By Kamel El Hadef, co-founder of Audion
Each year the Cannes Lions festival is a snapshot of where the advertising industry thinks it is heading. In 2026 the picture was unusually sharp, and it finally pointed in the direction the audio business has been signposting for years.
‘The Secret to Profit and Trust: Audio’, is a joint study by Radiocentre (UK), Radiocentre Ireland, Australia’s Commercial Radio & Audio, and the US-based Radio Advertising Bureau. Unveiled at Cannes by prominent marketing professor and industry commentator, Mark Ritson, it provides the data showing that audio is a genuinely effective performance channel, rather than a branding add-on.
The findings and scale of the research (it was the first time four global industry bodies have come together for a piece of work of this kind and drew on campaigns spanning 17 years), are impressive. But over and above the numbers, the conclusion was further reinforced by three noticeable shifts in the conversations happening at Cannes.
1. AI has moved from promise to orchestration
The word on every stage was ‘agentic.’ Across adtech, the same idea kept surfacing: platforms are wiring their systems so that AI agents can negotiate and transact directly with one another, from planning through to activation. Access to AI used to offer competitive edge; now the ability to orchestrate it across the chain, so that it produces concrete results rather than demos, is required. (Audion AI was built for exactly that in audio: a suite of agents that turns a brief into a multi-audio strategy, activates it and continuously optimises it towards outcomes.)
2. Conversation has turned from hype to accountability
A year ago, the question was what to do with AI. This year, it was what AI can be held accountable for. The honesty was both refreshing and necessary. Much of AI’s value still centres on efficiency rather than business impact, but it is the latter where the next phase will be decided. Efficiency makes things faster; accountability ties the technology to what it actually changes for a brand, from brand-building to sales. The winners will not be the ones with the most AI, but those that can show what it delivers across the whole funnel. That is the only standard to which any technology should be held to, including our own.
3. Creators became media companies – and audio and video stopped being separate
Credit for the loudest story of the week goes to Netflix versus YouTube. Netflix has been poaching top video-podcast talent and asking them to pull their shows from YouTube as part of licensing deals; YouTube’s business chief meanwhile shrugged that imitation is a form of flattery. Underneath the drama sits a structural truth. A podcast is now a video show, a video show is now a podcast, and the creators behind them are running media businesses. Jay Shetty’s globally recognised On Purpose podcast for example is heading to Spotify and Netflix at once. For advertisers, this dissolves the old mindset in which audio sits in a box marked ‘reach’. Audio now travels across formats and screens, and it must be planned and measured inside a single performance framework.
Taken together, these changes lead to one verdict. Audio is no longer a medium added on at the end of a media plan to raise awareness. It is a measurable channel, proven to deliver profit, increasingly powered by AI, and increasingly inseparable from video.
The reduced appetite for naming every trend was noticeable at this year’s festival. In its place, closer attention was paid to what is already showing up in real budgets. The shift that will define the next twelve months is straightforward: the advantage no longer goes to whoever discovers the newest tool, but to those who can orchestrate it into accountable, repeatable results. For audio, the proof is now on the table.
