Ad Stars, Asia’s top ad festival, opens today in Busan, South Korea and will run for three days from August 20 to 22.
As Asia’s largest advertising festival Ad Stars serves as a convergence event for creative communication where online submissions are open to anyone, amateur or professional. Entries are judged by some of the creative industry’s top professionals from around the world.
In its eighth year, Ad Stars has attracted a record 17,698 submissions from 67 nations.
In terms of the number of finalists by country, Japan sits at the top with 252 works, followed by Korea with 146 and Thailand with 101.
Around 1,700 final submissions, both professional and amateur, will be exhibited during this year’s festival.
This year there will be a featured exhibition and seminar called “China Special”, which will showcase the country’s rapidly-expanding ad industry.
The festival will also include side programs, including seminars, Creative School, a job fair and networking parties for those in the industry.
The final winners, including winners of the Grand Prix, will be announced and awarded Saturday, August 22, the closing day of Ad Stars 2015.
Festival becoming more diverse
This year Asia claims a lower share of submitted entries while those from Africa, the Americas and Oceania all account for greater share of submissions for Ad Stars 2015.
“Given that Asian entries dominated in previous years, this trend for better representation of other continents suggests that Ad Stars has overcome the perception of it being merely a regional event and successfully broken into the international market for advertising festivals,” the Ad Stars committee said in a press release.
They added that, “In particular, the numbers of entries have quintupled from Africa, tripled from Oceania, and more than doubled from Americas.”
Entry Category Breakdown
According to Ad Stars, entries were submitted in a total of twenty-two categories, including the new additions for the Video Awards.
The Print category, which ranked first last year, has 2,835 entries with 16 percent of all submissions for 2015.
Packaging will have 1,559 entries, or just under 10 percent of the total pieces for Ad Stars this year.
Mobile and outdoor presence increases this year
A total of 552 works are entered in the Mobile category this year, marking nearly a 5X increase over last year while two-way communication has led to rise in responsive advertising as well with 989 works entries in the Interactive category this year.
The Outdoor category accounts for the largest number of entries with a total of 3,141 works submitted this year, accounting for 17.75 percent of all world.
This rise in outdoor advertisements works is attributed to the increasing popularity of digital signage worldwide as outdoor marketing expands.
Find out more on Ad Stars 2015 website.
