Thousands of marketers will head to Midtown Manhattan’s Penn District for Advertising Week New York this week to network with colleagues and hear the latest in thought leadership on trends including generative artificial intelligence ( AI), commercial media and sports marketing. The annual gathering, celebrating 20 years, is once again hosted on what was once the Manhattan Mall, a sprawling, multi-story venue that last fall saw snaking lines — and some delays — to get into the marquee panels.
Organizers have rearranged the venue to make navigation easier, but still warn that attendees will want to show up with a concrete action plan as attendance is on track to surpass 17,000, up from 15,000 in 2023. Below, Marketing Dive has put together a guide to tackle the four-day gathering.
“We have changed the floor plan slightly. This year we’ve zoned it, hopefully, to make it a much easier space for people to navigate because it’s so big,” said Ruth Mortimer, global president of Advertising Week.
Navigation in the Penn District
The Penn District entrance for Advertising Week is located 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. There are Advertising Week greetings and signs to point people in the right direction. Mortimer advised guests to download the Advertising Week app, review it before arriving and bookmark the sessions they want to attend. The app also has a Slido feature for panels that allow questions and answers to the audience.
The Penn District is a vast, multi-story complex
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Within the Penn District, each level is assigned a specific area that reflects the discussion paths and lounges that can be found within it. There are 28 content tracks in 2024. The top floor, or second level, of the Penn District is the Leadership Zone which houses the Great Minds and Insights phases, as well as the CMO Lounge for brand marketers.
“Our Great Minds stage actually doubled its capacity this year in response to feedback that more and more people wanted to be able to get in,” Mortimer said.
The CMO Lounge, piloted last year, has been expanded to better accommodate senior-level marketers who need to keep up with their daily work during the conference. The lounge features private meeting rooms, a wellness space, and even AI-powered wine tastings.
“The idea is: if you’re a marketer, you can come to Advertising Week and be pampered and do your job better,” said Mortimer, who explained that sister conference Advertising Week Europe has recently seen an increase in 75% of brand marketers.
The ground floor of the Penn District contains a podcast studio and recording area, while the first lower level has been transformed into an entertainment zone containing the Creativity Stage and Media Stage. An excellence! Also located on this floor are the lounge sponsored by Group Black and the Equality Lounge presented by The Female Quotient. On Thursday, the last day of Advertising Week, there will be a podcast zone for audio marketers and media professionals.
On the second lower level, or bottom floor, is the Trends Zone, which includes The Marketplace Stage, The Tech Stage and The Innovation Stage, along with a press room that will host news announcements. New this year is a Scale Up Lounge focused on growing personal brands and businesses.
“We have integrated many more networking spaces into Advertising Week this year,” Mortimer said. “There’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 visit
Chats with celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Terry Crews, Lil Jon, Al Roker and Michael Strahan are commonplace and are sure to draw big crowds. Aside from snagging a $1,499 Super Delegate Pass, which grants access to reserved seats, the best guarantee of attending a high-level speech is to arrive early and be ready to change when something reaches capacity.
Artificial intelligence, which dominated the 2023 show, is less prominent on the program this year, while still occupying talks at brands like Under Armour, Moët Hennessy and Hershey.
“AI, as a standalone thing, is not that widespread of a trend. It’s more about getting into reality. Commercial media, I would say, is really important for us this year,” Mortimer said. “In fact, I would say this is the year that anyone with a high-traffic website realized they could get into advertising.”
Much of the programming in the Trends Zone focuses on the media networks of both retailers and other verticals that have increased their bets on monetizing digital media, such as ride-hailing apps (Uber and Lyft) and travel agencies ( many interventions come from United Airlines).
“We stopped calling them ‘retail media’ because there were so many businesses that weren’t in retail,” Mortimer said. “I definitely think there will be a lot of buzz about that.”
Dealing with the next election will be another hot issue, according to Mortimer. Advertising Week publishes research in collaboration with Cint that analyzes consumer sentiment towards politics and its impact on marketing.
Specific days will be dedicated to topics such as marketing activity (think M&A) and name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for college sports. A new NIL+ program on Tuesday, created in partnership with Group Black, Greenwood Ave and Lockstep Ventures, features a match-making marketplace to connect student athletes with business partnership opportunities.
In addition to the theatrical programming, Advertising Week will host numerous special events, including private dinners and a wrap party at Terminal 5 featuring performances by Eladio Carrión alongside Latin Mafia and Alex Sensation. The Future is Female Awards, sponsored by Spotify for the first time, are held on Monday evening at the Cutting Room. Advertising Week is also partnering with the Ad Club of New York to offer two new scholarships for women.
If all that sounds exhausting, the show this year features what Mortimer called “more rest stops than ever before.” Snapchat, Viant, Epsilon and Cint are behind some of the food carts and cafes dotted around the Penn District.
20 years of activity
The expanding presence of commercial media, NIL and other emerging avenues at Advertising Week is testament to the chameleonic nature of the meeting (retail media didn’t have its own dedicated space until last year). Advertising Week, acquired by Emerald Holding two years ago, operates in an events category that has expanded its reach over the past two decades and has seen a proliferation of niche offerings in areas such as programmatic, social, retail media and AI.
“There is more in the market than ever before, particularly for marketers,” Mortimer said. “The thing that Advertising Week tries to do, and maybe in slightly different ways than before, is really bring together the idea of entertainment and education.”
Advertising Week also has its legacy to stand on. The organization is releasing a book for its 20th anniversary that celebrates the pop icons and mascots who have helped kick off the annual celebration since 2004.
“For the last 20 years, Advertising Week has always looked to the future,” Mortimer said. “I think it’s a pretty useful brand proposition because it means you can never be out of touch.”
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