Five Takeaways From Advertising Week New York

Advertising Week New York is over, and four days uptown felt as long as an never-ending Snapchat ad. If you skipped the conference or couldn’t be bothered to fight your way through crosstown traffic, here’s what people were talking about.

Gloom and cume
Bad news made many appearances on stage. Sorrell predicted holding companies will break up and consolidate, and executives discussed how a new cross-platform standard for measuring video audiences can’t be implemented until the industry creates new tracking technology.

She Runs It released a report showing a decline in women at the executive level of the industry. Not just a stubborn lack of progress—an actual year-over-year decline. And Time’s Up says that at current rates, black women will achieve pay parity with men in 100 years. Latina women will need to wait another century after that. There isn’t even enough data to extrapolate a date for Native American women, but Time’s Up’s best guess is 250 years.

In perhaps another harbinger of doom, Fox News held an unironic panel celebrating the conflation of politics and pop culture.

Talking heads
Every moderator knows five panelists are too many for an informative conversation, but plenty of sessions arrayed a half-dozen people on stage. Sure, speakers get free badges and earned media, but audiences miss out when there’s too much crosstalk …[Read More]