Thousands of marketers will descend on Midtown Manhattan’s Penn District for New York Advertising Week this week to network with peers and hear the latest in thought leadership on trends including creative artificial intelligence (AI), business media and sports marketing. The annual co-op, which is celebrating 20 years, is once again hosted in what used to be the Manhattan Mall, a sprawling, multi-story venue that last fall saw lines — and some delays — to get into tent panels.
Organizers have retooled the location to streamline navigation, but still warn that attendees will want to come in with a concrete game plan as attendance is on track to top 17,000, up from 15,000 in 2023. Below, Marketing Dive has put together a guide to tackle four-day gathering.
“We’ve only changed the floor plan. This year we’ve really organized it, hopefully, to make it a lot easier for people to navigate because it’s so big,” said Ruth Mortimer, global president of Advertising Week.
Navigating the Penn District
Penn District’s entrance for Advertising Week can be found at 100 West 33rd Street in New York between 6th and 7th Avenues, just around the corner from Herald Square and a few blocks from Penn Station. Advertising week greetings and signs are there to point people in the right direction. Mortimer recommended that guests download the Advertising Week app, review it before arriving, and bookmark the sessions they want to attend to attend. The app also has a Slido feature for panels that allow for audience questions and answers.
Penn District is a sprawling, multi-story complex
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Inside the Penn District, each level is assigned a specific area that reflects the discussion tracks and lounges found there. There are 28 layers of content in 2024. The top floor, or second level, of the Penn District is the leadership area that carries the Great Minds and Insights levels, as well as the CMO Lounge for brand marketers.
“Our Great Minds stage actually doubled in capacity this year in response to feedback that more people wanted to be able to enter,” said Mortimer.
The CMO Lounge, piloted last year, has been expanded to better accommodate senior-level marketers who need to keep up with their day jobs during the conference. The lounge offers private meeting rooms, wellness spaces and even AI-powered wine tasting.
“The idea is: if you’re a marketer, you can come to Advertising Week and both be pampered and do your job better,” said Mortimer, who explained that sister conference Advertising Week Europe recently saw a 75% increase in brand marketing.
The ground floor of the Penn District includes a podcast studio and recording area, while the first lower level has been converted into an entertainment area that includes the creative and media areas. Excellent! A lounge sponsored by Group Black and the Equality Lounge offered by The Female Quotient can also be found on this floor. On Thursday, the final day of advertising week, the podcast will be a zone for audio marketers and media professionals.
On the second lower floor, or lower level, is the Trends Zone, which includes the Marketing Division, the Technology Division and the Innovation Division, along with a press room that will host press releases. New this year is the Scale Up Lounge, which is all about growing personal brands and businesses.
“This year we’ve integrated a lot more online spaces into Advertising Week,” said Mortimer. “It’s a lot of content, but what we felt people wanted even more from us was a reason to stay and do business.”
What to fall into
Chats with celebrities such as Drew Barrymore, Terry Crews, Lil Jon, Al Roker and Michael Strahan are scheduled and are sure to draw a large crowd. Other than snagging a $1,499 Super Delegate pass, which grants access to reserved seats, your best bet for high-paying chats is to show up early — and be ready to turn when something reaches capacity.
AI, which dominated the show in 2023, is less prominent on the agenda this year, but is still in talks from brands such as Under Armour, Moët Hennessy and Hershey.
“AI, as a standalone thing, is not quite as dominant as a strategy. There is more to come. Commercial media, I would say, is very big for us this year,” Mortimer said. “In fact, I’d say this was the year that anyone with a high-traffic website realized they could be advertising.”
Much of the programming at the Trends Zone revolves around media platforms from both retailers and other verticals that have increased their bets on digital media, such as ride-hailing apps (Uber and Lyft) and travel companies (there are several talks from United Airlines).
“We stopped calling it ‘retail media’ because there were so many businesses that weren’t retail,” Mortimer said. “I definitely think there’s going to be a lot of that.
Dealing with the upcoming election will be another hot button issue, according to Mortimer. Advertising Week publishes research in collaboration with Cint that analyzes consumer attitudes around politics and its impact on marketing.
Special days will be dedicated to topics like marketing (think M&A) and name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for college sports. Tuesday’s new NIL+ program, made in conjunction with Group Black, Greenwood Ave and Lockstep Ventures, features a matchmaking marketplace to connect student-athletes with business partnership opportunities.
In addition to the stage registration, Advertising Week offers several special events, including a private dinner and a breakout party in Terminal 5 with performances from Eladio Carrión along with Latin Mafia and Alex Sensation. The Future is Female awards, sponsored for the first time by Spotify, are held on Monday night in the Cutting Room. Advertising Week is also working with the Advertising Club of New York to offer two new scholarships for women.
If all that sounds exhausting, this year’s show is equipped with what Mortimer said are “more refreshments than ever before.” Snapchat, Viant, Epsilon and Cint are behind some of the food carts and coffee shops scattered around the Penn District.
20 years in business
The growing presence of trade media, NIL and other new avenues at Advertising Week speaks to the chameleon-like nature of the gathering (retail media didn’t have its own space until last year). Acquired by Emerald Holding two years ago, Advertising Week operates in an events category that has grown in scope over the past two decades and seen the proliferation of niche offerings in areas such as programming, social media, retail media and artificial intelligence.
“There’s more to the market than ever before, especially for marketers,” Mortimer said. “What Advertising Week is trying to do, and maybe in a slightly different way than we’ve done before, is really to combine the idea of entertainment with education.”
Advertising Week also has a legacy to draw on. The organization is releasing a book to mark its 20th anniversary celebrating the pop icons and mascots who have helped launch the annual festival since 2004.
“Ads Week, over the last 20 years, has always been about looking at what’s next,” Mortimer said. “I think that’s a really useful brand proposition to have because it means you can never be out of touch.
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