These are the adtech trends set to dominate Cannes Lions 2024

As the annual festival of creativity approaches, LoopMe’s team of experts give their take on advertising’s hot topics.

As we approach Cannes Lions 2024, the digital advertising space is facing pivotal changes. Here, industry leaders from LoopMe explore what they believe will be crucial topics at the festival, including the shift from cookies to privacy-compliant data, the rise of AI, the new golden age of media choice, and more. 

Can we stop talking about cookies now?

Stephen Upstone, LoopMe CEO & founder

“No (sorry). The cookie chat that’s dominated Cannes for the last few years is a microcosm of the ongoing battle between personalization and user privacy. Cookies and device IDs are just the start: the industry still needs to brace itself for ever-decreasing access to consumer data.

“The ultimate goal is an advertising ecosystem that performs using privacy-compliant signals – bear in mind that ‘privacy-compliant’ is a moving goalpost. This brings us to the other Cannes hot topic: artificial intelligence (AI).

“Only AI-powered technology can process the vast amounts of data needed to create audiences that perform on par with models that use cookies and device IDs. The good news is that adtech companies have been developing AI for years before ChatGPT launched AI into mainstream awareness.

“Brand marketers must cut through the noise to find AI platforms that generate the best ad delivery decisions for their desired advertising outcomes.”

Are we really entering a new golden age of CTV advertising?

Rob Cukierman, LoopMe chief product officer

“We are actually entering into a new golden age of media choice, of which connected TV (CTV) is a major force, along with channels like mobile gaming and social video. The challenge marketers now face is how to best navigate the fragmentation born from so many media choices.

“Smart advertisers are looking at where their customers and prospects fit into the bigger multi-channel picture, with recent LoopMe research revealing consumers' diverse media consumption behaviors across viewing platforms.

"A ‘heavy streamer’ is also more likely to be a heavy viewer of traditional linear TV, but spends less time with mobile games, social or online video. Insights such as this could prompt a campaign strategist to potentially prioritize these other video media platforms over streaming CTV when looking to increase campaign reach and effective frequency for a Linear TV campaign, for example.“

Is retail media the answer to advertising’s identity crisis?

Lisa Coffey, LoopMe CRO

“As we approach a cookie-less world, brands continue banking their budgets on retail media networks. The promise is big: deep first-party data, precise targeting, and ‘closed-loop attribution.’

“However, all that glitters may not be gold. Retail media networks have their own challenges and are continuously looking for ways to extend reach to find new audiences. Sellers on Amazon want to and have to extend their ad campaigns beyond their own ecosystem to find net new customers.

“By their very nature, RMNs interact with consumers near the point of purchase, so can tell us little about the impact of upper funnel activity. As brands and agencies invest more in off-site retail media capabilities, to find new audiences, brands and advertisers must develop their own (or use third-party) attribution models to understand the entire customer journey and campaign performance. Branding and upper funnel activity is just as important to find the next customer a brand can drive towards the path to purchase."

Which is more critical: creativity or placement?

Simon Stone, LoopMe GM international

“Creativity will always be the sexier part of brand advertising: there’s a reason it’s not called the Cannes Lions Festival of Placement. However, research suggests that the impact of creative on sales has dropped by 50% since 2009.

“There is no point in creating the next Guinness Surfer if fragmented viewing habits, skippable ads, and decreasing attention spans prevent it from being seen. Creative remains essential to branding but only when supercharged with data-driven media placement.

“Serving the right advert to the right audience at the right time is hard enough as consumers flit between streaming, social, gaming, and TV, while privacy restrictions throw further tacks in the road.

“In 2024, smart brand marketers will continuously test and refine tactics across all media platforms to ensure campaign effectiveness and optimised spend. The technology already exists: we have powerful AI models that can accurately predict consumer sentiment in real time and set the conditions for creative to work its magic.”

Can AI help advertising become more sustainable?

Jonnie Byrne, LoopMe GM, Intelligent Marketplace

“Reducing waste is one of the principal tenets of sustainability: only cook the food you need, don’t indulge in throwaway fashion, turn off the lights when you leave a room...

“When it comes to campaigns, every advert that gets ignored or doesn’t land with an audience counts as digital waste. This widens the role of performance metrics from a measure of commercial success to a sustainability marker.

“To get the whole picture, brands must rigorously measure performance at all stages of the marketing funnel, including the upper stages. This is where AI can step in to capture attributes that are hard to measure, such as brand awareness and consideration.

“Advertisers must combine this full picture of campaign performance with corresponding data on greenhouse gas emissions to make sustainable planning decisions around media mix and weight.

“Performance is just one part of the sustainability measurement puzzle. Zooming out, we are lucky to have industry bodies like Ad Net Zero and GARM developing standards to measure impact throughout the advertising value chain.”