I’m missing Cannes this year for the first time in over a decade to stay home with my newborn daughter and I'm feeling a ton of FOMO. Of course I'll be missing the south of France, friends, and rose, but Cannes is also a place to connect with the trends.
Cannes is where big partnerships are announced and creative juices flow. As the CEO of a company more on the creative side of ad tech, it's always interesting to see the programmatic core tech companies come together with the agency visionaries and brands. It always sparks new ideas and reminds us just how rich our industry really is.
Here are some of my predictions for Cannes in 2025:
The on-the-ground conversations about AI finally move beyond "we’re planning to use AI" into more specifics. Last year, the AI hype was building, and a lot of people were eyeing OpenAI as a potential threat to the way we do business. Few media companies or brands actually used AI at all, and tech companies were just starting to see what it was all about.
In the last 12 months, meaningful examples of how AI can be applied have exploded and it’s gone well beyond ChatGPT to include agentic AI and more. Curation, creative development, analytics - AI now looks like it’s capable of doing all of our jobs and then some.
At Cannes, it’s going to be interesting to see what leaders are interested in and what they are threatened by. Our industry has always been on the bleeding edge of technology and AI is no different - and in every case we’ve grown. There might be looming layoffs today, but smart companies will find ways to leverage AI and expand, rather than simply use it for efficiency. Look for the concepts that support humans and elevate what we can do to a more strategic level - that’s the way we’ll grow.
There are more walled gardens than ever - FAANG now includes TikTok. And there are RMNs building momentum, too. As Google’s star fades a bit - they’ve been pretty quiet since the recent ruling against their ad-tech stack - brands are looking around for inspiration, which means no single tech giant is in control anymore.
Google and META talk about a future where advertisers won't have to make their own creative anymore. I expect this to create a lot of chatter at Cannes, which is traditionally a creative-led event. Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that brands are going to hand him a credit card and Meta will do the rest might make sense for SMBs but anyone at Cannes should find that concept laughable. There is a big difference between using AI for creative iteration or DCO and hands-off AI creative generation from scratch. Brands want to lean in harder, take more control and have more transparency - and creative is a major part of campaign performance.
With Amazon in the mix, as well as emerging options on CTV and even TikTok Shop, there’s also less of a reason to lie down and let Meta and Google dictate what comes next. Brands really can make choices, and they’ll have lots of interesting things to hear about following a very CTV-focused UpFront/NewFront season this year. Expect lots of CTV oriented partnerships and creative concepts.
In the past, there were always a few companies that splurged for a yacht to get into the big leagues. Remember when Media Math had one? I predict this year yachts become the new hotel suites - more productive meetings that also happen to be pretty sweet hangout spots.
Yachts aren’t the only way companies get attention, of course. I always recommend that my team pay attention to how companies represent themselves at Cannes. We actually learn a lot before even talking to anyone!
This year, Amazon, Google, and Facebook will have lots of signage but this is just to hold onto their status as the kings of the industry. The more interesting thing to focus on is who is new - like streaming media companies and AI upstarts. It signals where our industry is right now, and where it's going - maybe even more than the panels on stage.
Let me know which predictions come true as I enjoy a glass of rose from my place in California.
