‘We’re all going to live with uncertainty forever’: Advertising Week New York opens amid industry rebuild

“We’ve moved quickly from experimentation to implementation,” said Alistair Hill, CEO & co-founder of brand uplift firm On Device. Roblox’s vp of global partnerships and advertising Stephanie Latham, said last year’s conversations were about how comfortable marketers felt using AI, and that they’ve since struck enterprise agreements with AI partners. Kochava CEO Leslie Amadi wants to see how far agentic AI has moved from talk to operations. He said CFOs are taking a more active role in discussions about costs, and security teams are paying closer attention to how first-party data could leak into AI models. Hill’s worry is trust, because faster optimization means little if nobody can trust the data and measurement behind it.

Implementation, in other words, comes with a long list of questions nobody has settled yet, and plenty of the execs heading over say they’re going mainly to listen. Channel Factory CRO Nico Greco and Summit House co-founder Steven Cundari both described the week as a chance to team up. “I want to understand where our clients and partners are in their technology journeys,” said Greco of what he wants to get from the meetings he’ll be having throughout the week.

Much of that listening will happen away from the stages. The Trade Desk opens the week this afternoon with drinks at The Perch, the rooftop on top of PENN 2 — a few minutes’ walk from the main venue. Amex Ads has the Riff Raff club in the evening. Ad tech’s card players will be at the Sigma Software invite-only poker night, which is into its fifth year. For anyone who’d rather sit down over lunch, The Landing at PENN 1 has private dining rooms right on the doorstep, and Bar Primi on West 33rd Street takes groups. Speakers and top-tier pass holders get the Chase Media Solutions lounge on the second level. By Tuesday night, some of the crowd will have drifted down to Little Rebel in the East Village for Proeller’s fringe party.

Creators have their own circuit this year. Meta is running a Creator’s Lounge on the second level for creator pass holders and Dhar Mann, Advertising Week’s first chief creator officer, hosts a karaoke night tomorrow and an omakase dinner with Rick Ross on Wednesday. There’ll be plenty of creators to fill them. Ruth Mortimer, global president of Advertising Week, expects around 2,500 creators this year, up from 1,000 creator tickets last time. She and Mann have set a target of $100 million in creator deals coming out of the week over the next 12 months.

It’s a long way from how creators used to land a meeting with a CMO here. “I used to joke, the only CMO meetings we were getting were if they had a 12-year old daughter who watched our creators,” said Adam Wescott, CEO and co-founder of independent content and media studio Home Game Studios. The welcome is, indeed, warmer than it used to be. Trevant GM Kristina Coughlin said creators have become “a core part, often a leading part” of advertisers’ marketing mix, whereas in previous years they were an extra. Wescott wants to see what comes of it once the week is over. “Creators don’t just want the invite to help promote ticket sales,” he said in an email. “They want real deals to come from it.”

AI and creators come with the territory at an event like Advertising Week. Measurement tends to get less air time, though the arguments over it have been building all year. AI-driven shopping is pulling budget out of search, while creators and social platforms want credit for sales that close somewhere else. Newer sellers like ChatGPT are asking advertisers to spend before they chan show what they money did. Kochava’s CEO Charles Manning will be watching how those conversations play out over the next few days: “Our sideline conversations are deliberately focused on deep, structural partnerships rather than transactional pitch meetings. Specifically, our calendar is booked with meetings in three categories: Enterprise Marketers seeking truth and leverage, ecosystem and platform partners that want strategically minded growth and organizations that want true AI-driven transformation in their processes.”

None of this gets settled by Thursday, and Mortimer isn’t pretending otherwise. “We’re all going to live with uncertainty forever,” she said. “So let’s try and find the opportunities together.”

AWNY wants creators in the room. Creators want to know what’s in it for them

At this year’s Advertising Week New York (AWNY), creators aren’t just part of the programming. They’re seemingly part of the draw for the event itself.

AWNY is trying something new this year. The conference brought on creator and entrepreneur Dhar Mann on as its inaugural chief creator officer. With Mann’s appointment comes the $100 Million Creator Challenge, a set of “interactive 30-minute experiences pairing leading talent with major CMOs to create ideas, content, connections and real business outcomes,” per the AWNY site.

There will also be an exclusive happy hour for creators, execs and cultural leaders, a curated dinner and a night out. The pitch to creators is clear: come to Advertising Week and maybe you’ll leave with a CMO-signed contract.

“It’s exciting more advertiser-first events are inviting creators, but what will be most telling is the results post-event,” said Adam Wescott, CEO and fo-counder of Home Game Studios, and Mind Chatter Media. 

It’s true the ad industry is taking creators more seriously. Just look at industry tentpole events, like the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this past summer. Creators all but stormed the French Riviera, looking to strike deals with business leaders. Dinners, key notes and other events that were usually reserved for CMOs were also hosting creators. 

While event organizers roll out the red carpet for creators, the question is whether or not the benefit is mutual. That’s what Wescott has top of mind heading into this year’s AWNY, he said. 

More ad industry events are starting to bring creators in not just as panelists and talent, but potentially to boost reach and promotion for these events themselves, he said. The question is: what’s in it for creators outside of a trip and photo op?

“Creators don’t just want the invite to help promote ticket sales. They want real deals to come from it,” Wescott added. 

What we’ve heard

“For us it was important [Dhar Mann’s involvement] had a business outcome. We’ve hand-picked a group of brands and we’ve asked them to identify what budget they’re spending creators. Then we’re getting them in the room with the creators here. We’re tracking it because we asked the brands up front to confirm what they were planning to spend.”

— Advertising Week global president Ruth Mortimer

Advertising Week New York by the numbers

• About 2,500 creators are expected this year, up from 1,000 creator tickets last year. 
• A $100 million target for creator deals coming out of the week will be tracked over the next 12 months against creator budgets brands confirmed up front.
• Nine stages and 36 day tracks. 
• Advertising Week’s own realtor network, built with the creator platform Breakr, gives it access to around 350,00 creators. 
• Brand marketers are now the largest audience segment, where agencies would have been a decade ago.

On stage

The creator advantage in AI search, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. (leadership breakfast)
Jenny Penich, CRO at Influencer and Eleanor Hooker, head of community and customer marketing at Profound discuss answer engine optimization, how LLMs rely on human recommendations and why creators could link AI discovery to consumer trust.

Dhar Mann’s opening keynote, 9.30 a.m., Great Minds Stage
This is the headline Monday session. Mann will launch the $100 million creator challenge from the stage, and the event says he’ll reveal a big initiative for 2027 for the first time.

After hours

Amex Ads happy hour, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at The Riff Raff Club (invite only)
Sigma Software AdTech Poker Night at 7pm. This is the fifth anniversary edition and its invite only.

Future is Female Awards at 7 p.m.
The anchor event of Advertising Week’s Future is Female programme, recognises women and allies in the industry. Invite only.