Cannes Lions

Hollywood shifts away from Cannes; SpaceX prepares to go public; and publishers aren’t prioritizing pageviews anymore.

When WhatsApp began serving ads in mid-June, there were two main reactions. One, didn’t the founders always insist there would never be ads on WhatsApp? And two, what the heck took Meta so long?

Where would the New York Times be without its recipes?; Cannes Lions deals with controversy; and Netflix wants to get ultra-personal with its ads.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the obvious: There was a lot of talk about AI in Cannes, but where is the real ad tech innovation?

Despite ongoing uncertainty over TikTok’s fate in the US – the potential ban just got extended for the third time – advertisers aren’t concerned, according to TikTok’s David Kaufman. On this episode, recorded live from Cannes, Kaufman, who oversees product development, marketing and operations for TikTok’s ad platform, says it’s pretty much been business as usual for buyers.

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.

Content aggregators are winning while actual journalism suffers; users say they hate Meta bringing ads to WhatsApp, but Meta’s research says otherwise.

In today’s newsletter: To boost its ads biz, Walmart will show in-store ads for non-endemic brands; Hyve Group buys Possible; and the Senate advances KOSA and COPPA 2.0, but the bills face obstacles in the House.

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.

It’s that time of year again. See you in Cannes! (This classic comic first ran in June 2015.)

More than two decades after they ran, Cerveza Cristal’s Star Wars ads are a perfect and unintentional cautionary tale for ad tech vendors pushing CTV ad products like virtual product placements and shoppable content overlays.

Though some early media coverage of the program suggested participants will get greater access to Roblox-provided data, that’s not actually the case. But partners will get a direct line to Roblox personnel for support.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Visionary, Vision Is Scary CMO tenures are shrinking. Confidence in CMO decision-making is down. Yet the demands on the CMO are expanding and growing more difficult.  “To add insult to injury, we’ve seen an overall lack of … competence, perhaps?” writes Chris Gadek, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Chasing Influencers The creator economy spending frenzy that began in 2020 has fizzled. Investor funds ran dry, which means most of the startups and businesses built on short-term platform creator funds and VC rounds are unlikely to find a happy exit. “It was the […]

The 70th annual Cannes Lions moved faster than ever to match the speed of the convergence of convergences happening in the industry. Here are five themes that stood out from the event.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Seeing Reddit The mass desertion of Twitter users and advertisers should be a bonanza for Reddit.  Unlike Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, Reddit is text-based, like LinkedIn or Twitter. But LinkedIn’s over earnest, your-bosses-are-watching vibe is a poor fit for Twitter types. Reddit […]

“How did they let us into this thing?” After a week at the Cannes Lions, Sarah and Allison share what they learned from advertising’s networking festival, set against the backdrop of White Lotus and Below Deck.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Meta lost in court against French ad-tech champion Criteo, and it will now have to grant better access to its inventory. Meanwhile, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, just deemed Google Analytics illegal – a move that the Italian data privacy authority has just followed as well. What happens now? It turns out there may be a server-side solution, writes Hugo Loriot, partner at fifty-five.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get Connected The coveted prizes in programmatic right now are exclusive CTV contracts.  In Cannes, the crème de la crème for handshakers and lunch-takers is Netflix. Google is meeting with Netflix there, Ad Age reports, and is an obvious choice as Netflix purportedly […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Bowing to pressure from agency holding companies, Ascential has canceled the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for 2020. The ad industry’s largest annual event was postponed on March 18 from its regular timing in late June to late October 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The festival will now resume in June 2021, when […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. How To Finnish The Job In Finland, social media influencers join jobs like doctors, bus drivers and grocery store workers as “critical operators” who continue working during a crisis. It seems like a strange designation (especially in the United States, where some influencers have […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. News Pile On Media companies and tech platforms are seeing more site and app engagement during the coronavirus epidemic, but revenue is not rising with supply. Facebook said messaging across its apps is up 50% in countries hit by the virus, but monetization is […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cannes Contingency   As global events continue to get canceled due to fears of spreading the coronavirus known as COVID-19, the advertising industry is waiting with bated breath for news about Cannes. For now, the ad conference on the Riviera is on for its usual […]

Ascential, the company that owns the Cannes Lions festival and MediaLink, just bought a slice of the ad tech ecosystem with a 35% stake in marketing analytics company Jumpshot. The investment, worth $60.8 million, values Jumpshot at nearly $173 million. What does the parent company of ad land’s favorite international get together want with a […]

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 […]