Guests at the launch ceremony for the 2021 Shanghai International Advertising Festival Photo: Courtesy of the organizers

The 2021 Shanghai International Advertising Festival kicked off on Wednesday. Eyeing on the development of digital advertising, the meeting discussed digital transformation of the industry, integrated development of advertising in Yangtze River Delta region and the cultivation of young talent in the digital era, aiming to transform Shanghai into becoming the international capital of digital advertising.

Alongside the event, organizers also held a Digital Advertising Summit, inviting top-ranking digital advertising enterprises from both home and abroad and Internet company representatives to share the latest development trend of digital advertising. It also seeks to shape the future development pattern of Chinese advertising companies and to promote the high-quality growth of Shanghai advertising industry, as well as to attract more world-class digital advertising enterprises to invest in Shanghai.  

 

Keynote speech at SHIAF 2021 Digital Advertising Summit Photo: Courtesy of the organizers

 

Promoting the integrated development of advertising in Yangtze River Delta region is one of the key topics during the meeting. It provides a communication platform for the advertising industrial parks in the region to conduct discussion on optimizing the regional industrial structure, exploring the innovation cooperation of the industrial chain, and promoting the high-quality development of the advertising service industry in the area.  

At the meeting, representatives from leading advertising industrial parks in Shanghai and provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui jointly initiated and inked the "integrated development agreement of industrial parks in Yangtze River Delta Region", with an aim to strengthen the communication and joint development of the industrial parks.

China's consumer market is developing and evolving rapidly. More and more new consumer brands are emerging, bringing new growth opportunities for the advertising industry after the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertising enterprises can facilitate new brands to swiftly seize the opportunity in the rapidly changing digital media environment and sweeping through market segments in short periods of time.

Besides showcasing advertising's capability to facilitate new brands' development, the Shanghai International Advertising Festival this year also focused on the rejuvenation of time-honored brands, help them adapt to the changes in the communication environment and consumer market, and jointly explore how to tell a new story of those Chinese brands.

In the end of last year, the meeting organizer issued a "Training Plan for Young Creative Talents" to join hands with industrial companies to enter universities across the country and to bring more practical courses for college students.  

The finals of Youth Camp was held during the meeting, with 120 students from 30 universities in the country gathered in Shanghai, competing for the creative champion after the training and selection of 6 well-known advertising companies.

The annual Shanghai International Advertising Festival has been forwarding a vision to boost industrial development. During the digital era, it aims to facilitate firms grow with high quality; equip them with stronger international competitiveness to thrive in the global market.

Advertising is a "barometer" of the market and Shanghai is one of the advertisement centers in China. The industry's storied history has become one foundation of the city's culture. With a rapidly expanding scale of the sector over the previous years, the total number of enterprises mainly focusing on advertising in Shanghai had reached 68,798 in 2020, in which 6,631 were foreign-invested firms and 14 were public companies. Revenue of advertising enterprises above designated size had reached 179 billion yuan ($27.9 billion), media reports said, citing official data.