Digiday Podcast at Cannes: AI hype, data overload and other takeaways from Cannes Lions 2025

For Carly Carson, PMG’s head of integrated media, this year’s festival served as a temperature check for an industry in flux. As the book closes on another Cannes Lions, Carson has pocketed three takeaways.

1. AI still needs a human infusion. To be sure, AI talk dominated panels. Per Carson, the industry is still convinced the technology is a tool that can’t replace human thinking.  
2. Garbage in, garbage out. Marketers have more data than ever, but information doesn’t mean insight. When it comes to AI, data needs to be contextualized or it’ll produce “garbage on top of garbage.”  
3. Ad dollars need to keep up with changing consumption habits. Fragmentation has made measurement more difficult, making it tougher for marketers not only to dedicate ad spend, but justify it. Still, Cannes can be a meeting of the minds — or where pressure mounts on platforms to “play nice together so we can have this really holistic picture of what’s happening,” Carson said.

Tune into the full episode for more from Carson on how PMG is navigating the industry’s shifting tides and what Cannes talking points mean for the second half of the year’s ad dollars.