By Lukas Fassbender, SVP EMEA, The Trade Desk
AI. Brand safety. Measurement. All three will be taking centre stage at Cannes this year. This should be in no way surprising – in fact, they’ve each taken up more than their fair share of air time at Cannes over the past half decade.
But it’s about time we talk about the golden thread that ties them together – the bigger shift across the industry they point to. Transparency.
The real question is no longer just about performance, but accountability. Can you clearly show where every advertising pound is going and why it matters? Can you justify the platforms your ad spend is supporting?
It all comes back to transparency: offering an increasingly powerful competitive advantage for brands.
Artificial intelligence
Walk the Croisette this year and every other stand will promise AI that buys smarter, faster, cheaper. That noise, and over-exaggerated hype is exactly the problem.
I’ll put it simply. Conversations around AI need to mature. The industry has seesawed back and forth between AI being the job-stealing enemy, to the silver bullet of innovation, efficiency and profit.
Some players overstate their AI capabilities, while those who are successfully deploying it have been doing so for decades without the fanfare. As a collective we need to be more responsible and accountable for how we talk about AI within the industry.
With AI, it’s no longer about shouting from the rooftops that AI can automate decisions at scale. Brands are rightly demanding more transparency. They want to understand exactly how those decisions were made and to stay in control of them. Being completely transparent and honest about how AI is deployed in decision making, and the role of individuals in this is a core differentiator for advertising businesses. Do it right, and you’ll find yourself a real partner to brands.
Brand Safety
If AI is the loudest conversation at Cannes, brand safety is the most overdue to be actually dealt with. A run of recent rulings against social platforms has put it back at the top of the agenda – but it’s crucial we ask pointed questions, and demand real answers.
Brand safety used to be simple, keep ads away from harmful content. That definition is no longer sufficient.
We believe brand safety must now encompass which platforms a brand funds. The rulings exposed serious concerns around user protection, yet the industry’s investment model has barely shifted. Ad spend is not neutral. It is a signal of where the industry is placing its trust and its backing.
This is why brand safety is now a board-level decision, and why it is inseparable from transparency. You cannot make a responsible funding choice if you cannot see, to a granular level, what your money is placed against and what it is supporting. The open internet gives brands that visibility. The walled gardens, cannot.
Measurement
The third conversation will play out in the meetings behind the panels. Brands pressing for proof their spend is working.
As budgets tighten, measurement is where Cannes gets uncomfortable because for too long the industry has accepted marking its own homework. Closed platforms surface the metrics that flatter them and obscure the rest. That’s opaque, unaccountable reporting.
Real accountability means being able to see the full-funnel impact of a campaign measured consistently across channels, not just the immediate numbers a single platform makes easy to find. That is the difference between trusting a platform’s word and being able to verify it.
These conversations at Cannes will be framed as three separate debates. They are not. AI, brand safety and measurement are all asking the same underlying question – can you account for where you are spending, why you’re spending there and what it’s ultimately delivering for your brand?
