2019 Year in Review

Look at you, checking email on the lost week...er, last week of the year. Well we're back at work too, and we're spending a lot of time thinking about the year that was 2019 in marketing, media and tech—along with what changes we expect to see in 2020.
In terms of ads, it was a solid—though not quite stellar—year. If you look through our list of the 25 Best Ads of 2019, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised by the range of high-quality and craft-driven work that came out this year We all witnessed the rise of Ryan Reynolds as a creative marketing powerhouse, with his work for Aviation Gin, Detective Pikachu and more culminating in Aviation's widely applauded followup to Peloton's viral ad. For Reynolds and many more, it was a year of crossovers and collaborations, a tactic that combines brand forces and marketing budgets with occasionally fascinating results, like the Bud Light-HBO Super Bowl mashup that we named our favorite ad of the Super Bowl (and, spoiler alert, of the year).

Revisit the spots: Adweek video editor Josh Rios created a mashup of the year's best ads.

On the agency front, no story had the rattling impact felt from independent creative icon Droga5's acquisition by consultancy Accenture Interactive. It came at the end of a dominating run by David Droga's shop, which Adweek named Agency of the Decade. But it also highlighting the escalating and ambitious role of consultancies when it comes to agency acquisitions.

While Droga5 saw a massive payday and Wieden + Kennedy reclaimed its title as U.S. Agency of the Year for the second year in a row, not all independent shops had a good 2019. The staunchly creative Barton F. Graf closed its doors, as did Texas' TM Advertising after 85 years in business. These extreme highs and lows for independent agencies make it tough to predict how they'll fare in the decade ahead, but volatility seems like it won't be in short supply.

Read more: Adweek's Erik Oster rounds up the year's biggest agency stories.

While 2019's TV offerings might have started off on a disappointing note with the lackluster finale season of Game of Thrones, we thankfully got quite a bit more to talk about—in the good way—as the year went on. Our TV editor, Jason Lynch, recapped his 10 favorite new shows of the year and 10 favorite shows overall, with a few several (such as Russian Doll, Unbelievable and Watchmen) earning spots on both lists. There was also a lot of movement behind the scenes of the TV industry, with several key players shifting into different roles, so be sure to check out Jason's roundup of the year's biggest TV exec departures.

Read more: The year's best TV shows ran the gamut from emotionally arresting to fiendishly funny.

It may have been one of the hottest niches to be working in this year, but cannabis marketing was also one of the most complex, as emerging brands struggled for mainstream awareness and against byzantine regulations.

Read more: Adweek's T.L. Stanley looks at the year's most memorable cannabis campaigns.

As Amazon and Walmart escalated their efforts to make ecommerce faster than ever, going so far as offering one-day shipping, many brick-and-mortar retailers found themselves doing whatever it took to simply stay in business.

Read more: Adweek's Ann-Marie Alcántara catches you up on the year's biggest retail shifts.

The company wasn't always wildly successful this year

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Burger King's Impossible Whopper, KFC's chicken-free chicken and other memorable ads.