Media Briefing: Inside publishers’ real Cannes agenda – AI money vs agentic hype

This week’s Media Briefing looks at the real conversations publishers are having in Cannes – how much of the AI and agentic media buzz will turn into actual money, and what it all means for who pays for the open web.

• More publishers package and sell AI visibility – aka GEO – to brand advertisers.
Penske Media acquires remaining assets of Vox Media including Eater, The Verge, The Dodo, Popsugar, and SB Nation.

Croisette conversations: sorting the real from the hype

For publishers, Cannes this year isn’t just about showing up for clients and sponsors. It’s a mid‑year checkpoint on two hard questions: who is going to pay for the open web in an AI world, and whether agentic media buying is a real fix or just a freshly branded ad‑tech tax.

The rosé is still flowing, but it feels like a veil over a different set of worries than in previous years. For some, the week is about cutting through the noise that has built up since CES in January. 

“This year, the AI conversation has completely shifted – moving past experimentation into real ROI,” said Josh Stinchcombe, global chief revenue officer at the Wall Street Journal. “The new frontier is all about discoverability as consumers pivot to AI agents and chatbots for search.” 

Agentic buying is where much of the Cannes chatter is concentrated, with WPP’s media arm unveiling a video‑buying agent just a day before the Croisette filled up. But publishers say they’re arriving with a colder eye. 

One senior commercial lead at a major news group said they are “in Cannes to work out what’s bluster and what’s real” on agentic trading – specifically, which holding groups have actual technical builds, budgets and timelines, and which are still selling concepts. “How would they like to see our data being passed to them, and are they ready to trade in that way?” he said. 

Others echoed that they want clarity on design: will these agentic setups reduce friction between buyer and seller, or simply rebuild the same opaque middle layer that has historically taken what some publishers estimate to be up to 50% of the money out of a buy? Some are worried that “agentic” will simply become the next must‑have label for intermediaries, with a fresh layer of fees attached.

“If we’re not careful, every single ad‑tech company is going to become an agentic ad‑tech company and will slam themselves into the agentic ecosystem exactly backward, but now we also have to pay token fees,” said an exec at a global publisher who requested anonymity in exchange for candor. By token fees, he means the small per‑impression or per‑transaction AI charges that look tiny on a rate card but add up fast when they’re applied across billions of ad calls.

Publishers are determined not to sleepwalk into another era where the core plumbing of digital advertising gets written without them. If agentic is going to reshape how media is bought and sold, they want a say in the rules this time, not just to adapt after the fact. 

Their meetings this week reflect that intent: discussions around data acquisitions and marketplace plays will test which vendors are genuinely positioned for an agentic future – and which are simply defending the old programmatic rails.

Underneath all of this is the same old question in a new wrapper: who controls the rails and the data that sit between buyers and publishers, and who gets paid for it in an AI‑driven market?

One exec said he is zeroing in on how holding groups are stitching data into central “spines” and what moves like Publicis–LiveRamp really signal. LiveRamp was supposed to be “this neutral link across the industry,” but inside Publicis, it “raises the specter of the agency groups themselves becoming walled gardens,” he said, shifting from “the neutral connector of the open internet” to “the facilitator of a walled garden network within the Publicis environment.” In Cannes, he’ll be probing whether these data assets lock into closed agency ecosystems – and, crucially, whether publisher inventory still appears when an agent or planner goes into those tools and inputs an audience.

“As we design these standards, as we rebuild the industry, what we don’t want to do is become as redundant as we were in the discussion of how the programmatic ecosystem [was built]… it was done to publishers, and probably to the lesser extent, the buy side,” he said.

For publishers who’ve spent years paying an opaque ad‑tech tax and guessing what’s really happening in the supply chain, any practical way to clean that up and pipe spend more directly from buyers is appealing. That’s the promise of agentic media trading, and several of the biggest publishers are already hunting for agency partners to run early tests. 

“Agentic AI for media planning and buying has shifted from concept to reality,” said Yahoo COO Matt Sanchez. “Standards like AdCP and MCP are gaining momentum to enable seamless agentic workflows.” (Those standards are essentially protocols designed to let software agents talk to buying platforms and ad systems without humans clicking through dashboards.)

But like every hot digital‑media trend, publishers are waiting for the hype and PR spin to clear so they can see what’s actually feasible today – and so far, when it comes to real revenue, the answer is: not much. For most publishers, Cannes is a listening post for holding group agents: not yet core to the agenda, but they want to be close when it tips from concept to real spend.

Those publishers that have already built their own AI‑visibility tools, like Future, will also be using Cannes to walk advertisers through those products, pitching them as a way to stay present in AI search and summaries. 

Future CRO Mike Perlata said his conversations are mostly about next-year’s AI strategy: how others are working with LLMs, the challenges they’re running into, and how they’re folding AI into day-to-day workflows. He is also comparing notes on bot blocking and how to balance AI visibility with content protection.

Running alongside that is a more quietly urgent agenda around AI licensing and scraping. Some publisher execs describe a “full dance card” of meetings with cloud providers and platforms to understand whether the emerging roles for charging AI systems to access their content will ever add up to a meaningful line of revenue. 

While there is some positive movement, like Amazon’s reveal last week that allows publishers to charge for scraped content, there is still a lot of money being siphoned away from publishers by intermediaries. One publisher pointed to the scale of VC-backed scrapers as evidence the market is real. These companies are getting “hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at them…that means there is a real economy here,” said one publisher who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “But that means everyone else is building profitable businesses on the back of our IP. That’s not going to fly. You can have a Napster for a bit, but we need to have a Spotify.”

Cannes is where some publishers will test and push that thesis with Microsoft, Amazon and especially Google – using Azure/Web IP and AWS/CloudFront as proof that paying for quality IP is both possible and commercially attractive.

If anything, the rush to build new AI rails for the open web has only heightened a sense that the industry is rebuilding the plane mid‑flight. The money may be clearer this time than it was in early programmatic, but the rules – and who to trust – are not. 

That uncertainty is bleeding into brand conversations. As David Rubin, chief brand and communications officer of The New York Times Company and publisher of Wirecutter, put it: “A striking difference in the conversations I heard this year was the uncertainty and change. In an industry that is usually marching towards what’s next, many brands are searching for what to do. The one thing leaders seem to agree on is that in a world of AI, trust is likely to matter more than ever and be elusive and hard-won.”

What we’ve heard

“The obvious difference this year is that Cannes is happening during a World Cup. I’ve watched the tournament come alive in the U.S., and arriving on the Croisette, you see that same energy on a global stage. Soccer fandom has become a shared language for brands, publishers, creators and everyone in between. What’s the same? AI is everywhere again, but now with a distinct emphasis on human-centric authenticity: the more automated everything gets, the more people are drawn to what’s unmistakably human.”

– John Sills, head of sales, North America at The Guardian.

Numbers to know

19%: The average year-over-year audience drop among 75 local U.K. news sites in April, following Google’s latest algorithm changes.

$1 billion: The operating profitability (EBITDA) Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour wants the company to reach in five years, a 70% growth.

104%: The year-over-year growth of The Atlantic’s podcast revenue, as it invests in podcast videos and roughly doubles its video team.

What we’ve covered

Forbes tests a creator-led audience play to grow off-platform reach

• Forbes is testing a creator-led audience play that puts TikTok and Instagram talent at the front of its off-platform push. 
• It’s a flexible, case-by-case payment model rather than a fixed rate card, and execs are still in test-and-learn mode on what delivers a return for both Forbes and the talent.  

Read more here.

Omnicom Media and Disney Advertising collaborate to enable sequential ads in streaming

• Omnicom Media and Disney Advertising have agreed to implement a connected TV ad solution that enables dynamic sequential storytelling across both video on demand and live programming.
• The partnership gives Omnicom Media clients first access to what they’re calling dynamic streaming fixed units solution, which lets brands tell sequential stories in Paramount’s premiere-week.

Read more here.

How a German publisher JV is turning LLM visibility into a premium brand buy

• Germany’s BCN, the joint-venture commercial arm of three major publishing houses – Hubert Burda Media, Funke and Klambt – is the latest publisher to start commercializing AI visibility to advertisers.
• GEO Brand Impact offers bundles an AI visibility audit, content strategy, AI-optimized branded content and ongoing optimization across roughly 300 specialist titles.

Read more here.

AI podcast experiments march on with Forbes’ new daily audio briefing

• “The Daily Brief” uses a combination of summaries submitted by writers into Bertie, Forbes’ internal AI tool. 
• Like The Washington Post, Forbes sees monetization opportunities around its AI audio experience. 

Read more here.

How USA Today Co. is trying to beat AI Overviews on World Cup news

• In the fight for visibility in an AI-powered search era, USA Today Co. is betting that speed can still beat the machines. 
• After using AI-assisted, pre-written “shell files” to help boost traffic to Winter Olympics coverage, it’s rolling out the same strategy for this summer’s FIFA World Cup 2026.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

People Inc. bets its massive test kitchen can beat AI slop

People Inc. is betting on its 40,000-square-foot test kitchen to beat AI slop and chatbots for audience attention, The New York Times reported. The publisher is using the test kitchen to make more social media videos for People Inc.’s food brands, producing about 175 videos a month.

The era of the independent creator media business is here

A growing cohort of independent creators are finding financial stability outside of large media companies, The Washington Post reported. Prominent writers and media personalities have migrated from newsrooms to newsletters, building communities and direct audience relationships and revenue.

Penske Media buys the rest of Vox Media

Penske Media – which owns publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter – is buying the Vox Media sites left over from James Murdoch’s $300 million deal to acquire New York magazine, Vox.com and the Vox Media’s podcast network, The New York Times reported. Penske is buying Eater, The Verge,  The Dodo, Popsugar, Punch, SB Nation and Thrillist.

Under pressure: The Daily Wire targets IPO

Conservative media heavyweight The Daily Wire is in discussions to raise at least $100 million in new funding, with the longer-term goal of positioning itself for an IPO within the next few years, Semafor reported.

The use of AI chatbots for news is on the rise

As people increasingly get their news through digital middlemen, AI chatbots are emerging as the next key distribution platform, Nieman Lab reported.