Cannes Lions 2025 drew over 15,000 delegates to the French Riviera, reflecting the festival’s status as one of the world’s most important spaces for brands, agencies, celebrities, and creators seeking to tap into the US$1 trillion global advertising market.

While I did not attend, reports say this edition felt notably more celebratory than recent post-pandemic festivals, yet uncertainty around AI’s transformative impact loomed large, particularly for news publishers competing with Big Tech platforms.

AI transforms from novelty to infrastructure

Cannes 2025 marked AI’s transition from experimental tool to essential infrastructure:

• 85% of marketers now leverage AI writing tools or content creation tools to enhance their marketing, with Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration enabling thousands of personalised ad variations daily.
• Sainsbury’s Nectar360 Pollen platform uses generative AI to optimise campaign creative in real-time, build hyper-relevant audiences, and streamline media planning while improving advertiser satisfaction.
• Amazon’s Ad Relevance technology (announced in 2024) achieved 34% lower CPMs while improving campaign performance by 8.8%, proving cookieless solutions deliver both privacy compliance and superior economics.
• Meta’s 11 new AI advertising features, including dynamic image-to-video tools, democratise advanced creative capabilities for publishers of all sizes.

Privacy-preserving data collaboration

Data clean rooms continue to emerge as a viable first-party data monetisation strategy, even with operational challenges. 

Publishers using Snowflake’s Media Data Cloud and AWS Clean Rooms maintain data control while enabling advertiser targeting, in some cases achieving 20%-40% higher CPMs for authenticated users. DirectTV’s Amy Leifer captured the sentiment: “With privacy regulations changing, it becomes critical to partner with advertisers in a really safe and trusted privacy-compliant way.”

Attention metrics validate premium environments

Attention measurement’s increasing adoption is a reason to be optimistic for its impact on quality news publishers.

Amid announcements and an on-site presence by Lumen, Adelaide, Amplified Intelligence, and others, industry leaders declared viewability “archaic” as Adelaide announced its “AU Ecosystem” with quality publishers including Schibsted and the Financial Times, while Lumen Research showed display advertising in quality contexts receives 51% more attention than elsewhere on the Web. 

Brand safety tensions show signs of evolution

The need to evolve brand safety remains an urgent conversation in the industry.

DoubleVerify announced its News Accelerator Publisher Council with major publishers including The Atlantic, CNN, The Guardian, and The New York Times participating. Let’s hope this represents continued industry reckoning with keyword blocking’s economic impact.

In addition, Stagwell’s Future of News research — a comprehensive study of 7,126 U.S. adults — provided valuable evidence supporting advertising to news media audiences: 

“News Junkies” (30.2% of population) view brands significantly more positively across all metrics, with 66% average purchase intent versus 50% for the general population. “Exclusive News Junkies” (13.8% of U.S. adults) defined as those who follow the news “very closely” but do not closely follow sports or entertainment — an audience theoretically only meaningfully reachable through news advertising — demonstrate higher brand lift across all metrics, validating news content as a premium advertising environment.

Stagwell CEO Mark Penn fiercely defended the value news brings advertisers in a panel titled “Future of News: Why News Junkies Are the Real MVPs.” Penn pointed out that news readers — often highly educated and affluent — are ideal consumers for categories like finance and technology. 

Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase, added a powerful buyer’s perspective: “News isn’t a charitable choice. It’s a business decision — and one that drives real results. If your brand claims to value trust, then investing in news is the ultimate test of that.”

Major announcements about publisher targeting innovation 

Two significant publisher announcements made during Cannes demonstrate how news organisations are leveraging first-party data and commerce media to create competitive targeting advantages: 

• Hearst’s AURA-Amazon DSP Integration debuts

Hearst Magazines announced a significant expansion of their AURA targeting capabilities through a new partnership with Amazon Ads. The offering, which debuted at the festival, combines content engagement data from Hearst’s 30+ U.S. brands with shopping insights from Amazon Ads, enabled by Amazon Publisher Cloud.

AURA’s AI-powered targeting now leverages Amazon’s shopper signals to enhance programmatic campaign performance beyond Hearst’s own inventory. 

Some key points:

• Enhanced scale by combining Hearst’s contextual and behavioural signals with Amazon’s vast commerce data.

• Privacy-compliant targeting that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.

• Exclusive availability through Amazon DSP within its Inventory Hub.

• Integration of hundreds of millions of purchase actions from Hearst visitors with Amazon’s shopping insights.

“As we see increased programmatic interest in our inventory — especially from DSPs like Amazon — it’s the right time to bring the power of AURA targeting and meet buyers where they’re already transacting,” explained Lisa Ryan Howard, global chief revenue officer at Hearst Magazines.

This partnership represents a significant evolution in publisher-platform collaboration, demonstrating how premium publishers can leverage their first-party data assets within major programmatic platforms while maintaining data control and privacy compliance.

• Axel Springer’s Criteo commerce media partnership

Axel Springer announced an expanded partnership with adtech company Criteo to enhance their commerce media capabilities. The collaboration, announced on June 17, focuses specifically on activating purchase intent data through Criteo’s supply-side platform (SSP) with Media Impact (Axel Springer’s advertising arm) serving as curator.

For the first time, Axel Springer is bringing data from price comparison platform Idealo programmatically to market. The partnership combines:

• User signals from Bild, Welt, and Business Insider Deutschland.

• Product and pricing data from Idealo (including product searches, price sensitivities, and purchase intent).

• Criteo’s commerce audiences based on transaction data from thousands of global retailers.

This represents the first connection of intent data from the Axel Springer ecosystem with concrete e-commerce signals. The resulting “framework” can be activated programmatically through curated Deal IDs across both Springer’s own inventory and Criteo’s extended network.

Benedict Gründig, senior director/commerce grid activation at Criteo, noted: “The preparation of their intent and Idealo data by Axel Springer is an important milestone for the market. The partnership demonstrates the potential of curated publisher data for commerce-driven media strategies.”

Creator economy integration

The rebranding of “Social & Influencer Lions” to “Social & Creator Lions” reflected fundamental strategy shifts in Cannes.

Vaseline’s “Verified” campaign achieved a 43% sales increase by transforming creator content into science-backed advertising — a model news publishers could adapt by partnering with subject-matter expert creators who extend journalistic authority into new advertising formats.

Platform relationships also evolved significantly. TikTok’s shift from “trend chasing” to “real-time trend building” and Meta’s investment of US$14-US$15 billion in Scale AI demonstrate platforms’ commitment to creator-centric models. 

News publishers can leverage these investments by developing creator partnership frameworks that maintain editorial standards while embracing platform-native storytelling. The winning formula combines journalistic credibility with creator authenticity to build engaged communities rather than passive audiences.

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