NEW YORK— This week, Emerald Holding, Inc. completed the acquisition from Stillwell Partners of all the assets comprising Advertising Week, a leading B2B event and content platform in the advertising, marketing, media and technology sectors.
Advertising Week has more than 100,000 annual attendees at its hybrid events, uses more than 3,000 speakers per year and produces about 1,000-plus video content hours. Its events include Advertising Week in New York, as well as Advertising Week Europe in London, Advertising Week Asia in Tokyo, Advertising Week LATAM in Mexico City, Advertising Week APAC in Sydney and expansion plans for Advertising Week Africa in Johannesburg.
From June 2021 through Q2 2022, Emerald so far has produced 117 in-person trade shows, conferences and other events, drawing approximately 328,000 event attendees and 17,000 exhibiting companies.
Emerald’s President and CEO Hervé Sedky said, “This exciting potential to join forces with Advertising Week represents an important next step in the implementation of our strategic initiatives and underscores our commitment to evolve and grow our customers’ businesses 365 days a year combining creativity and innovation with the Emerald platform.”
Emerald CFO David Doft, who has led the conversations for Emerald, added, “We have long admired Advertising Week’s best-in-class reputation for being ahead of the curve serving the influential advertising, marketing, media and technology sectors which I have experienced personally as both an attendee and sponsor over the course of my career. Its signature blend of thought leadership on the business of the business, with highly curated experiential events, will diversify our collective product offerings, enhance our growth profile and enable us to deliver even greater value to our clients and customers over the long term.”
In addition to live and virtual events, the year-round global event and content platform also offers e-learning led by top event management practitioners with its AWLearn program and original audio, video, and editorial content with its AW360 podcast.
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The acquisition of Advertising Week also boosts Emerald’s customer engagement strategy by integrating in-person events, content and commerce. It also helps Emerald build on its prominent position in the B2B marketing sector where it utilizes its Demand Gen Report media platform and B2B Marketing Exchange in-person event series.
For Advertising Week, the acquisition provides access to complementary customers within Emerald’s businesses – including a variety of small- and medium sized businesses as well as its well-established retail and design portfolios. The acquisition also adds resources to boost Advertising Week’s expansion and growth.
Following the acquisition, all Advertising Week employees will join Emerald, including Co-Founder and Advertising Week Chairman Matt Scheckner, Co-Founder and Advertising Week CEO Lance Pillersdorf, and Advertising Week’s Global President Ruth Mortimer, who will continue to lead the day-to-day operations of the business.
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“Moving beyond organic growth by integrating with a larger organization with additional resources is the right next step in our evolution as a business for today, and for tomorrow,” Scheckner said. “We chose Emerald because it clearly values the unique aspects of our brand, have committed to our leadership team led by Lance and Ruth, bring an intuitive knowledge of our industry, and are passionate about supporting growth.”
Pillersdorf added, “After completing our first phase of global expansion pre-pandemic, we are now focused on our next phase of growth. The momentum of change in the global marketing industry through the impact of rapid cultural and technological evolution has provided us with multiple growth opportunities. Accelerating these growth opportunities around content, education, further global expansion and our proprietary technology is at the heart of this partnership with Emerald.”
Reach Hervé Sedky at herve.sedky@emeraldx.com; David Doft at 866-339-4688
