New York Festivals International Advertising Awards is accepting entries for its 2016 competition. The early bird discount runs until December 16 2015 and the entry deadline is January 31 2016.

There are three new categories in which to score a World’s Best award – or five if you’re ambitious – Mobile, Media and Activation & Engagement.

This year, there’s also a new Special Award, Best Commercial Film Director. This will go to “the commercial director whose visionary talent and creative excellence is associated with the highest number of award-winning commercial entries.” Regardless of who submitted the entry. Check out this, and the other awards in detail here.

“NYF diligently monitors evolving advertising industry trends to insure our competitions offer multiple opportunities to showcase the creative and technological advances brands employed to engage consumers. While we’ve added new competitions, we also deleted categories which no longer play a relevant role with respect to the work that’s being done today.” Michael O’Rourke, president of New York Festivals, noted.

• Mobile advertising now accounts for more than half of digital ad spending and is increasingly important to how consumers interact with brands.
• Media will applaud standout strategies to achieve maximum coverage and exposure on behalf of their brand.
• Activation & Engagement will applaud the executions that used compelling emotional personal experiences to achieve a measurable and positive shift in brand perceptions.

Since 2011, work entered has been judged by 400+ members of NYF’s Executive and Grand Juries – “a brain trust of global creative minds” as NYF calls it. Between them, they cast more than 400,000 votes to select the World’s Best Advertising.

The 30 chief creative officers in the 2016 Executive Jury, will meet May 13-17 to select the World’s Best Advertising winners from the shortlisted winners. The 2016 New York Show creative panel sessions and networking events will take place on Thursday May 19 at the NYIT Auditorium in New York. The New York Show gala cocktail party and awards ceremony will be held that evening, followed by a celebratory after-party.

Entries submitted before December 16 2015 can save 10% of their entry fees by using the code PRN2016.