Cannes Lions

Like many other companies, Twitter uses the Cannes Lions festival to showcase its product offerings. Unlike others, it’s adopted a “feed-first” mantra as opposed to mobile-first. At this year’s festival, Twitter will spend a lot of time talking about the value of experiences, how it’s doubled down on live streaming and what it takes for […]

Most marketers have now been taking advantage of social media networks for several years. By now, everyone knows the medium is both transformational, but also risky. But exactly how risky can social be, and how do brands best respond? News Corp’s Storyful unit, which began by helping publishers validate user-uploaded content for news stories, says it […]

What the Global CEO of J. Walter Thompson believes is “incredibly interesting” about creativity is that it can exist in product utilization. This comes at a time when despite the continued expansion of digital platforms, consumer engagement is all that really matters. As she looks ahead to the 2017 Cannes Lions festival, in this interview […]

What do you get when you combine the internet’s most-recognised viewability measurement system with one of the biggest content verification agencies? A new framework for fighting profiteering fake news merchants. Moat and News Corp’s Storyful have partnered to form the Open Brand Safety (OBS) initiative, an open-source effort to track web domains and video URLs identified as purveyors […]

Brands can only chase new technologies for so long before they become mainstream. At that point, it’s creativity that matters. It happened in the early days of television and it’s happening all over again, says Ari Weiss, North American CCO for DDB in this interview with Beet.TV in which he explains why he looks forward […]

Finding the right context for traditional television commercials and creating platform-specific creative are challenges and opportunities for brands and their agencies. When it comes to the latter, being screen agnostic is a plus, according to NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino. “I think the creative agencies are wrestling with two things,” the media company’s Chairman of Advertising Sales […]

Sean Bryan can’t wait to get to the Cannes Lions festival this year. And it’s not just because he has high hopes for McCann New York’s groundbreaking Fearless Girl campaign and its work for brands like Godiva, Microsoft and Nespresso. “I love it every year. But this year in particular is going to be an […]

LONDON — In his first year as Managing Director of the Cannes Lions festival, Jose Papa will be overseeing a number of new initiatives. One in particular is designed to bring together some 15,000 participants in new and engaging ways under the auspices of its networking pillar. One of the things “that excites me the […]

When Wenda Harris Millard discusses the evolution of the Cannes Lions festival she does so with many years of perspective. What she sees now is an efficient venue where people gather to engage with others “who have real implications for the future of their business.” Millard is Vice Chairman of MediaLink, the strategic advisory and […]

Less than a decade ago, the creative work showcased at the Cannes Lions festival seemed to be more about technology than storytelling, in the mind of Y&R’s Global CEO, David Sable. But more recently, some of the work has been “spectacular” as the value of good storytelling has once again eclipsed tech. During the same […]

CANNES — In the last few years, we have seen a rush of companies scramble to offer services for the programmatic trading of online advertising. Traditional ad agencies have added programmatic services to their offering, even as programmatic ad tech vendors rise up and promise to to disintermediate those agencies. One company now claims to be toeing […]

CANNES — Time was, AOL was just your common or garden dial-up ISP. Now with a booming video empire and as part of the Verizon footprint, it is becoming a player in the converging TV and advertising spaces. That puts Dan Ackerman, AOL’s programmatic TV SVP, who came to AOL via its acquisition of the video ad-tech provider […]

CANNES — They have traditionally been regarded as two distinct places on the marketing “funnel”. But could “branding” and “performance” advertising now be colliding together? Whilst the former tactic aims to switch on consumer interest, the latter sees marketers pay for end results. Now there are so many ad technologies out there, things are changing, says Bob […]

CANNES — Programmatic has come a long way, and confused a lot of people along the journey. Now it’s time to simplify a technology that is the overriding priority for many a media agency. “Everybody needs to understand it and they need to understand the simplicity of it,” according to Houssein Houssaini, global head of programmatic solutions for […]

Ever heard of brands like Sennit, Glossier, VSCO or mymuesli? Interbrand cites these and dozens of others in its first annual Breakthrough Brands report because its Global CEO says marketers can probably learn something from these relatively young companies. “What we’re looking for is who’s going to be next,” Jez Frampton said in an interview […]

CANNES — In June at Cannes Lions, Merkle, the independent data-driven ad-tech company, announced the launch of its Programmatic Addressable Marketplace, the latest ad targeting product to hit the market. As the company put it at the time, “PAM represents the industry’s first premium programmatic advertising solution that enables deterministic, people-based targeting and measurement across premium […]

CANNES — In September, the 30-company advocacy group founded by video ad-tech company FreeWheel will be celebrating its first anniversary. The FreeWheel Council for Premium Video was formed last year to develop a strong and unified position on topics that matter to the premium video ecosystem. FreeWheel’s Agency and Brand Relations VP James Rothwell says the Council is focusing on four […]

CANNES – Marketing veteran Jordan Bitterman sees a “flight to safety” delivering advertiser dollars to places like Facebook and Google as marketers try to avoid ad fraud and other problems within the digisphere. He believes this, in turn, could have the longer-term effect of prompting other digital properties to make themselves brand-safe. Bitterman, whose career includes full-service […]

CANNES – At the end of this year’s television Upfront presentations, Lou Paskalis sensed a “digital divide” between media sellers. He credits ESPN, NBCUniversal and Turner for having making data an integral part their value propositions by virtue of the data pedigrees of their executives. In an interview with Beet.TV, the SVP of Global Communications, […]

CANNES – Cannes Lions wasn’t always a stop on the annual tour for legacy media companies. But that’s been changing. “Increasingly over time, this is really where the advertising industry, technology industry surrounding advertising brands and media are coming together,” says Howard Homonoff, SVP at MediaLink. Part of their challenge is creating these different types of […]