The Cannes Lions 2025 festival highlights significant shifts in the advertising industry, including agency consolidations, the rise of retail media, and the increasing influence of AI and data-driven marketing, amid ongoing industry upheaval and changing consumer media habits.
Google plans to integrate generative AI into its advertising programs, allowing customers to input content like text, image, and video into Google's AI systems which will "remix" them to generate ads based on goals like audience and sales targets. However, there are concerns that the AI could introduce factual errors into ad campaigns. Google has assured that it will introduce guardrails to protect against this eventuality. The move comes as Google faces pressure from startups and established companies offering AI tools for content creation and advertising, while Facebook and Instagram owner Meta also plans to introduce generative AI advertising tools later this year.