By Krystal Scanlon and Seb Joseph – June 23, 2025 –
AI was the buzzword of the week at Cannes Lions however platforms behind it were mostly out of the general public eye. CMOs think that will not hold true for long.
Perplexity, ChatGPT and others might be holding back on the full-blown advertisement pitch however the economics state that will move. GPUs, cloud computing, information pipelines, top-tier engineers– it’s a high-burn service. At some time, the mathematics requires the design to generate income from.
And when it does, there’s still just one profits stream huge enough to make a damage: marketing.
Which is why Cannes, with its distance to brand name wallets and holdco power brokers, is ending up being more than background. It’s the warm-up act for AI’s inescapable relocation into the advertisement service.
“I would not be shocked if that was the play,” stated Bose’s cmo and president of high-end audio Jim Mollica, who spoke with Digiday at the celebration.
Ends up, it currently is. Perplexity silently sent out advertisement officers to the south of France, consisting of Taz Patel, its head of marketing and shopping, who invested the week conference with firm and brand name causes reveal where the business’s advertisement organization stands– and where it wishes to go.
Anthropic existed too. As reported by The Information, the business silently sent out a group of advertisement officers to Cannes for the very first time, consisting of Lexie Barnhom, its head of influencer marketing.
“People are moving from the single most monetized area throughout the web to an area that, a minimum of in theory, would be much more difficult to generate income from,” stated Matthew Dacey, CMO at TripAdvisor. “If they do not find out how to get advertisements in there then they’re going to have huge issues.”
That stress turned up consistently in discussions with CMOs in the south of France: they fret that in a rush to juice profits, these platforms might wind up jeopardizing the energy, speed and trust that made them so beneficial to a lot of individuals in the very first location. Due to the fact that making advertisements operate in environments like ChatGPT or Perplexity isn’t practically stock. It’s about fitting into an area that was never ever developed for advertisements to start with.
“Whatever occurs I believe context ends up being more substantial due to the fact that what they [AI platforms] learn about the user enables them to emerge advertisements in an even more appropriate method than what takes place today,” stated Dacey. “They [the platforms] will figure it out, I simply hope it handles a various type of marketing.”
Far, it’s still uncertain. The foundation is being laid. Silently.
“What constantly appears to occur in these minutes is before they begin taking advertisement dollars, they begin having discussions to get info from individuals,” stated Mollica, who remembered comparable relocations from Meta, Google and Twitter throughout his time at Disney in the late aughts.
At that time, Cannes was their coming out celebration. Now, it appears like AI platforms are following the exact same script. Customer councils, holdco collaborations and brand name advisory groups are most likely next.
Revealing up is simply the start. Generative AI includes a various set of restraints. Facilities expenses are squashing. Advertisement stock does not scale. And more user inquiries are still exploratory not business, making near-term advertisement efficiency a difficult sell. Purchasers desire measurability, targeting and brad security. The platforms aren’t there yet.
Cannes might have marked AI’s soft entry into the advertisement world however turning interest into invest will need more than simply appearing. As one advertisement officer, who asked not to be called since they had an associate who consulted with Perplexity, put it: “As more of these options from those business come out, we’re visiting more of them here.”
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