Advertising Week Briefing: How AI is expected to dominate this year’s conference
This year’s Advertising Week in New York may as well be called Artificial Intelligence Week as generative AI is expected to be a dominating theme for the more than 12,000 marketers, advertisers, media and tech professionals are expected to attend this year’s conference.
The 19th edition of Advertising Week is hosted in “The Penn District,” otherwise known as the neighborhood around New York City’s Penn Station, as well as online, making it a hybrid event — a post-pandemic trend for industry events. And undoubtedly, this year’s focus is the AI boom, according to attendees.
“In 2022 there was so much about the metaverse, but that pales in comparison to the impact AI is having across the advertising industry and that is obviously going to be very apparent at this year’s Advertising Week New York,” said Anna Bager, president and CEO of the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), in an email.
Consider it a continuation of the conversations that were taking place at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity back in June, where the industry was excited by new tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard by Google and the new AI-powered Bing. (Read Digiday’s 2023 artificial intelligence glossary here.)
Months later, in time for Advertising Week, generative AI has continued to mature with marketers testing said tools to streamline processes and make people’s jobs easier, content creators using the new tech to make higher quality content for platforms and even AI showing up during the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“Only a few months later, it feels a lot calmer and a lot more rational. People have been able to better wrap their head around what is AI, how is it potentially both a benefit to your existing [tools] and how you do business,” said David Anderson, partner and