Cannes We Do Better
Panels and presentations at Cannes this year overflowed with optimism for AI-generated creative and other applications of AI tech.
And yes, AI will fundamentally change the way marketing and personalization work. But “behind closed doors,” Tracy-Ann Lim, JP Morgan Chase’s chief media officer, tells Ad Age, there are other private conversations about “how we scale, what our operating model should look like and how people are feeling about AI.”
As a point of fact, the sentiment regarding AI actually seems rather bleak.
“There’s more stress in the ecosystem than the panels were able to showcase,” Lim says. “I took solace in the fact that we’re all in the same boat. We’re all navigating uncharted territory and doing our best.”
Keep your chin up, in other words.
“I appreciate the positive spin for the sake of the masses, and equally appreciate the candor off-stage in helping to decipher the next best things we all need to go do,” she says.
Frankly, though, the industry would be far better off if the candor was happening on stage.
But, hey, this is the advertising business, after all.
Trading Agencies For Agents
Actions speak louder than words. Despite TikTok’s and Meta’s insistence that agency relationships are still valuable, their AI product development suggests otherwise.
TikTok is furthering its generative AI toolkit for ad creative, and Meta is doing the same.
If ad growth slows down and tech infrastructure costs continue to rise, businesses will look to save money from their agency partners. Generative AI tools can turn “what were once essential roles into potential cost savings,” writes EMARKETER.
Although brands won’t leave their agencies en masse tomorrow or anything, the future isn’t looking all that bright. After Meta announced its advertising automation ambitions, agency holdco stocks dropped by up to 4%.
Also, advertisers are still on the fence. On the one hand, they love cutting costs and the ease of AI-based products. But having operational control over their own campaigns is also really important to them.
And anyway, marketing teams have relied on agencies for generations now. AI tools may be an easy button, but many brands don’t have the chops to execute without help from their agency partners, at least not for now.
Unused News
A whopping 83% of American adults haven’t paid for news coverage in the past year, according to a depressing survey from Pew Research Center.
Of the 17% who have paid for news, that number counts people who donated to a news site.
Most digital and traditional news publishers have implemented subscription paywalls of one kind or another on their sites. Although some of these paywalls can’t be breached, others are rather easy to get around. Still, the default reaction among many who encounter a paywall is to either search for the news somewhere else or give up on the endeavor altogether.
For every one person who converts, nearly one-third (32%) of people give up on ever reading that news item.
Oof.
But these results actually camouflage how bad the situation is with younger adults who have no memory of subscription rebilling for actual newspapers.
Yet the number of American adults who have used ChatGPT in the past year has doubled, also per Pew. ChatGPT usage has now reached an outright majority among the youngs, or 58% for those under 30, to be exact.
But Wait! There’s More
Amazon is CTV’s data engine, says Eric Seufert. [Mobile Dev Memo]
Why are employees so secretive about using AI at work? (Hint: They’re trying not to get in trouble.) [WorkLife]
YouTube leads in TV viewing for the fourth month in a row, according to Nielsen. [Adweek]
Anthropic didn’t just scrape digital versions of books to train its AI; it also “destructively scanned” millions of physical ones. [Business Insider]
Legal news website Court Watch calls out content aggregators – and traditional news organizations – for regurgitating its reporting without credit. [Court Watch]
The Trump administration terminated roughly $20 million in federal grants for subscriptions to Springer Nature publications. [Axios]
You’re Hired!
Mediaocean promoted Ramsey McGrory to president of Prisma, the company’s media management and finance platform. [release]
M+C Saatchi Performance appointed Jim Hamilton as managing director for North America. [release]
JWP Connatix (still waitin’ on that name change!) hired Chris Maccaro as CRO. [ExchangeWire]
Alejandro Clabiorne joins Tinuiti as chief operating officer of client delivery. [release]
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