Amazon, Meta, Reddit, YouTube: A look at announcements made by tech companies at Cannes Lions 2024

Agencies such as Omnicom and WPP have also formed strategic partnerships to create content and make businesses easier.

It has been a week since Cannes Lions 2024 kicked off, and the festival has been a ground for innovation, creativity, and groundbreaking announcements.

Technology giants and retail media powerhouses have taken the stage to unveil their latest advancements and strategic initiatives. Organisations such as Meta, YouTube, Reddit, Amazon, WPP, and Nvidia, among others, have made headlines with their significant announcements, each aiming to reshape the landscape of digital marketing, advertising, and media.

Here’s the list of the announcements made at Cannes Lions 2024:

Instacart X YouTube

Grocery delivery platform Instacart announced it is expanding its partnership with Google to offer shoppable ads on YouTube. This means brands can buy ads that, when clicked, take users directly to Instacart's site to order products for same-day delivery. Instacart primarily operates in the US and Canada.

Reddit

At Cannes Lions 2024, social media platform Reddit announced it will start showing ads in the comments section, not just at the top of posts. This change could provide a lot more space for ads. Since going public, Reddit has been testing various new ad formats and placements to attract more advertisers and deliver better marketing results.

Amazon

On June 18, 2024, e-commerce platform Amazon announced a new ad-targeting tool called Ad Relevance, which does not use cookies or third-party identifiers. The announcement was made through a blog post and at the Cannes Lions 2024 event.

Ad Relevance, available on Amazon’s demand-side platform, uses AI to analyse massive amounts of data from browsing, purchasing, and streaming activities on Amazon. It then matches this data with what content a consumer is currently viewing in real time.

Meta

At Cannes Lions, Meta launched new products to help brands and advertisers connect with consumers more personally and authentically. They also shared that for every euro spent on their ads, businesses earn an average of €3.79, a 12% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) from 2022. Meta said this means advertisers in Europe make about €107 billion in revenue each year from Meta ads.

Nikila Srinivasan, VP, product management and business messaging, Meta, shared that over 600 million conversations happen daily between people and businesses on Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, which have a combined user base of 3.24 billion. To support these interactions, select advertisers will soon be able to create, organise, and send paid marketing messages on Messenger using Meta’s Ads Manager.

Havas

At Cannes Lions 2024 on June 18, 2024, advertising agency Havas’ chairman-CEO Yannick Bolloré announced that it will invest over $428 million in AI over the next four years. This announcement comes as Havas' parent company, Vivendi, considers spinning off some of its assets, including Havas, with a decision expected next year. A possible spinoff of Havas could also reportedly open it up to mergers and acquisitions discussions.

Omnicom X Amazon Ads

On June 17, 2024, media agency Omnicom announced a unique partnership with Amazon Ads, according to a Digiday report. This partnership allows Omnicom’s planning and investment teams to use Amazon’s exclusive browsing, shopping, and streaming data. This means they can directly link traditional TV and connected TV investments to purchases made on Amazon.

Stackline X Amazon

Retail technology company Stackline and Amazon have introduced a new tool that helps brands see how their ads affect sales across different retailers and channels. This solution uses unique audience technology and Amazon Marketing Cloud to let brands measure all purchases influenced by their Amazon ads across major retailers.

WPP X Nvidia

Advertising agency WPP has launched Production Studio, an AI-powered production tool created with NVIDIA Omniverse. This new application simplifies and automates the creation of text, images, and video, making content creation easier for advertisers and marketers.

Created in collaboration with Hogarth and integrated into WPP Open, the company's AI-driven marketing platform, Production Studio offers access to a generative AI content engine. Its main purpose is to efficiently produce large volumes of interactive and Product Detail Page (PDP) content, aimed at boosting e-commerce and online shopping experiences.

Topsort

Topsort, a retail media platform using AI technology, introduced its new Halo Attribution model. This model goes beyond typical measurements by not just tracking immediate responses but also capturing the wider impact that ads have on overall customer engagement with the brand.

Additionally, it will also capture the often subtle influences on consumer behaviour, including:

i) Brand influence: Advertisements can help people remember and like a brand, even if they do not buy something right away.

ii) Seller impact in marketplaces: When someone sees an ad for one product, it might make them look at all the other products the seller has, which could boost sales overall.