Why Cannes is a hotspot for media data deals

Cannes Lions has served as the battleground for new currency providers in recent years. But the excitement for discussing measurement drama or alternative currencies has dissipated, replaced by media companies announcing new data partnerships. This week, numerous companies have made such announcements. Fox, Spectrum Reach, CVS and Albertsons announced deals with The Trade Desk, Disney and Roku debuted partners for category-specific insights and NBCU touted first-party data for better targeting in live TV broadcasts. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns “It’s more Trade Desk, more tech-media partnerships, more of the same,” said a media buyer, adding that the measurement conversation has died down as the industry continues to establish standards and pricing models around implementing multiple currency providers. But while Netflix, NBCUniversal and Disney, among others, are active on the Croisette, the ad festival overall has been more muted on the media front. The leadup to the upfront buying season has become so crowded with festivals and events, that industry news has been stretched thin as market players seek to generate visibility throughout talks with advertisers, the media buyer said. A second buyer also said that Cannes falls at a quiet time for media companies, after many announcements have already been made during the upfronts and NewFronts and as many agencies are heads-down in upfront talks. The buyer added that data partnerships are part of traditional media’s attempt to counter audience declines across individual channels, and that their agency was pressed heavily by media partners in May to hurry tests to have results to share by Cannes. “Data, data, data—when you can’t talk about ratings, you’ve got to talk about something else,” said the second buyer, adding that the constant flow of incremental announcements have begun to blur together. “It’s hard to track what the true benefits are. Sometimes I don’t think they have benefits, they’re just news.” Judge for yourself: Below, Ad Age has rounded up the data and tech partnerships announced at Cannes. Programmatic inventory On Wednesday, Fox released details of an expanded partnership with The Trade Desk. Earlier this year, Fox announced that it would offer inventory across its entire portfolio, including free streamer Tubi, through its owned tech platform AdRise. Now, AdRise is integrating that inventory with The Trade Desk’s direct sales platform OpenPath, with targeting capabilities through The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0. SiriusXM Media also announced a partnership with The Trade Desk. The audio company claims to be the first audio publisher to adopt Unified ID 2.0 for programmatic buying across its platforms, starting with music streamer Pandora. Charter’s Spectrum TV app also announced it was making its inventory available programmatically through Magnite, a programmatic advertising company 40 under 40 entries are open The final deadline for nominations is Aug. 2 Enter here Data galore During Cannes Lions, multiple media companies announced that advertisers looking for more audience data would be getting their wishes granted. Disney announced a partnership with Affinity Solutions, which will allow advertisers to plan and activate campaigns using data from 140 million debit and credit card transactions. The partnership aims at beefing up retail intelligence for advertisers in categories such as CPG to better understand transaction behaviors in TV advertising. Albertsons also announced an expansion of its retail media offering in the days leading up to Cannes. The grocer launched Collective TV, which will apply its retail data to clients’ CTV campaigns, providing audience targeting and purchase measurement with Albertson’s first-party data, as well as access to video inventory through Google Display & Video 360, which includes YouTube. Additional partners in the announcement include The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, FreeWheel, iSpot and Clinch. Meanwhile, CVS also used Cannes to launch its Trade Desk partnership, which grants advertisers self-serve access to its inventory for the first time. Read more about the CVS partnership here In the entertainment space, Roku announced a partnership with Fandango before Cannes. In partnership with Fandango’s marketing intelligence arm, Fandango360, Roku will provide advertisers promoting theatrical releases the ability to measure effectiveness by how many viewers purchased tickets on Fandango after seeing an ad. NBCU announced new measurement options for marketers seeking greater insights for ads during live events, such as sports. Using first-party data, NBCU will be able to provide granular insights on who viewed an ad within days, according to the company, such as types of car a viewer is in market for. NBCU will also construct audience segments for marketers to retarget those viewers in future advertising. Publicis’s Razorfish debuted a new proprietary data tool, R-Index, created in partnership with Google Cloud. The tool uses AI algorithms to measure a brand’s overall marketing spend to aggregate insights into brand sentiment and equity, allowing advertisers to adjust investments accordingly. And before Cannes, Nielsen announced the availability of LiveRamp data with Nielsen’s measurement platform Nielsen One. This will allow advertisers using Nielsen in ad deals to integrate additional audience data into planning and measurement across platforms.

Why Cannes is a hotspot for media data deals

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