It’s been one week since the highly anticipated Cannes Lions 2024—the event of the year for advertising and creativity. We are excited to present our top five takeaways from the event, revealing the industry’s priorities for the year ahead.
Navigating the post-cookie era
One of the pivotal discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 centered around signal loss and identity resolution. The industry is grappling with the impact of third-party cookie deprecation, driving a move toward alternative identifiers such as Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2) and ID5, and contextual targeting. This shift aims to uphold accurate audience targeting while addressing privacy concerns through authenticated forms of identity. Brands and agencies are actively exploring these new strategies to replace traditional cookie-based methods with stable, privacy-compliant solutions.
First-party data providers are also seeking data onboarding solutions to navigate this transition. They need streamlined integration processes, comprehensive ID-matching capabilities, and transparent pricing structures.
Fortified by our roots in offline data and significant investments in our Graph, and our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, you can count on Experian’s solutions to maintain strong signal coverage in a cookieless world so you can have uninterrupted, effective marketing.
Unifying targeting across TV platforms
Another focal point at Cannes Lions 2024 was the challenge of navigating TV fragmentation. Advertisers strive for unified targeting across diverse TV platforms, including connected TV (CTV) and traditional linear TV. They emphasize integrating data sources and ad servers to reach audiences across these platforms. CTV continues to stand out in conversations as a crucial and expanding area for advertising, offering new opportunities for targeted campaigns and broader audience engagement.
We’re fueling the expansion of CTV advertising through our signal-agnostic Graph, which seamlessly integrates CTV IDs, universal identifiers such as UID2, IP addresses, and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for targeted campaigns. Our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, also provides connectivity to more than 10 TV destinations.
Transforming marketing with AI
We would be remiss not to mention the hottest topic at Cannes Lions 2024, the transformative power of AI within data and identity. Discussions highlighted AI’s pivotal role in revolutionizing marketing strategies by enhancing campaign planning, dynamic optimization, measurement, and analytics. AI is not just a tool; it enables marketers to work smarter and faster. With real-time data enrichment, AI will empower marketers to manage large-scale campaigns with unprecedented efficiency and precision.
Marketers envision a future where AI seamlessly integrates into every aspect of their strategy, from understanding and predicting consumer behavior to automating personalized engagement. They see AI as the key to unlocking new levels of precision and efficiency, allowing them to adjust real-time campaigns based on consumer interactions and preferences. This vision includes using AI for deeper audience insights, ensuring that every marketing touchpoint is relevant and impactful.
Striving for strategies for proven ROI
Discussions on measurement at Cannes Lions 2024 focused on how measurement metrics are evolving to keep pace with industry changes. Cross-device, multi-touch attribution, and outcome-based metrics like consumer lifetime value and conversion rates are becoming more important. Accurate measurement is critical for demonstrating campaign impact and optimizing future marketing efforts.
These developments reflect a shift toward more sophisticated measurement practices to optimize marketing strategies and prove tangible ROI.
Through our Consumer Sync solutions, you can improve your attribution quality to understand the true path to conversion by linking all digital touchpoints to a single person.
Creating integrated consumer experiences with retail media networks
Retail media networks (RMNs) are becoming more integrated and connected. Their goal is to provide consumers with a unified online and physical store experience and create a comprehensive marketplace where retailers can work together and use shared data to better reach and engage with their audiences.
“Throughout the conversations, it’s been clear that there’s a lot of demand and interest in building and growing retail media networks. What strikes me is that Experian products, both across identity and data, can be a big support to help grow and fill in these gaps.”
budi tanzi, vp, product
Discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 emphasized how collaborations with technology providers and industry groups can help set measurement standards and ensure transparency. These partnerships can enable RMNs to expand their reach and compete with larger advertising platforms, driving industry growth and innovation.
Experian offers comprehensive solutions for RMNs. Our Profile Insights and Enrichment tools offer valuable customer behavior insights, driving smarter inventory management. We enhance ad targeting beyond item-level purchases with accurate data and syndicated audiences, aligning with broader media strategies. Third-Party Onboarding enables expansion beyond owned and operated inventory, supported by our Graph for enhanced connectivity.
“Data providers are excited to eliminate digital hops in their data flow using Experian Third-Party Onboarding. Third-Party Onboarding is uniquely set up to reduce friction for third-party data and the ecosystem in general.”
adam kobus, director of data partnerships
Experian events at Cannes Lions 2024
This year, we hosted a kick-off happy hour, content studio, and members of our team joined various panels across the Croisette. Here’s a recap of our week at Cannes.
Experian’s kick-off event with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions
To kick off the week, we co-hosted a happy hour with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions. At our sold-out event, attendees enjoyed a live performance from St. Lucia.
Content studio
We interviewed 27 thought leaders across the industry in our content studio. Our interviews covered topics like:
• Signal loss
• Connected and linear TV
• Data collaboration
• Future of addressability and personalization
• Retail media networks
• And more
We’ll be sharing more from our content studio over the coming months. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for the latest updates.
Panel participation
The Experian team participated in four panels throughout the week across the Croisette:
- Scott Kozub, VP, Product Management, joined the Brand Innovators panel, “Future of media,” where he discussed how media companies can adapt their content and distribution strategies to cater to changing consumption habits as media becomes more fragmented across devices and platforms.
- Kimberly Gilberti, Chief Product Officer, joined OpenX’s panel, “Unlocking addressability: Navigating the post-cookie era,” to discuss the prevailing strategies for achieving addressability in a cookieless world.
- Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, participated in Audigent’s panel, “Curation in regulated industries,” where they talked about why curation is effective in regulated markets like finance and health.
- Rachael Donnelly, Chief Marketing Officer, joined The Female Quotient in the Equality Lounge for their panel “Emotional agility: Leading beyond the double standard,” where they explored the power of diverse storytelling and its impact on audience engagement, brand building, and the bottom line.
Let’s keep the momentum going
As we wrap up another exciting week at Cannes Lions, the discussions have shown us the potential for innovation in signal loss, TV fragmentation, AI, measurement, and retail media networks. These topics pave the way for a more connected future in advertising. Which trends are you most excited about? Let’s continue the conversation! Reach out to us, and let’s dive deeper into these topics together.
We understand that customers may be experiencing uncertainty with their marketing strategies with Oracle’s exit from advertising. Experian is one of Oracle’s primary data providers powering their audiences. We can help marketers easily make the switch from Oracle audiences to Experian audiences without changes in advertising effectiveness or efficiency.
We have mapped Oracle audiences to Experian audiences to make it easy for you to switch your campaign targeting to Experian. Reach out to your account representative or our audiences team for information about audience mapping and finding the most relevant Experian audience for your campaigns.
Latest posts
In a previous blog entry, Ordering sushi and a lesson in embracing the contextual marketing mindset, I showcased a fictitious scenario that required complex data point integration to pull off. These kinds of programs can seem overwhelming given the three barriers that many organizations face when embarking on their contextual marketing journey: Marketing sophistication A brand’s own conventional mindset and the programs that support it Actionable data Lack of clean and accurate data that prohibits real-time “on the fly” interactions Technology Disparate systems that are unable to link information across repositories, channels and interactions; inability to automate interactions in real-time Regardless of the barriers, there are ways you can show customers you’re listening and provide contextual messages without “boiling the ocean.” Take, for example, the recent viral blue/black vs white/gold dress debate. As the conversation spread throughout Facebook and Twitter, brands like Dunkin’ Donuts and Tide tweeted these contextual messages: The tweets did not go unnoticed as thousands of followers retweeted, commented and favorited these messages. The contextual elements used in these messages — channel preference and breaking/relevant news — are easily accessible to any brand. While the brands had to act swiftly, executing these messages circumvented the three barriers listed above. On the flip side, addressing the barriers can allow a brand to build more sophisticated, targeted contextual messages, as shown in the below example. Here, Experian Marketing Services and technology partner Movable Ink helped Finish Line deliver this sale announcement that adjusts based on the date and time the customer opens the email. The message remains relevant via a countdown clock during the run of the sale, a “warning” when it’s about to end and an alternative message after the sale ends — all of which ensures that the message is relevant regardless of when it’s opened by its intended recipient. And combining more contextual data points, such as location and stock, Finish Line includes the countdown, a local map to the customer’s nearest location and up-to-the-minute inventory of available sizes. Contextual marketing enables modern enterprises to engage in customer-centric conversations that — like any meaningful relationship — deepen across time and future points of engagement. This is particularly true in an era when consumers are overwhelmed by untargeted and disruptive marketing messages. By contrast, contextual marketing is designed to seamlessly and usefully merge into the customer’s daily activity. Want to know more and how to get started? Download the eBook From campaigns to context: Making the move to contextual marketing.
With online video viewing at an all-time high and television networks and system providers increasingly making video content available to those who don’t pay for television, many are wondering if we’re on the cusp of a massive spike in cord-cutting numbers. In our recent Cross-Device Video Analysis, Experian Marketing Services found that that 7.3 percent of all U.S. homes are cord-cutters, meaning they have high-speed Internet but don’t pay for TV. And the pace is increasing. In the last year alone, one million more homes joined the cord-cutter ranks bringing the total to 8.6 million households. It should come as little surprise that cord-cutting is on the rise. As we reported in our video viewing habits post, 57 percent of all American adults and 75 percent of Millennials now watch some sort of digital video during a typical week with the smartphone being the most commonly used device for watching video either streamed or downloaded from the Internet. Consumers thinking about cutting the cord will find an industry increasingly working to remove barriers that typically stand between cord-cutters and programming from their favorite networks — in exchange for a small fee. For instance, CBS recently announced the launch of CBS All Access, a digital subscription service that provides live and on demand viewing of CBS programming. And Dish Network launched Sling TV, an over-the-top pay service that allows cord-cutters to stream live and recorded programming from networks like ESPN, Univision, CNN, HGTV and more. With HBO announcing an April launch of their digital-only streaming service, HBO Now, March may be the last month that many pay for cable or satellite. If the cord-cutting ranks are, in fact, about to swell, a common question is: by how much? Experian Marketing Services estimates that there are currently 13.8 million Americans — representing 5.6 million homes — who are prime to cut the cord. Many of those individuals already have one foot out the door, if you will, given that they are more likely than average to say that they watch less television today because of the Internet. They are also more likely to watch HBO and be fans of at least one major professional sport making them good targets for Sling TV and HBO Now. Given that many cord-cutters already pay for Netflix and/or Hulu Plus, the net savings to those on the fence may be smaller than they think once they add up the costs they’ll assume from piecing together, à la carte, the various subscriptions and downloads required to keep watching their favorite programs. Whether or not we’re on the cusp of a major spike in cord-cutting, the fact is that consumers are increasingly getting their video content from digital sources and marketers need to understand where, how, when and what consumers are watching to ensure that their video campaigns are optimized for today’s digital consumer. For more information about cord-cutters and cross-device video consumption, including consumer receptivity to digital video advertising, download the Cross-Device Video Analysis.
Advertising Age recently released their annual Marketing Fact Pack, featuring data from Experian Marketing Services that looks at habits of digital consumers. This post highlights some of these findings. In the 2015 AdAge Marketing Fact Pack, we featured stats on key marketing and consumer trends impacting the advertising industry. Highlights include the lifestyle of the digitally connected consumer, including the habits of smartphone and television users, household and personal use of smart devices and the choice between becoming a cord-cutter and staying connected. An estimated 7.3 percent of U.S. households (8.6 million homes) today are considered “cord-cutters,” meaning they have high speed Internet but no cable or satellite television service. That number is up from 4.5 percent of households (5.1 million homes) in 2010, a comparative increase of 60 percent. Despite the growing number of consumers who use digital devices to watch video (as opposed to viewing on a television), it has not been enough to overwhelmingly convince all households to cut the cord. Instead, it seems as if the ability to stream or download video directly to the television is what ultimately seals the deal. As streaming devices like Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Google Chromecast become more common and as televisions themselves are increasingly connected to the Internet directly, we can only expect the number of cord-cutters to grow. To learn more about video viewing behaviors to improve your strategies for reaching digital consumers, register to join our upcoming webinar Online video: engaging consumers in a multi-screen world.