Advertising is quickly becoming a digital business. For proof, look no further than Advertising Week in New York.

This year, many of the hundreds of panels and discussions scheduled for the annual event will be on digital topics, from mobile marketing to data mining.

Top digital executives, such as Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, will headline events. They will be seeking to woo marketers such as PepsiCo Inc., Allstate Corp. and Mondelez International Inc., who have been allocating ever-greater portions of their marketing budgets to digital in recent years.

Talk at the swanky cocktail parties is likely to revolve around things that didn't even exist a decade ago, from BuzzFeed and Instagram to programmatic ad buying and the marketing cloud. The chatter over canapés will entail an alphabet soup of new marketing jargon such as DSP, SSP, DMP and RTB.

It is a far cry from the first Advertising Week, 11 years ago, when much of the talk among ad executives was whether the prize for fan-favorite ad icon would go to Tony the Tiger or the M&M characters.