Ad Age

About Ad Age

Ad Age is the advertising industry's longest-running news service and its most widely recognized trade publication. Founded in 1930 as Advertising Age and shortened to Ad Age in 2017, it is a global media brand publishing news, analysis, and data on marketing, media, and the agency business. Owned by the privately held Crain Communications Inc. of Detroit, Michigan, Ad Age is based in New York City and appears in multiple formats, including its website adage.com, daily email newsletters, social channels, live events, and a bimonthly print magazine. For decades the publication has served as what company historians and industry observers call the "publication of record" for the advertising business, chronicling agency account moves, executive appointments, campaign launches, holding-company earnings, and the technological shifts that have repeatedly remade marketing.

Founding and Early History

Ad Age was born in the depths of the Great Depression. In the months before the October 1929 stock market crash, G.D. Crain Jr., founder of the Crain Publishing Company in Louisville, Kentucky, had finalized plans for a news weekly devoted entirely to advertising. On January 11, 1930, without knowing the full extent of the nation's financial collapse, he published the premiere issue of Advertising Age, promoted as the "national newspaper of advertising." With no advance notice, 10,000 copies of the 12-page broadsheet edition appeared on the desks of advertising professionals selected from the Standard Advertising Register. The first editor was Sid Bernstein, who would be associated with the Crain organization for decades. The premise of the new paper was to print all news related to advertising and marketing — and, crucially, to cover what the industry's reigning trade bible, Printer's Ink, deemed unimportant. Many observers considered the launch recklessly timed, but Crain proceeded, and history vindicated the gamble: Printer's Ink folded in 1967 while Ad Age became the industry's defining news source.

The Depression years were lean for the whole Crain company. The previously healthy publications Class and Hospital Management wavered, and in 1933 Crain chose to fold Class into Ad Age as a special section rather than sacrifice it altogether, keeping it there until ad sales and circulation recovered. Through the 1930s and the postwar boom, Advertising Age grew alongside the modern advertising agency business, documenting the rise of the creative revolution, the growth of television advertising, and the consolidation of agencies into holding companies.

Growth Under Crain Communications

The company behind Ad Age, Crain Publishing Company, was founded in 1916 by G.D. Crain Jr., previously the city editor of the Louisville Herald newspaper. It changed its name to Crain Communications in 1969 and relocated its corporate headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2001. Today Crain Communications is a publishing conglomerate with dozens of business, trade, and consumer publications, including Autoweek, Crain's New York Business, Crain's Chicago Business, Crain's Detroit Business, Modern Healthcare, Pensions & Investments, and Automotive News. Through the second half of the twentieth century, Advertising Age remained one of the family's flagship titles even as it moved its editorial center of gravity from Chicago to New York City, the capital of the American advertising business.

Ad Age expanded through acquisition as the media landscape changed. In March 2002 The Ad Age Group acquired AdCritic.com, a website showcasing television commercials and creative work. In 2004 Advertising Age acquired American Demographics magazine. In January 2014 the industry trade magazine BtoB, aimed at business marketers, was folded into Advertising Age, consolidating Crain's business-marketing coverage under a single brand. In 2017 the publication formally shortened its name from Advertising Age to Ad Age, reflecting a brand that readers had already been using informally for years.

Editorial Coverage

Ad Age's newsroom covers the full span of the marketing and media industries. Its reporters track the world's largest advertisers and their chief marketing officers, the global agency networks and independent shops that serve them, and the holding companies — WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic, Dentsu, and Havas — that dominate the business. Coverage extends to media buying and planning, ad technology, programmatic advertising, retail media, the creator economy, brand purpose, diversity in the industry, and the regulatory pressures around data privacy. The brand's journalists are known for breaking agency account news: which shop won a major creative or media review, which executive is moving where, and which campaigns are defining each awards season. Alongside daily news, Ad Age publishes analysis, opinion columns, and long-form features on the forces reshaping marketing, from generative artificial intelligence to the fragmentation of television audiences.

The A-List and Creativity Awards

Among the most influential things Ad Age publishes are its annual rankings and awards. The Ad Age A-List honors the top agencies of the year across more than two dozen categories, including Agency of the Year, Agency Network of the Year, Media Agency of the Year, Independent Agency of the Year, and specialist honors for creativity, design, experiential, performance marketing, PR, multicultural marketing, and sports and entertainment. The 2026 A-List named Rethink as Agency of the Year and honored agencies such as Mischief @ No Fixed Address, Highdive, Tombras, and Wieden+Kennedy, with executives like Pereira O'Dell's Mona Munayyer Gonzalez recognized as Agency Executive of the Year. Companion programs include the Small Agency Awards, which celebrate independent shops with fewer than 150 employees, the Creativity Awards honoring standout creative work and talent, and recognitions such as Marketer of the Year, the Leading Women program, and the 40 Under 40 list of rising industry talent. These franchises give Ad Age outsized influence: an A-List win can define an agency's new-business year.

Events and Conferences

Beyond publishing, Ad Age operates a significant events business that convenes the industry in person. Its calendar includes the Ad Age Next: CMO conference, the Small Agency Conference, the Ad Age Creativity Festival tied to awards season, and gatherings focused on media, data, and emerging technology. These events bring together chief marketing officers, agency leaders, media executives, and technology platforms for interviews, panels, and networking, extending the brand's editorial authority into live programming. The events business also complements Ad Age's research and data products, which help marketers benchmark spending and strategy.

Digital Presence and Newsletters

Adage.com is the brand's primary publishing platform, updated throughout the day with breaking news, analysis, and data visualizations. The site is supported by a family of email newsletters that reach marketing professionals each morning and throughout the week, covering agency news, media, creativity, and data. Ad Age is also active on social channels, where its editors share stories and engage with the industry conversation, and it produces podcasts and video programming. The print magazine, published bimonthly, carries long-form features, photography, and the brand's signature rankings in a format aimed at the industry's senior leadership.

Leadership and Organization

Ad Age operates as part of Crain Communications, the family-owned publishing company led by Keith Crain as chairman and KC Crain as president and chief executive officer. Within the Ad Age brand, Dan Peres has served as president, guiding the publication's evolution as a multi-platform media brand. The editorial leadership directs bureaus and correspondents covering the industry from New York and beyond. Like the rest of the trade press, Ad Age has navigated the economics of digital publishing — in 2025 Crain Communications reduced headcount across the company — while continuing to invest in the events, awards, and digital products that drive its business.

Influence on the Advertising Industry

Few trade publications have shaped their industry the way Ad Age has. By deciding which agency moves, campaigns, and controversies merit coverage, it has long set the agenda for the business conversation in advertising. Its awards programs have become career milestones: appearing on the A-List or winning Agency of the Year changes how the market perceives a shop. The brand's coverage of industry diversity, workplace culture, and business practices has at times pushed the industry toward reform, and its reporting on holding-company consolidation, the rise of consultancies, and the in-housing trend has helped marketers make sense of a business in constant flux. Competing publications — notably Adweek, its longtime rival — cover the same territory, but Ad Age's nine-decade archive gives it a historical depth no competitor can match.

Business Model

Ad Age operates on a diversified media business model. Revenue comes from print and digital advertising sold to the same marketers, agencies, and technology companies it covers; from subscriptions and memberships that provide access to premium content, data, and research; and from its events and awards programs, which generate sponsorship and attendance revenue. This multi-revenue structure is typical of modern B2B media, and it has allowed the brand to sustain a sizable newsroom even as print advertising has declined across the industry.

Visit Ad Age Online

Readers can find Ad Age's latest reporting, rankings, and event information at its official website, adage.com. The site offers breaking news on the marketing and media industries, archives of the A-List and other awards programs, newsletter sign-ups, and details on upcoming conferences. The print magazine, identified by ISSN 0001-8899 in print and 1557-7414 on the web, remains available to subscribers as the brand's flagship long-form product.