Cannes

From Cannes Lions, our editorial team discusses the mix of perspectives on the ad industry’s application of AI: the opportunity, the hesitation and the predictions of how it will disrupt marketing.

The art-filled lobby of Miami’s Hotel Fontainebleau was overtaken by the trappings of ad tech this week for the third-annual Possible Conference, a show that’s rapidly established itself as an influential industry event.

It’s been almost one year since MediaMath went out of business. Two months later, Infillion acquired the assets out of bankruptcy. Now it’s time for the next phase, says Infillion CRO and CMO Laurel Rossi.

At the Cannes Lions, generative AI applications for advertising were out in force. Plus: takes from the Croisette on retail media and cookie conspiracies.

If the nonstop news coming out of Cannes Lions in France this week is making your head spin, this week’s newsletter dispatch will catch you up on how CTV is factoring into this year’s festival.

AI was a hot topic at Cannes Lions, while Elon Musk used the festival as a shot at redemption for X. Plus: Expect more crypto ads this year.

Despite forceful calls for a shakeup of the digital ad business from the main stage at the Possible conference in Miami this week, the online ad industry remains locked in a harmful holding pattern.

Some consumer insights are obvious: People who buy hot dog buns are more likely to buy hot dogs, for example. But Instacart has also observed some far less intuitive online shopping behavior on its platform.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Looking For ADvice No one likes cruddy TV ads. But how much of a problem are they, really? Enough for Comcast-owned FreeWheel to unveil The Viewer Experience Lab at Cannes in partnership with research company MediaScience. The lab will test consumer responses to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Voyage Of Discovery Newspaper publisher Gannett is suing Google for alleged ad tech monopolization. Google, of course, disputes the charge. Dan Taylor, VP of Google Ads, tells The Wall Street Journal Google will “show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers […]

Industry executives can put away their magnum rosé bottles until October. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will postpone its annual June gathering until Oct. 26 to 30, the organizers said on Wednesday. All sponsorships, passes and bookings for official customers will roll over for the postponed event. Read the release. “As always, the […]

Havas isn’t facing the same pressure to grow as other holding companies are. The privately-held agency network, owned by French media mogul Vincent Bolloré’s family empire, The Bolloré Group, isn’t subject to pressures of the stock market. “When you’re privately owned, you can focus on the long term,” said the elder Bolloré’s son, Havas CEO […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No More CMO For J&J Johnson & Johnson’s first CMO Alison Lewis is out after five years on the job. But the CPG giant seems like it’s getting rid of the role altogether, according to Ad Age. In a statement, J&J said: “We have […]

At Disney, no one messes with the Mouse. The brand is extremely protective of its reputation among consumers, one largely built on trust. At the same time, Disney is a data-driven publisher with an epic amount of O&O. There’s ABC, ESPN, Fox, Hulu, movies, hotel resorts, cruises, theme parks and everything else that formed the […]

Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic […]

Michael Kassan was Mr. Cannes even before he sold MediaLink to the festival’s parent company, Ascential. This week, with Cannes Lions 2019 kicking off, Kassan spins tales of Cannes past, present and yet to come. He also talks about the evolution of MediaLink two years after the acquisition. (Spoiler: It’s going well. Kassan just extended […]

The Cannes Lions, the annual advertiser confab celebrating creativity on the French Riviera, is all about the glitz and glamour. But this year, beyond the branded yachts and magnum-sized bottles of rose, proving that creativity drove business performance will be a key ingredient in winning awards as marketers struggle for growth. Creatively, the focus will […]

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The Business Of Media Atlantic Media is selling its mobile-first business property, Quartz, to Uzabase, a Japanese media company with a business news app and corporate intelligence tool. The deal is valued at between $75 million and $100 million, Quartz reports. Founder and editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney and publisher Jay Lauf will become co-CEOs as founder […]

Unilever CMO Keith Weed gave influencer marketing a black eye at Cannes this year with a call for brand marketers to demand more transparency and accountability in their dealings with social trendsetters. It’s about time the industry took a more critical view, said Ahalogy’s CEO and co-founder, Bob Gilbreath. Ahalogy is an influencer marketing ad […]

AT&T rode into Cannes this year amid fanfare following its Time Warner acquisition, freshly rebranded as WarnerMedia. But trailing in its wake are a lot of questions around what this mega-merger means for the advertising landscape. Intentionally or not, AT&T added to the ambiguity with its Cannes branding – or complete lack thereof. The telco […]

Last year, when Publicis Groupe said it would pull out of the Cannes Lions festival and awards show and reinvest the funds in an artificial intelligence platform, it sparked other holding companies to rethink their presences. Many had become concerned that the festival, which takes place every June along the beach in the south of […]

As agencies struggle to transform under continued fee pressure from clients, executives are reassessing whether descending on the French Riviera for a week of endless rosé and parties on yachts sends the right message about the state of the industry. “If clients are using zero-based budgeting, let’s use it for Cannes,” WPP CEO Sir Martin […]

Despite the tech company takeover of Cannes, the ad industry’s current infatuation – artificial intelligence – confined its appearances to panels and presentations. But a few AI aspirations (“deployments” is too strong a word in many cases) are worth calling out. Tencent The Chinese maker of the popular WeChat application has a machine learning agenda […]

Twitter’s ad tech fortunes haven’t been great. Most recently, it took its 479-million-dollar acquisition TellApart for a long walk behind the barn. However, Twitter isn’t giving up on ad tech, at least not as an investor, said co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey at a Wednesday panel hosted by Omnicom’s OMD in Cannes. “We’re definitely not […]

The in-housing trend continues to reshape agency and ad tech relationships. CPG giant Unilever announced on Wednesday that along with WPP it will invest $15 million in mobile creative management platform Celtra. The move aligns with Unilever CMO Keith Weed’s rather blunt approach to marketing strategy. “Get out of marketing if you’re not going to […]

Leo Burnett, one of the most iconic advertising agencies in the game, is evolving the way it thinks about creative. “I’ve been focused on infusing technology, data and analytics to make creative more relevant, personalized and effective,” said Andrew Swinand, CEO at Leo Burnett. For Swinand, who spent time on the media side as president […]

It’s never a surprise to hear a high-end digital publisher lampoon the chaotic digital ad environment, but a sharp invective delivered yesterday by Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times, went beyond the usual sniping. “The world of digital advertising is a nightmarish joke,” he said during a panel hosted by Omnicom Group agency […]

The 2017 Cannes Lions festival will be a first for MediaLink – though not in the sense of its presence. After all, the consultancy has been nearly ubiquitous for a number of years, with its sponsorships, the events it hosts like Daily Dose and Tech Talks and its suppers with an invite list full of […]

Are programmatic advertising and creative storytelling finally coming together in a meaningful way? It’s a good question to ask at the Cannes Lions festival, where the whole point is creativity – or it used to be, before the twin powers of data and media started elbowing in on the joint a few years back. But […]