Editor’s Note: Advertising Week and StreamTV Insider are now part of the same company, Forge.
Advertising Week New York is upon us, running Oct. 5-8 in the Penn District, where streaming and connected TV continues to play a rising yet evolving role for marketers and the event itself is diving deeper into key segments and verticals – including creators.
This is Advertising Week’s first year under new ownership after parent Emerald was acquired by Apollo Global Management in July and merged with Questex (parent of StreamTV Insider) to create Forge.
And amid a fragmented and complex advertising and marketing ecosystem, the 2026 event marks a year where a lot of different themes for marketers come together, according to Advertising Week Global President Ruth Mortimer.
“This feels like a real year of convergence,” she told us.
Streaming has been a big topic at Advertising week for many years, per Mortimer, and this year is no different with four days-worth of content across different stages and sessions on a streaming track devoted to that segment.
This year there’s also a dedicated half-day Future of CTV Summit hosted by Wurl happening Tuesday afternoon (where this reporter will be moderating a session focused on CTV Outcomes, check it out if you can).
But the event will see streaming and CTV crop up and intersect throughout many areas across the program, including one big theme that is coming back in gusto: Streaming and creators.
Mortimer noted the emergence of so-called “micro-streaming” marketing opportunities alongside the more traditional streaming marketplace, while at the same time creators are converging with things like commerce media and social commerce much more.
In today’s world advertising and marketing efforts can’t be siloed by channel, and different areas are coming together to collaborate as lines increasingly blur and different marketing segments start to converge. So Mortimer expects plenty of cross-over and intersection of key themes, trends, and conversations throughout the week.
“The big differentiator for this year is you almost can't keep yourself in one lane because they're all coming together,” she said.
Creators, commerce intertwine for marketers
The intersection of streaming, creators, and commerce media or social commerce is one area where new Ad Week New York strategic initiatives aren’t just about panel conversations but driving tangible business generation.
Mortimer described the creator economy as “a major focus” of this year’s event, including a goal to, over four days, facilitate $100 million in creator-brand deals within 12 months of the event.
Last year at AWNY popular creator Dhar Mann hosted a live creator-focused interactive session on stage to build a video campaign with Gap, which later turned into a real Old Navy campaign deal.
Now, AWNY wanted to do something similar but scale it up while also helping to play matchmaker on-site between creators and brands with specific creator budgets.
This week’s creator efforts with Mann span softer, relationship-building engagements and more direct and tactical initiatives to drive business, like the on-site creator-brand matchmaking, Mortimer explained.
Ad Week NY brought Mann on as the event’s chief creator officer and he’ll be giving today’s opening keynote address, host multiple invite-only events and lead the Creator Challenge on Thursday.
The Creator Challenge features unique 30-minute interactive experiences that pairs creators and celebrities with major CMOs to create ideas, content, connection and real business outcomes.
AWNY is also poised to bring brands and creators together via more casual fun through events like Creator Karaoke with Christina Milian and Julianne Hough and Mann’s Creator’s Table with Rick Ross and Jack’s Dining Room – the latter which is a curated dinner of CMOs and creators meant to spark new connections and future partnerships.
When it comes to stimulating rather than just talking about the creator economy, Mortimer said there’s really the need for both soft and hard tactics when connecting brands and creators.
Karaoke and a curated dinner for example, “are much more about having the right people in the room together who can do business,” she said, versus the on-site matchmaking.
“Actually having brands in the room who have budget they want to spend on creators with creators that we think would be good for them,” she said. “That’s much more tactical, hands-on business generation.”
And as the show looks to cater to and attract high-level marketers this year’s event includes a CMO Experience initiative, which is an intimate program for B2C marketers that is meant to elevate topics important to the crowd through unique experiences. It features workshops with figures like John Legend, Questlove and others talking about aspects such as career longevity.
Social vs streaming? Marketing funnels get sophisticated with micro creators
The question of whether YouTube is TV is a debate that has reared its head among the CTV crowd, but according to Mortimer, it’s one that might not matter much to brands.
“Brand marketers have so many options for channels, and my feeling is that they tend to be fairly unemotional” in terms of where they spend dollars, she explained. “They choose what works well for them. I think they're much more interested in where does a channel really excel and produce results.”
Sometimes that could be linear TV mass market, or YouTube for more granular data.
But as technology and consumer behavior continue to evolve and reshape advertising tactics, she believes that brand marketers are increasingly pragmatic and prioritize the platforms that are easy to use and provide measurable results – versus theoretical debates.
“My perception from talking to a lot of marketers is they just care about what gets results, and also the platforms that make it easy for them are really alluring,” Mortimer said.
She also noted how the marketing funnel is getting increasingly sophisticated, particularly by large retail brands like Target or Sephora, for example, and further shows the convergence of streaming, shoppable TV, social and commerce.
Per Mortimer, large retail brands have created marketing programs that might start at the top with linear TV for reach and awareness, then move to CTV to narrow campaigns, and then at the end use so-called micro creators that act as the last-mile to amplify and take the messages onto social commerce channels and “actually get people to shop that way.”
In this scenario, she described that last creator touch as “micro streaming,” saying retailers are “employing this huge army” of micro-creators who often have less than 5,000 followers but whose audience is highly engaged and follow them for a very specific reason.
“I think it’s just a really interesting, sophisticated funnel,” Mortimer said, adding her biggest insight is that “[marketer’s are] just excited to do even more of it.”
AWNY dives deeper into verticals as brands world build
As marketing segments converge, some of the verticals Ad Week New York is diving deeper into this year include media and entertainment, gaming, health and wellness, and finance and investing.
There’s a full day gaming summit taking place on Monday, where Mortimer noted the current importance of fandom and world building for brands – where new environments present new opportunities to engage and get in front of communities.
World building can been in streaming by the likes of Disney, she noted, not just via the media company’s franchises but digital environments like Disney Dreamlight Valley, a simulation and adventure video game that allows users to interact with Disney film characters in a game on an ongoing basis.
And she sees brands moving towards creating and appearing in digital environments like gaming to give their assets more longevity.
“I think more and more brands are going, ‘How can we give our core assets ways of living longer?’ Whether it's in Roblox” or different gaming environments, Mortimer said.
So while creators are a big focus for this year’s event, they don’t necessarily brepresent the way Advertising Week is evolving.
“It’s more that we’re going deeper into each of the verticals,” Mortimer noted.
In addition to gaming, that includes the show’s first-ever Health Summit, as Forge brings together brands like Fierce Pharma, and where she called out intersection and impacts from things like GPL-1s on everything from fashion brands and sizing to food brands and formulations and flavorings, for example.
“Some of these things end up having a far bigger ripple effect than just in there one area,” Mortimer said.
Editor’s Note: Advertising Week and StreamTV Insider are now part of the same company, Forge.