How AI is reshaping ad tech—top trends from Cannes 2024

Ad tech was de rigueur at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year, with AI continuing to dominate the discourse. But the AI conversation shifted a bit from last year’s fatalism to a sense that the technology could help solve upcoming challenges, at least, within ad tech. In fact, the industry portrayed a more coherent roadmap for how AI will infuse every part of the ad experience from concept to programmatic ad buys. “We’ve gone from a curiosity of what I need to learn [about AI] to how do I make it work,” said Marta Martinez, a managing director at Google, who talked earlier in the week at Omnicom’s Cove beach cabana at Cannes. Martinez spoke with Joanna O’Connell, OMG’s chief intelligence officer, North America; Melissa Smith, AT&T assistant VP of communications planning; and Mario Schiappacasse, president, North America, at Trkkn, an ad tech consultancy and Google marketing partner within Omnicom. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns The discussion was about Google, AI and transformation, and how AT&T is adapting to the shifting landscape. “Brands are not competing against AI,” Martinez said. “They are competing against other marketers that leverage AI.” It was the type of conversation being had throughout Cannes among major brands and platforms, including Google, Amazon, Meta and TikTok. Omnicom, Google and AT&T touched on topics that have consumed the ad tech community for years: first-party data, cookie deprecation and clean rooms, and now with AI, there is a new clarity to the playbook. AI will help connect dots for AT&T, which can wed its data to Google’s within clean room environments. “As we start to get cleaner data and more direct touchpoints with the consumers, we’re able to see them,” Martinez said. “And then modeling them, I think we’ll be able to do more personalized marketing.” Google wasn’t the only platform talking about the revolution in AI and internet ads. Amazon made an update to its AI-image generation tool in its ads platform, and it discussed how AI would help solve post-cookie advertising when marketers lose more data signals from the internet. Google plans to deprecate cookies next year, and data is being restricted across the internet. In place of those clear data signals coming from web trackers, AI plays a more significant role in managing ad campaigns. Meanwhile, TikTok showed how AI-generated avatars could lead to a proliferation of ads from creators, who would use the avatars to make doubles of themselves that sell products in any language. How AI is reshaping advertising AI is already at a point where it could take over the full process of ad creation, according to Mark Wagman, managing director of MediaLink, the tech and media consulting group with a large presence at Cannes. Wagman said he has witnessed Hollywood producers whose “jaws dropped” during generative AI demos, watching a prompt of a few words transform into a cinematic trailer in 30 minutes. “The same thing is true for digital advertising,” Wagman said. “It exists today.” “I can type into ChatGPT, the free model, and it will give me a brief,” Wagman said. “I can turn that over to Gemini … I describe what the ad unit needs to look like. I then go into Google Performance Max. I hand it that ad unit. I hit the one ad outcome I care about, say it’s downloads, and then I walk away.” Gemini is Google’s large language model that powers text, image and video creation. Performance Max is Google’s AI-powered ad campaign that takes over many of the functions of digital media planning and buying. Companies are already working on becoming completely AI-driven, which is what has startled parts of the advertising world. There are startups that want to get to a point where creative and buying are all done with the click of a button, Wagman said. Before taking the deep plunge into everything AI, brands need to figure out a strategy. “Do people want the easy button in AI,” Wagman said, which is what Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Adobe offer. Otherwise, sophisticated marketers and agencies could create bespoke AI marketing programs with a variety of vendors, but that will likely emerge over the long term, Wagman said. How AI is reshaping data in advertising As was discussed in the Google AI panel with Omnicom, first-party data is still the most prized commodity for brands. AI, however, is getting so powerful that it supercharges first-party data, and even creates data for brands with less visibility into consumers, according to advertising experts. In fact, one term that was used frequently at Cannes this year was “synthetic data.” It’s a concept that is gaining traction with AI spinning new forms of research for brands about their customers. “So much of what marketers do is make decisions and just trying to get information and data to make good business decisions,” said Jen Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, who spoke with Ad Age during Cannes. Synthetic data could help companies understand, “who is my customer, how do I talk to them, is it worth it,” Wong said. Earlier this year, Media.Monks, a digital ad tech services company, launched a product that enables brands to create virtual consumer panels, giving brands AI-generated focus groups. At Cannes, Media.Monks announced a partnership with Adobe GenStudio, an AI-powered marketing platform. “The theme of this Cannes in AI is progress and proof,” said Henry Cowling, Media.Monks’ chief innovation officer, in an e-mail statement. “On the client side, the data on the value of AI is in. We’re seeing results in AI that demonstrate massive upswings, exponential results. After a year of pilots, this year is about proving out how to scale.” How AI fits into post-cookie advertising Platforms, browsers and devices have been locking down data for years, but Google is set to tighten its data-sharing rules next year. Google plans to deprecate cookies in Chrome in mid-2025, and it will limit data going to marketers from Android devices soon after that. For marketers, they have to come up with new ways to collect their own data, and they will use a combination of clean rooms and AI to make that data useful in advertising. Trkkn’s Schiappacasse discussed the Google “signal” changes in the talk with AT&T, and referenced Google Ads Data Hub, the cloud environment that brands use to analyze and plan campaigns. “It’s a lot about understanding [consumer] behavior, what are the sources for those behaviors, and how are those changing,” Schiappacasse said. “With third-party cookie deprecation and other signal changes, how we observe those behaviors, some of it’s going away. We’ve got a lot of new technology that’s starting to supplement that.” Amazon, too, is a prominent player in cloud marketing services. The e-commerce giant used Cannes to discuss how its Amazon Web Services and its marketing and publisher clouds would apply AI to solve post-cookie advertising. Amazon is seen as a particularly powerful player in this emerging ecosystem, according to Jim Mollica, global chief marketing officer at Bose. “We’re becoming a bigger and bigger advertiser with them,” Mollica said. Bose sells its headphones and audio products through Amazon and promotes them on the e-commerce site and across Amazon’s ad ecosystem, which includes Amazon Prime Video and Amazon DSP—a demand-side platform. “Signal loss” does come up as an issue, Mollica said. “Amazon is one of the most significant players in this,” Mollica said. Bose sees the potential to create greater data ties with partners such as Amazon, because they have unique access to consumers, their product searches and transactions. The data Amazon doesn’t have, it can supplement through AI, too, as seen by its announcement at Cannes. In fact, Amazon claimed it could target 65% on otherwise non-identifiable internet users through its upgraded ad platform. The best marketers rely on first-party data, Mollica said, but partners are increasingly helping in the equation. Amazon helps brands connect with “contextual behaviorally relevant information,” Mollica said. “It’s almost like a substitute first-party data on those platforms.”

How AI is reshaping ad tech—top trends from Cannes 2024

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