Cannes Confessionals #1: Where are all the brands?

Its my first year at Cannes, but it's not my friend Lauren's. Lauren Livak is Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute and she and my arch-nemisis Colin Lewis were discussing how the brands and CMOs tended to hang out in the Palais section of the event, with the Cannes-organized programming and creative awards showcases, while the retail media networks and associated tech vendors and agencies mainly cruised the Croisette. This is what Lauren said:

"I think that's a problem, right? Shouldn't we all be together having a joint conversation rather than having the creatives in the Palais and then the retail media networks outside?

Colin concluded that the CMOs "are not down [here] talking to us mere peasants in the retail media world."

Their observations perfectly capture the strange geography of influence here at Cannes - and sets the stage for some other observations from my first day on the ground.

Here are some other observations from my first day on the ground.

Amazon's Moment in the Creative Spotlight

Andy Jassy was named Cannes' Media Person Of The Year. Cannes' rationale: Amazon is "the largest media platform globally" and setting "a new model for media", and to me, it's the perfect vignette for where retail & commerce media sits in today's media zeitgeist.

Cannes' Media Person list is a roll-call of era-defining platforms (Google, Meta, YouTube, Twitter). Cannes is a creativity festival; honoring a retail-driven platform says the creative conversation now includes closed-loop sales signals, on-site sponsored products, and shoppable video.

The Non-Retail Commerce Media Invasion

With the love between Cannes and Amazon being so strong this year, I wasn't surprised to see the enormous Amazon port and how prominent a position it had at the event. But I was surprised to see the extent to which non-retail Commerce Media is out in force. Marriott, Chase, and United Airlines all have big activations here, spruiking their media chops.

They are newcomers, but have been named as a critical component of Commerce Media's future diversification away from the humble Sponsored Product ad unit on a retailer site, as projected by eMarketer: Nonretail commerce media will grow at a faster rate, enjoying a CAGR of 34.1% between 2025 and 2028, compared with 16.2% for traditional retail media.

All we know for sure right now is that these new commerce media players certainly seem willing to drop a bundle at Cannes this year - if only to will this future into existence.

The apocalypse in traditional publishing will come to commerce

Speaking of willing futures into existence, Rachel Tipograph, founder of MikMak, had an particularly stark take on what's coming next. She told me:

"Everyone knows that AI is a tsunami that's coming. The publishers, the media companies are already feeling it in a significant way. They believe that there could be the death to the open web... my belief, and it's how I started MikMak, whatever happens to media will soon happen to the rest of commerce and advertising. And I think that fact that the publishers are scared shitless about their owned and operated channels and their ability to monetize should be a loud signal for the rest of the industry."

It's a sobering perspective - that the current disruption hitting traditional publishing is just a preview of what's headed for commerce media.

Trade media < retail media

The future may be uncertain, but the present battle lines are clear.

Albertson's announced a new partnership with in-store retail media provider Stratacache yesterday morning, some of the most candid insights actually came from Jody Hallman, Vice President of Integrated Marketing at Perdue, who didn't mince words about retail media's superiority:

"And so that's probably been one of the biggest things for us to start to navigate as well as, I would say, start to have hard conversations about trade, because retail media is much better and more effective than the traditional trade solutions. And so for us, that's probably one of the biggest areas, right? Is us navigating how do we shift the mix and make sure that we're actually shifting into this space. And we know that it's more effective, but we also know that there is just this legacy of love for 'what's the deal.'"

Albertson's Senior Advertising and Retail Media Sales Executive, Ben Richardson, offered a counterpoint about the benefits of tighter internal coordination:

"I don't want to be contrarian, but... being smaller at Albertsons, I've already seen it and our leadership ladders up to the same place. So the merchant team and the retail media network, the e-commerce team, the pharmacy, it's all pointed to the same direction... there's less siloing."

DSPs Promise To Unlock Retail Media Demand. What’s Holding Retailers Back?

And now for something not Cannes related (phew!)

In my piece for Forbes today, I unpack why 96% of media buyers say they’d shift budgets tomorrow if they could transact programmatically, yet most retailers are integrating with only a couple options out of the myriad of DSPs available today.  I break down which DSPs are vying for a slice of retail media, the practical factors retailers use to pick (identity match rates, advertiser demand, brand-safety controls), and the pros and cons of shortcuts like audience syndication.

The full article unpacks the trade-offs and practical steps for letting programmatic dollars in while keeping data risk and operational strain out. Read here.