable. Those moments are exactly what the business notices. When a marketer knows procurement is in their corner solving problems that slow them down, that’s when you stop being seen as a gatekeeper and start being seen as a partner. Trust is built in the small moments, not always savings related.
Kenigsberg: There will be multiple presentations during this year’s Advertising Financial Management Conference about the impact AI will have on marketing procurement and the industry at large. How, if at all, is AI reshaping your role at Astellas?
Shukla: The reality of operating in highly regulated environments is we are likely a few years away from seeing AI make substantial, measurable impact. However, in the meantime, what AI has done is re-energized the art of the possible. It’s prompted us to re-examine business decisions and operational models that would have seemed out of the question a few years ago. This process itself has been meaningful and has uncovered value and efficiency as we challenge the status quo with AI in mind.
Kenigsberg: For those new to marketing procurement, what do you suggest they do in their first 90 days to set themselves up for success?
Shukla: One of most important things I’d tell a new marketing procurement professional is to learn your company’s business cycle. Understand when budgets are being developed and who is building them. If you’re showing up to the conversation after your stakeholder’s budget has been approved and teams are ready to begin work or to sign a scope, you’ve already missed the window. Try to insert yourself into the conversation well before decisions are made. The second thing I’d challenge new and old members of procurement is the instinct to focus on building relationships with senior leaders alone. It’s often not the organization leaders who are making the day-to-day decisions about the suppliers and the agency relationships. Find the stakeholders closest to the work and build your credibility, this is where you’ll have the most impact.
Kenigsberg: What’s one thing agencies should know about strategic sourcing that they might not be aware of today?
Shukla: I think there’s a common assumption on the agency side that coming in at or slightly under the budget signals fiscal responsibility, but that’s not how procurement sees it. We are evaluating if a dollar amount matches the work associated with the scope. We are evaluating the agency’s efficiency, the level of complexity of the work, and if the resources being deployed are the ones needed to do the work.
Kenigsberg: If you could “wave a magic wand,” what industry issue or problem would you fix?
Shukla: If I could wave a magic wand, I would give every stakeholder or client complete visibility into how every dollar in media is working for them. Full transparency into media buying and measurement wouldn’t just change how we plan, invest, and partner. It would level the playing field. To give marketers the ability to truly strategize their campaign approach against business results rather than making decisions on incomplete information.
Kenigsberg: What are you most looking forward to at the 2026 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference?
Shukla: I’m looking forward to the concentration of thought leadership. There’s real value in being in a room with such a diverse range of speakers and perspectives, all focused on trends, insights, and challenges that matter to our industry. It’s not often that you get that level of expertise and leadership perspective in one place. I always walk away with an amazing insight that shapes how I approach my work moving forward.
For more information about this year’s conference and to register, please click here.
The speaker is a paid employee of Astellas. Statements of fact, positions taken and opinions expressed are those of the speaker individually and, unless expressly stated to the contrary, do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the speaker’s employer, Astellas, or any of its subsidiaries and/or related entities.
This article is written by Peter Kenigsberg.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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