Cannes

Edition #454

What was the biggest story at Cannes? Sherwood and Publicis’s take on AI.

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The was some major ad festival on this week, maybe you’ve heard of it, Cannes? I suspect the bulk of write ups will come next week once everyone gets back to their desks.

I thought I’d take a peek at – who won Cannes?

Not as in the award winners. But from a media/tech/agency POV and exploring that through the lens of the earned media. I’ll share the results maybe in next weeks edition 🙂

In an earlier chat in the week – the question was – will models just drive all media buying moving forward? And well yeah, probably. But the deeper question was really how are metrics changing, and in a world without the ’trackability’ and identifier on every impression. What does the industry shift too.

Marc from Adelaide, in this weeks Attention Attention episode, feels like attention sits well in the middle. In that balance of buyers / sellers interest. That is the common ground.

Notable stories this week

• Sherwood sharpens its pitch to advertisers.
• Advertible makes its case to SSPs for running native channel extensions.
• Eating in the dark – Adtech & adfraud research.
• Meta unveils new Threads API & AI tools.
• How Uber Ads is tackling programmatic challenges and AI innovations.
• Retailers are flocking to Cannes Lions to pitch their ad networks.
• Minute Media breathes new life into Sports Illustrated.
• Forbes threatens Perplexity with legal action.
• Oracle will end all of its ad products by Sept 30th.
• United’s new Ad Network has programmatic on its flight plan.
• Episode 2 of Attention Attention.
• Measure me this.
• Meeting expectations.

Deals/M&A

• Mozilla has acquired Anonym.

Campaign of the week

• Publicis with AIAIOH. Fun. 

View all 2024 best campaigns.

Smartest commentary

• “Revenue per session as North Star. Publishing businesses are often complex, often with competing goals. When subscriptions enter the picture, ad sales sees a threat. Less inventory means less to sell. That’s falling away. The data from subscriptions programs is a powerful asset in a tough ad market where publishers are battling it out with everyone from grocery stores to taxi companies. Jason White, chief product and technology officer at The Arena Group, told me during a live podcast recording with EX.CO general manager for the Americas Johanna Bergqvist said he prefers to drive to a revenue per session goal.“ via Rebooting.

Datapoints of note

• Minute Media expects to generate $400m this year, up from roughly $300m last year.
• More than half (52%) of core creative assets produced by global Fortune 500 brands across 2023 were never used or activated.
• Only 25% of advertisers ready for Google cookie phase out.
• Cannes Lions Award entries are down 38% compared to an all-time high in 2016.

Events

• Attention Happy Hour, come to the next one.

View all 2024 datapoints of note.

That’s it for this week.