Finding Clarity on the Croisette: Six Lessons Learned at Cannes Lions

Amid all the talk coming out of the Croisette around the technical side of marketing, it can be easy to lose track of the single most important part of any marketing equation: consumer identity. 

Knowing your consumers — who they are, what they watch, where they live, what they like — is crucial to creating marketing interactions that are actually meaningful. Without an in-depth understanding of your audiences, you’re doing little more than taking a best guess as to how and where to successfully reach them. And with growing consumer expectations for brands to cater to their specific needs, that approach is riskier than ever. 

The key to truly understanding consumer needs is to get a clear picture of identity; the kind that can only come from a true, 360-degree view of behavior across every touchpoint and over time. Onstage at the Stagwell Sport Beach during the show, Matt Spiegel, TransUnion EVP of TruAudience® marketing solutions growth strategy, explored this very concept with Damaune Journey, Global Chief Growth Officer for ad agency 72andSunny, and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, former NFL wide receiver. While the trio acknowledged identity is critically important, they agreed it’s also far from simple — so marketers who only look at partial identities or signals from a single source are going to miss out on opportunities to engage with their customers authentically. 

“What we’re learning as marketers is when we’re targeted and messaged in a relevant way, people actually respond better,” Spiegel said. “A media landscape that enables that is good for marketing and for us.” 

Personalization and privacy go hand in hand (yes, really) 

Personalization was a hot topic at Cannes this year, and for good reason. In today’s increasingly chaotic marketing ecosystem — where a user may be subjected to thousands of impressions every day — delivering messaging that can cut through the noise is crucial. 

However, executing an effective personalization strategy isn’t so simple. In a conversation with Beet.tv’s Mike Shields at Cannes, Brian Silver, TransUnion EVP of TruAudience marketing solutions, highlighted fresh research from the most recent TransUnion Consumer Pulse Survey. Findings showed while most US consumers are clamoring for personalized experiences, they’re also increasingly worried about their data security: 

• 39% of respondents (the largest cohort in the survey) now expect to receive personalized experiences when shopping online 

• 80% said they’re at least somewhat concerned about sharing their personal information online. 

Shields and Silver explored how robust, responsibly sourced data is key to helping marketers meet consumers’ seemingly contradictory demands, concluding that privacy and personalization don’t have to be mutually exclusive. They advised with the right strategy and a careful approach, marketers can build engaging messaging while simultaneously keeping data privacy in focus.  

(Want to learn more about this topic? Check out this Beet.TV interview with Matt Spiegel on how balancing privacy and personalization can help marketers utilize responsibly sourced third-party data to its full potential.) 

Good AI depends on great data 

Cannes? More like CAInnes. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) seemed to be on the lips of just about everyone at this year’s show as THE topics of conversation. It’s easy to see why: As the AI landscape has matured, its marketing potential has come into sharper focus. That said, many marketers are beginning to understand one crucial factor is holding them back from realizing the full potential of these tools: their data. 

AI outputs are only as good as the inputs that create them, and messy data houses and disconnected tech stacks are preventing marketers from moving at the speed of innovation. In fact, a recent Forrester study found marketing leaders rank the inability to effectively onboard AI tools as one of the top three challenges stemming from the complexity of the martech landscape. 

But data doesn’t stop being important once those integrations are in place. In a panel discussion at the Supernova Pride Summit during Cannes, Spiegel stressed the crucial role good data plays in limiting bias in AI models. If the data fed into AI tools is inaccurate or incomplete, the insights those tools create will be partial at best and misleading at worst, alienating consumers and creating bad experiences. 

Simply put, AI can’t deliver results without clean data and a connected martech stack.  

Getting audience targeting right can make all the difference 

It's no stretch of the imagination to say audience targeting is critically important to marketers. After all, alongside messaging and measurement, it’s one of the key pillars of modern marketing. However, just how much of an impact it has on the bottom line has historically been difficult to quantify. Getting an accurate view of this impact has only grown more challenging as fragmentation in the media landscape intensifies. That is, until now.

According to new research TransUnion debuted at Cannes, the gap that exists in potential return on ad spend (ROAS) between the best and worst targeting decisions isn't just a given — it's massive. Looking at real-world campaign data from 25 TransUnion marketing measurement solutions clients across five vertical industries, a 97% increase in ROAS was achieved when campaigns leveraged the best-performing audiences built from a single characteristic. That gap widened even further when building more complex audiences using multiple audience characteristics, as shown in the chart below.  

However, this data also shows for as much potential reward as there is to getting audience targeting right, there's just as much risk to getting it wrong. 

All this adds up to a high-stakes game in which one wrong move (or targeting decision) can make all the difference between success and failure. To take full advantage of the potential of audience targeting, marketers have to get it right with a strategy rooted in data that’s durable, reliable, consistent and connected.

Interoperability is the fix for fragmentation 

Fragmentation is one of the biggest challenges facing marketers today. But despite all the promises made by marketing technology vendors in ads displayed across the Croisette, more martech isn’t always the right solution. In fact, according to Forrester, while 66% of marketers today are using 16 or more martech platforms, 70% also said reaching their target audiences across touchpoints is harder than ever before. 

However, while it may seem like a more simplified tech stack is the cure for fragmentation, the real solve for disconnected data is interoperability. By ensuring data can flow unimpeded across an entire suite of tools and platforms, marketers can maintain a clear and consistent view of their audiences, messages and performance — regardless of channel or touchpoint. The benefits of operating in this way are profound: According to the aforementioned Forrester research, among marketing leaders who use identity to connect data across platforms: 

• 93% said they’re meeting or exceeding goals to improve the customer experience  

• 88% said they’re meeting or exceeding goals to improve customer insights  

• 89% said they’re meeting or exceeding goals to improve data-driven decision-making and adaptability  

The numbers make this clear: Ensuring interoperability across your stack, powered by connected identity, is one of the most impactful things your business can do to promote marketing effectiveness and stay prepared for whatever comes next. 

Measurement is moving from retrospective to real time 

Pictured left-to-right: Mike Finnerty, Kelsey Hodgkin, Georgie Jeffreys.

During a week when many Cannes Lions attendees were focused on creativity, marketers had their sights set on the role of measurement. In a nutshell, it’s about more than just ROAS. 

At Brand Innovator’s Rado Beach, TransUnion SVP of TruAudience Marketing Solutions Mike Finnerty sat down with Uber Eats Head of Marketing Georgie Jeffreys and Special US CEO Kelsey Hodgkin to highlight the important roles KPIs (such as brand lift, app installs and order volume) play in shaping marketing across channels. The trio concurred all can provide incredible insight — but only when made available to marketers while campaigns are still in flight. 

After-action reporting may have been sufficient when ROAS was the end-all be-all of marketing performance. But the sophistication of today’s marketers means waiting around for results just won’t cut it anymore. All week long at the event, marketers, agencies and platform suppliers alike all emphasized the importance of using measurement to actively optimize campaigns in real time.  

When used this way, measurement can effectively close the loop on the marketing cycle, informing marketers of what worked and what didn’t while campaigns are, once again, still in flight. For example, when marketers can pinpoint campaign converters in real time, they can adjust targeting on the fly, reaching new customers who may look like those converters and reducing acquisition costs. 

While many platforms have developed their own conversion APIs (CAPIs) to support this process within their ecosystems, the next frontier is cross-platform optimization. The ability to connect insights across walled gardens is the proverbial holy grail for marketers looking to maximize performance and efficiency. Look forward to developments in this space in Cannes to come. 

Bringing clarity to chaos 

If there’s one primary takeaway from Cannes Lions 2025, it’s even with continued fragmentation and uncertainty, success in today’s marketing ecosystem isn’t impossible — far from it. With the right tools, insights and partners at your side, you can see your customers more clearly, reach them more meaningfully, measure your performance more effectively and bring clarity to chaos. 

To learn more about how TruAudience^® marketing solutions can help move your business forward, visit transunion.com.truaudience.