So, as pret­ty much every busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er across the land will be aware, New York’s annu­al Adver­tis­ing Week is short­ly upon us again, with 2013 mark­ing its tenth anniversary.

What’s top of mind for 2013?

Last year, the empha­sis was solid­ly on dig­i­tal. This year, the tens of thou­sands of busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers and oth­er Adland atten­dees can look for­ward to an array of press­ing issues besides dig­i­tal and the role of Face­book and Twit­ter. Like the rise of native adver­tis­ing, for exam­ple, and the increas­ing need for cross-screen mar­ket­ing, not to men­tion the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of star­tups in the indus­try. All three have acquired sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in con­tent this year, although they’re close­ly fol­lowed by dig­i­tal video, mobile, dynam­ic women in adver­tis­ing and gen­er­al tal­ent issues. And judg­ing by the sheer weight of the 263-page tome that is the week’s guide, there’s going to be no scarci­ty of content.

A year is a long time in adver­tis­ing and, as any job­bing busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er can tell you, the land­scape can change a lot in twelve months in this busi­ness. As Adver­tis­ing Week’s Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Matt Scheck­n­er puts it:

“Every year, there’s a pret­ty girl at the dance, if you will. Years ago, it was dig­i­tal. Now, dig­i­tal is part of every­thing. Social has mor­phed into that now as it’s embed­ded in every­thing. And mobile is arguably going in that direc­tion. At the same time, there are sub­jects that require heavy treatment.”

Inter­ests, not themes, are the star of the show

Sub­jects lined up to receive that heavy treat­ment this year include tar­get­ing mil­len­ni­als and there’s quite a line-up of con­tent providers for that one, with big pub­lish­ing names like Cos­mopoli­tan, Com­plex and Men­tal Floss all tak­ing part. A broad range of issues will receive atten­tion, from For­rester and com­Score ana­lysts crunch­ing data to real­i­ty celebri­ty Kris Jen­ner dis­cussing high-lev­el media concepts.

Scheck­n­er explains that the event, by design, includes a vast amount of con­tent. He went on:

“One of the biggest mis­nomers every year is that we have a theme every year. There is no theme. We sim­ply look at the sub­jects peo­ple are most inter­est­ed in.”

The event drew more than 80,000 atten­dees last year and, accord­ing to Scheck­n­er, even more are pro­ject­ed to attend this year.