It would be easy to dismiss the annual convergence of advertising executives for the Cannes Lions as another industry conference, amongst dozens of others, albeit with better views. However, each time I attend, when I reflect on my time there, I’m struck by the power of the experience. Cannes is many things. Just another conference is not one of them.
Perhaps it’s because Cannes brings advertising professionals together from all over the world, from all aspects of our industry, in a relatively confined space for a limited number of days. When you have so much concentrated creativity and brain power in one place, great ideas tend to happen. And while each attendee will likely take away something different, from my vantage point — the premium video advertising marketplace — the big ideas surfacing in meetings, casual conversations, and programming across La Croisette fell into three interrelated areas this year.
The Need for Connectivity
Fragmentation within the premium video landscape is not new. But with the increase of ad-supported, TV viewing options now available to consumers, it has crescendoed. This year, the need to help advertisers connect with consumers across screens and platforms took on a new urgency.
Ultimately, connectivity hinges upon advancements in the privacy-focused use of data to unite audiences. This will impact the ability to provide advertisers with everything from the basic building blocks of reach and frequency to the more sophisticated capabilities now possible on TV viewing platforms, such as advanced targeting and addressability. And in the end, it is what will allow us to provide the level of measurement and attribution necessary to allow advertisers to continue to invest in the premium video marketplace. The need for innovation in the use of data to fuel new measurement solutions is the impetus behind the launch of the unprecedented U.S. Joint Industry Committee (JIC) for premium video measurement, whose members were present and outspoken across Cannes stages this year.
The Need for Simplicity
The result of greater fragmentation is greater complexity. Again, while not new, we are hearing a rising appeal from advertisers to make it easier to plan and buy premium video advertising. Moreover, this year, there was a growing focus on helping global advertisers reach TV viewers in a unified way across markets and regions.
One example of a response to this growing need was NBCUniversal’s announcement at Cannes of a global partnership with seven other international programmers and OMG to offer advertisers multimarket campaigns across addressable linear TV, CTV, and premium digital video ad inventory in a single buy for the first time. This offering provides marketers with the ability to execute advanced advertising solutions at scale across premium networks, and geographical boundaries in a more simplified way to maximize return on investment. This is a great illustration of the power of working together for the greater good of the industry.
The Need for Partnerships
Following on my last point, this year at Cannes I witnessed an overwhelming willingness of competitors, frenemies, and tech providers to partner on industry initiatives. The premium video marketplace is deep in the heart of change. Consumer viewing technologies are still outpacing advertising solutions. And in the past few years, whereas most companies were focused on building their own next-generation viewing platforms and advertising solutions, there is a growing realization that each may have gone as far as they can alone.
Now is the time to put in place the frameworks, standards, interoperable capabilities and best practices needed to take premium video advertising to the next level. One of the first initiatives to embrace this concept was Go Addressable, and its predecessor On Addressability, which was first launched in Cannes in 2019. Now, some four years later, Go Addressable includes all major premium video distributors, and has helped set common industry guidelines to help facilitate and accelerate the scale, enablement, and adoption of Addressable TV, which 90% of advertisers and agencies now say is critical to the future of TV advertising, per Advertiser Perceptions — a great example of winning together.
My key takeaways are centered around media and technology, as that is my day-to-day focus. However, Cannes also forces us to look up and see the broader meaning of advertising. It celebrates creativity. It celebrates engagement. It celebrates effectiveness. And it makes us realize that the consumer is at the heart of everything we strive to do.
Everyone working in advertising has a different role to play in bringing the consumer experience to life. For my part, optimizing the consumer’s experience as a viewer of premium video has been a recent focus. In fact, this was the impetus behind FreeWheel’s launch of The Viewer Experience Lab at Cannes this year, an initiative supported by major publishers including A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal. The goal of the project is to help media companies ensure a quality experience for viewers across the growing array of traditional and emerging advertising channels that support their premium content.
There is much work ahead as we each embark on improving our individual pieces of the advertising landscape. But as I think back on an exhilarating week, I’m ready to look ahead and get on with it. See you next year, Cannes.
