In 1930, G.D. Crain Jr. started a weekly newspaper in Chicago called Advertising Age, betting that an industry built on selling other people’s stories would pay to read about itself. Nearly a century later, Ad Age is still published by the company he founded, Crain Communications, and it is still the place where agency executives, chief marketing officers and media buyers go to find out who won the account, who got fired, which campaign worked and what the numbers say.
That history tells you most of what you need to know about how to get featured in Ad Age. It is a trade publication. Its readers are professionals who make decisions about marketing budgets, and its reporters cover the business of advertising the way a business desk covers any industry: with deals, people, money and data. A pitch that reads like consumer marketing, with superlatives and no figures, misses the readers entirely.
Know which Ad Age you are pitching
Ad Age is several products under one masthead, and each has its own door. The news side covers agencies, brands, media, technology and the people who run them, with reporters assigned to beats such as agency business, media buying, retail marketing, automotive or food and beverage. The Creativity section covers the work itself: campaigns, spots, stunts and the creative teams behind them, including a regular showcase of standout work. Ad Age Datacenter publishes rankings and data products, including its annual Agency Report on the largest agency companies by revenue.
Then there are the franchises: the A-List and Agency of the Year awards, the Small Agency Awards, Best Places to Work, 40 Under 40 and various year-end and category lists. These run on nomination and submission cycles with published deadlines and, in many cases, entry fees. They are not pitches. They are applications, and they reward agencies and brands that prepare months ahead.
If an award franchise is your goal, build the case all year. Entries for agency awards typically ask for business results, client retention, new business, culture and creative work over a defined period. Agencies that keep a running file of wins, metrics, client quotes and campaign results can assemble a strong entry in a week. Agencies that start from scratch at the deadline usually submit something thin. Read the current year’s entry rules on Ad Age’s site, note the deadline and the categories, and assign one person to own the file.
Rankings work the same way. Datacenter’s agency rankings rely on revenue figures that agencies report or that Ad Age estimates, and the methodology is published with each report. If your agency wants to appear, find out how and when the data is gathered and respond on time with accurate numbers. Inflated figures are worse than missing ones, because the people reading the rankings are the clients and competitors who know your real size.
Mixing up these doors is the fastest way to be ignored, and it is the first thing to fix if you want to know how to get featured in Ad Age. A campaign pitch sent to an agency-business reporter, or an account-win announcement sent to Creativity, lands with someone who cannot use it. Read the recent bylines on the stories closest to yours and pitch that person.
Five story types Ad Age reporters want
The first story type is the account move. New business wins, losses and reviews are the lifeblood of agency coverage. If your agency won a significant account, the reporter wants the client name, the scope of the work, the size of the business if you can share it, the incumbent agency if there was one, and whether there was a formal review. A press release that says “Agency X partners with leading brand” and hides the client name is not news. A note that says “Agency X wins Brand Y’s creative account after a four-agency review, taking over from Agency Z” is.
The second is the people move. Senior hires, departures and promotions at agencies and brand marketing teams get covered when they say something about the business. A new chief creative officer from a rival shop, a CMO leaving after a short tenure, or a holding company consolidating leadership are stories. A junior promotion is usually not. Offer the person for a short interview, and give the reporter the context of why the hire matters.
The third is proprietary data. Ad Age readers make budget decisions, and they are hungry for numbers they cannot get elsewhere. If your agency or platform has data on ad spend shifts, creative performance, media pricing, AI tool adoption or consumer response to a category of advertising, and the sample and method are sound, offer it as an exclusive with the methodology attached. Data stories also tend to get cited by other outlets, which multiplies the reach.
The fourth is the work. Campaigns and creative executions go to Creativity, and the bar is simple: is the work good, and is it new? Submit the finished work with credits for the agency, the client and the production partners, a short explanation of the idea and any early results. Timing matters. Send it before or at launch, not three weeks after it has already been everywhere.
The fifth is the business-of-marketing story. How a brand restructured its marketing team, why a company moved its media in-house, how a chief marketing officer is reallocating budget from television to retail media. These stories come from access. If your executives are willing to speak on the record with specifics, you can offer a reporter something they cannot get from a press release, which is the reasoning behind a decision.
Brands have a door into most of these story types too. A chief marketing officer who explains why the company cut a channel, consolidated agencies or changed its creative approach is offering the business-of-marketing story directly. Brands also make the account-move story whenever they launch a review, and the communications team that tells a reporter about a review early, on the record, often gets the cleaner and fairer story when the decision is announced.
Run the Rival Read Test
Before you send anything, run what we call the Rival Read Test. Picture the new-business lead at your biggest competitor. Would they stop scrolling to read this story? Would they forward it to their CEO? If yes, you have trade news. If they would shrug, you have a blog post.
The test works because Ad Age’s audience is, in large part, your competitors, your clients and your future hires. They read it to understand who is winning and why. A story about your new office’s design fails the test. A story about how your agency cut production costs by a stated percentage using a new workflow, with client results, passes, because every rival wants to know if they should copy it.
Apply the test to the headline you would want, not the release you have. Write the headline an Ad Age editor might run, in the publication’s direct style, with a name, a number and a verb. If you cannot write a headline like that from your facts, you do not have the story yet. Go back and get the client approval, the figure or the executive quote that makes it real.
Here is a quick before-and-after. The release headline reads “Agency X Announces Exciting New Partnership With Leading Beverage Brand.” The Rival Read version reads “Agency X takes Brand Y’s $20 million media account from Agency Z.” The second has a name, a number and a loser, and every new-business director in the category will read it. If you cannot share the dollar figure, the scope still works: “Agency X wins Brand Y’s U.S. media planning and buying after a three-month review.” Only use a spend figure you can stand behind, because reporters will check it with other sources.
The test also helps you decide what to leave out. Mission statements, company values and lists of every award your agency has won fail the Rival Read Test individually. Cut them from the pitch. If the reporter wants background, your website has it.
Write the pitch that gets a reply
Ad Age reporters move fast and get a heavy volume of email, so the pitch has to be readable in fifteen seconds. Put the news in the subject line with names, such as “Exclusive: Agency X wins Brand Y creative, ending Agency Z’s eight-year run.” In the body, give the core facts in the first two sentences, the proof in the third (who can confirm, what data you can share, what documents back it) and the offer in the fourth, such as an interview with the CEO today or the full dataset under embargo.
Be precise about exclusives and embargoes. If you offer an exclusive, mean it, and do not send the same news to a rival trade outlet an hour later. If you set an embargo, state the exact date and time with the time zone, and only send embargoed material to reporters who have agreed to it. Breaking those terms once can end your relationship with a newsroom.
Client approval matters more than agencies expect. Many account-win stories die because the client has not signed off on the announcement, or because the agency named a client that had not yet told its incumbent. Get written approval from the client’s communications team before you pitch, and agree on who will confirm the news if the reporter calls.
Have the assets ready before you hit send. That means a short, approved statement from the client, a headshot and one-line bio for every executive quoted, the campaign film or key visuals with credits, and the name and number of the person who can confirm details after hours. Trade news often breaks late in the day, and the source who answers the phone at 7 p.m. with what the reporter needs gets the story told their way.
Follow up once if you hear nothing within a day or two on a timely story, and include a new detail, not a nudge. For data or feature pitches, give it a week. After that, move on, and bring the reporter a different story next time. Reporters remember the sources who send them real news and do not waste their time with the rest.
Wieden+Kennedy, Droga5 and the other shops that show up in Ad Age year after year did not get there by sending more press releases. They got there by doing work and winning business that other people in the industry wanted to read about, and by telling reporters about it with names, numbers and speed. That is how to get featured in Ad Age in one sentence: real news, told fast. Your next account win, executive hire or dataset can follow the same path if you pitch it the way Ad Age’s readers would want to hear it.