That’s a Wrap: Takeaways from Cannes Lions 2019

Well, sun has set on yet another Cannes Lions. This was MadHive’s third year at Cannes, and the busiest one yet. We were jam packed with meetings, panels, interviews, and (don’t forget) parties. We’re already looking forward to next year.

As always, the festival was a gathering of some of the greatest minds in the marketing world, but when it comes to advertising technology, several key themes dominated the week.

Here is a recap of some of the biggest takeaways:

The OTT market is booming, but fraudsters are already along for the ride.

There was a lot of buzz about the forecasted OTT ad spend of $5 billion a year by 2020, but also a lot of talk about how fraud is already severely impacting this nascent platform. A recent MadHive study found that 18% of OTT ad inventory is fraudulent, which stands to be a billion dollar problem in the next couple years if we don’t address it now.

Fighting fragmentation with cross-screen measurement solutions.

Sure, OTT is booming, but it’s also adding yet another platform to the already fragmented ecosystem. We heard lots of calls for the industry to agree upon measurement standards that would give us the ability to holistically analyze cross-screen linear and OTT campaigns. This is exactly why we partnered with smart TV company Inscape to leverage their glass level data, enabling broadcast networks to sell linear advertising alongside data-enriched OTT inventory, as well as provide brands with the ability to easily plan, target, measure and optimize cross-platform linear and OTT campaigns in real-time.

Blockchain is back…with a purpose.

The blockchain hype that was so visible last year has finally subsided, and the companies left standing across all verticals are leveraging the technology in some pretty innovative ways. When it comes to advertising, blockchain is providing the underlying infrastructure for verification across the supply-chain, for everything from impressions to data, while replacing the need for many of the third-party authentication companies. This plays an integral role in how MadHive is maximizing the value of the media dollar for advertisers and publishers.

Privacy needs to be a primary focus.

With juggernauts like Google violating GDPR, Facebook being hit with a multibillion-dollar FTC fine (amongst a bevy of other official and non-official violations), and two U.S. senators calling for the investigation of the Smart TV space, privacy is front-and-center for the advertising industry. With a year of GDPR firmly under our belt and California’s privacy law going into effect in 2020, the industry finally seems to be rallying around privacy in a real way — though there are still questions about how to accomplish the task without forsaking marketers ability to efficiently drive ROI. In the near term, we need to leverage innovative technologies like cryptography to ensure data security and prevent leakage into an open ecosystem.