Jordan Horowitz, producer of the movie "La La Land," was forced to acknowledge the major error last night. Moonlight wins the Best Picture Oscar after a mishap that named La La Land the winner at the 89th Annual Academy Awards.

From ad misplacement and fraud to sexism in commercials and alleged harassment in Hollywood, it was quite a year for the marketing and media industries. CNBC takes a look at the past 12 months.

January — The world's largest advertiser slams 'crappy advertising'

P&G's Marc Pritchard at the IAB's Annual Leadership Meeting 2017

January 2017 saw Procter & Gamble's Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard calling on the media buying and selling industry to become transparent in the face of "crappy advertising accompanied by even crappier viewing experiences." He gave agencies a year to get to "a transparent, clean and productive media supply chain," or risk losing its business. This set the tone for the rest of the year with ad fraud being reported as a widespread problem.

February — PwC is the Oscars biggest loser

Jordan Horowitz, producer of the movie "La La Land," was forced to acknowledge the major error last night. Moonlight wins the Best Picture Oscar after a mishap that named La La Land the winner at the 89th Annual Academy Awards. Eddy Chen | ABC | Getty Images

And the loser is … accounting firm PwC for the envelope mix-up at this year's awards that saw Faye Dunaway mistakenly announce "La La Land" as the winner of the best picture Oscar, rather than the actual winner, "Moonlight." It will continue to work for the Oscars, but with no cellphones allowed backstage.

March — YouTube apologizes for ad misplacement problem

Matt Brittin, Google's president, EMEA business and operations, at Advertising Week Europe in London, March 20, 2017

Brands including HSBC, U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer and L'Oreal pulled advertising from YouTube in March, after their ads appeared next to extremist content. "We've got a comprehensive review under way — we have for some time — looking at how can we improve here and we are accelerating that review," Google's EMEA president of business and operations told journalists at a briefing at Advertising Week Europe in London. It then hired "significant" numbers of people to tackle such content.

April —Tencent is set to become a more valuable brand than Facebook

VCG | Getty Images

China continued its rise as a technology powerhouse, with Tencent becoming the first Chinese brand to top the $100 billion mark, according to the BrandZ ranking of the most valuable brands in the country. When BrandZ's global ranking was published in June 2016, Facebook's brand value was $102.6 billion, so Tencent's value of $106.2 billion suggests that it is now competing on a global scale.

May — Facebook and Google are declared the world's largest media owners

Facebook and Google logos Peter Foley/Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google and Facebook together took 20 percent of the world's advertising budget across all media in 2016, according to media agency Zenith's Top 30 Global Media Owners report. It listed Google's parent company Alphabet at number one, making $79.4 billion in ad revenue, followed by Facebook, which earned $26.9 billion.

June — Marketers tackle sexist ads

Keith Weed, Unilever's chief marketing officer, speaking at Advertising Week Europe in London on 20 March 2017 Shutterstock | Advertising Week Europe

The chief marketers of some of the world's largest brands got together to tackle sexism and poor representations of diversity in advertising at the Cannes Lions ad festival. Companies including Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, AT&T and Facebook announced the "Unstereotype Alliance," with the United Nations' female empowerment arm UN Women, and will do research every two years to understand the impact of changes made.

July — The BBC reveals an embarrassing pay gap

Claudia Winkleman arrives for the GQ 25th Anniversary Exhibition at Phillips De Pury on November 12, 2013 in London, England. Stuart C. Wilson | Getty Images

Britain's publicly-funded TV broadcaster the BBC revealed the salaries of its top paid stars for the first time, in a move to become more transparent with license fee payers. The salaries of female presenters were largely dwarfed by their male counterparts: Overall, 25 men on the talent list received more than £250,000 ($335,023) per year, compared to just nine women, including Claudia Winkleman.

August — Alibaba launches 'smile to pay' tech at KFC in China

An Alibaba employee demonstrates 'Smile to Pay', an automatic payment system that authorize payment via facial recognition Alex Wong | Staff | Getty Images

In August, KFC redefined the term "happy meal," as fast food fanatics in China could just flash a smile to earn their dinner. Alibaba's Ant Financial teamed up with KFC in the city of Hangzhou to debut its new "smile to pay" service, which allowed customers to process their payment simply by smiling after placing their order at one of the fast food restaurant's self-serve screens. A 3-D camera then scanned the customer's face to verify their identity.

September — Instagram reaches 800 million users

The Instagram logo Bloomberg | Getty Images

The 800 million figure was 100 million up on the April stat, and 500 million of those are daily active users, the company said. That means that Instagram is still ahead of rival Snap in terms of users and solidified parent company Facebook as one of the most dominant companies in online advertising. Time spent watching video on Instagram was also up 80 percent year-over-year.

October — The Harvey Weinstein scandal breaks

Harvey Weinstein attends the 'Lion' premiere and opening ceremony of the 12th Zurich Film Festival at Kino Corso on September 22, 2016 in Zurich, Switzerland. Getty Images

The New York Times broke the story that Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein had allegedly been sexually harassing women for nearly three decades. The piece led to a string of high-profile men across industries being publicly taken down and started the #metoo movement on Twitter, where women declared their experiences of harassment. Weinstein denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.

November — Chief marketing officers are told to 'grow or go'

Pallets of Coke-Cola cans wait to the filled at a Coco-Cola bottling plant on February 10, 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah. George Frey | Getty Images

When Coca-Cola consolidated marketing into a new "chief growth officer" (CGO) role in March, it followed previous Fortune 100 companies in doing so — Hershey's announced Mary Beth West had joined as CGO earlier that month, while Kellogg gave the same job title to Clive Sirkin in 2015. According to consultancy Forrester, this is a trend that will continue next year. "In 2018, we expect CMOs to fall under even more pressure to drive growth — or step aside while someone else takes the reins," its "Predictions 2018" report stated.

December — Disney is to buy 21st Century Fox's film, TV and international businesses for $52.4 billion

Chief executive officer and chairman of The Walt Disney Company Bob Iger and Mickey Mouse look on before ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), November 27, 2017 in New York City. Getty Images