Another year, another Cannes Lions Festival. Last year we attended as a start-up in the innovation space. We had a booth and could stoke the interest of passers-by with glimpses of our dynamic ad platform. This year’s innovation space was a little different. No booths, no visual enticement, rather a focus on start-ups, learning and mentorship.
What was consistent this year was the opportunity to see how advertising technology and trends are maturing, chance meetings with important people, and beaches of rosé.
Trends
AI, machine learning, and data-driven creative were hot topics again this year. Numerous discussions covered these topics. Adobe showed off their new ‘Sensei’ product that offered up some interesting approaches to using AI to surface and improve creative production. Other companies discussed how “effective” (read: highly complicated and convoluted) data strategies coupled with ML can deliver more relevant ads. What is apparent is none of these expert businesses has cracked AI in a scalable manner and it’s still a dark art
Chance meetings
Cannes is a fantastic venue to reconnect with one’s network and customers… all of them… in one place. But what makes Cannes truly magical are the serendipitous, chance encounters that lead to potentially fortune changing meetings. When else can you sip champagne in a suite at the Martinez with the CEO of McCann global? Or get introduced to the co-founder of a successful and interesting prospective partner business while on a yacht?
Beaches
This year the usual suspects had the same large beach presences; Facebook was promoting their live video analytics to their influencer network; Oracle was promoting their marketing and data clouds (which will become a single cloud). Up and down the La Croisette different organisations were promoting their next big thing in advertising. Though different in scale, they were all generously pouring glass after glass of rosé.
Fluid Ads were stationed in the Discovery Zone, offering guided tours of our ad platform, demonstrating some of our new features and of course, teaching attendees how to make beautiful banner ads. If you would like a similar demonstration, you can let us know by clicking the button below.