As leaders head into Cannes this year, there will be plenty to talk about: AI, commerce media, identity, data collaboration, consolidation, curation, and measurement. Each one will shape how marketers plan, activate, and prove impact in the years ahead.
But the bigger conversation will be about the foundations underneath them. The market is becoming more connected, operationally complex, and concentrated, which makes independent, interoperable infrastructure more valuable. Brands, agencies, platforms, publishers, commerce media networks (CMNs) and data partners all need systems that can work together with trust, flexibility, and control.
The question I expect to hear at Cannes is: are your foundations strong enough to support connected growth?
Infrastructure now shapes how marketing works
Marketing infrastructure used to be easy to overlook. It sat behind the scenes moving data between teams, platforms, and partners, so campaigns could run and reports could get built. That view is too narrow now.
The choices companies make around data, identity, activation, collaboration, and measurement, now shape what they can do. Those choices affect which partners a brand can work with, how easily teams can connect customer signals, how quickly campaigns can move, and how clearly performance can be measured.
The more connected the ecosystem becomes, the more valuable interoperability becomes. Marketers need infrastructure that can work across agencies, platforms, publishers, commerce media networks, clean rooms, cloud environments, and connected TV (CTV). Not infrastructure tied too tightly to one commercial system or strategies that work well in one environment but break down everywhere else. Marketing needs room to adapt.
Identity connects the customer view
Identity is the connective layer that helps marketers understand who they’re trying to reach across data sources, devices, and partners. It’s the foundation that helps teams connect signals in a governed, privacy-safe way so they can plan, activate, and measure from a more consistent view of the customer.
Without that foundation every downstream decision gets weaker. Teams may have more data than ever, but they still struggle to connect it into a clear picture of who they’re trying to reach. That matters more as customers move across devices, channels, platforms, and media environments constantly. No single partner sees the full picture and no single channel carries the full journey. That’s why interoperability matters. Identity has to connect across the market, not sit inside one closed workflow.
AI raises the standard for trusted inputs and independent decisioning
AI will be one of the biggest topics at Cannes. It’s already changing how teams think about planning, decisioning, optimization, and measurement. AI makes trusted data matter more, especially as more decisions depend on the quality of the signals behind them.
AI systems are only as strong as the data feeding them, the identity layer connecting that data, and the governance controlling how that data is used. Marketers also need to understand which signals AI is using, which signals it may be favoring, and how much control the brand retains. Brands need more visibility into the intelligence guiding their investments.
This is where many leaders will need to pressure-test their strategies: are AI decisions based on data you can trust, test, govern, and move across the partners that matter to your business?
The AI conversation should always come back to data quality, identity, governance, transparency, and trust.
Commerce media needs pathways beyond owned environments
Commerce media has created powerful new opportunities for brands and commerce platforms. Commerce environments sit close to intent and can help advertisers understand what people search for, compare, consider, and buy. The next phase is about scale.
CMNs have valuable shopper and transaction signals, but owned inventory can limit reach and create friction for advertisers trying to work across many networks. The next step is helping advertisers use those audiences beyond the network’s own site or app, across channels like CTV, social, and programmatic. That requires an identity foundation that can connect customer records, reduce duplicate profiles, improve audience accuracy, and support activation and measurement across the platforms advertisers already use, without turning every campaign into a separate workflow.
This creates another path for CMNs to grow alongside their media business. It gives them more ways to create value from the signals they already have, and it gives advertisers more consistent ways to activate audiences across the market.
Curation brings data closer to supply
Curation is gaining attention for a reason. It connects audience intelligence and supply at the point of activation. Done well, it helps marketers bring data, context, and inventory together in a more intentional way. But curation only works when the foundation is strong.
It needs trusted identity, high-quality data, clear rules for how signals are used, and supply paths that marketers can understand and measure. It also needs the ability to optimize as campaigns run, so audiences, inventory, and outcomes are not treated as static decisions.
This is where curation can become more than another media tactic. It can become a practical way to connect intelligence with action, giving brands more control over where and how data informs media decisions.
Measurement is where trust is earned
Every growth conversation eventually comes back to proof. Leaders need to know what worked, where it worked, and for whom. They need to understand how activation influenced outcomes across channels and partners. They need confidence that the systems behind those answers are transparent enough to guide future decisions. Measurement confidence depends on the same foundations as everything else: identity, data quality, interoperability, collaboration, and governance. That’s why measurement should be designed into the strategy from the start.
The Cannes conversations that will matter most
The most valuable Cannes conversations this year may not be about chasing the next idea. They may be about asking better questions.
- Can our identity framework adapt as the market changes?
- Can our data strategy work across partners without locking us into one system?
- Do we know which customer signals our AI systems are using, which ones they’re prioritizing, and whether we can test that intelligence outside one system?
- Can our commerce media and curation strategies scale with control?
- Can our measurement framework give us confidence across the full journey?
At Experian, we sit across the ecosystem as an independent identity and data partner built to support flexibility, governance, and interoperability. As the market keeps changing, our role is to help you preserve control. Not by forcing a single path, but by helping identity, data, activation, and measurement work together across the broader market. For leaders heading to Cannes, that’s the conversation worth having.
About the author
Kevin Dunn
Chief Revenue Officer, Experian
Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships.
Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together.
Latest posts
Throtle enlists Tapad, now a part of Experian, to expand audience precision and cross-device connectivity
Featured stories from Experian MarketingThe Tapad Device Graph™ increases Throtle’s amplification by 475 percent. NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, now a part of Experian, the leader in cross-device marketing technology, today announced a partnership with Throtle, a leading data onboarding company. The Tapad Device Graph™ will enhance Throtle’s best-in-class onboarding capabilities by providing accurate and privacy-safe cross-device reach as well as precise audiences at scale. In partnership with Tapad, Throtle will deterministically link its services to a corroborated individual with hundreds of targeting attributes. This linkage allows Throtle to offer true cross-device identity management and identity resolution services to accompany its robust onboarding capabilities. Throtle will also work with Tapad to validate its device graph, building larger, more comprehensive audience segments. To date, the Tapad Device Graph™ has connected 61 percent of Throtle IDs to related ones in the graph, with an average amplification rate of 475 percent for Throtle’s IDs, or 4.8 new IDs per each of Throtle’s. Throtle has also seen its overall match rates involving Tapad’s identity insights rise an average of 15 percent since the inception of the partnership. More specifically, Tapad’s mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) have increased Throtle’s in-app identity inventory by 35 percent. “Tapad has proven to be a trusted source for cross-device matching and has a tremendous reputation in the advertising and marketing technology industries for delivering superior precision and scale with the utmost dedication to privacy,” says Paul Chachko, CEO, Throtle. “Since we first began our test phase, and continuing through to this day, Tapad has met and exceeded our expectations for what a partner should be.” With Tapad’s strong commitment to precision and accuracy, Throtle was confident that this partnership would prove to be the right choice for the strategic expansion of its platform. Not only does Tapad deliver in-depth insights, parsing deterministic from probabilistic linkages, but its pool of device-level touchpoints enables Throtle to increase scale without seeing a decline in precision. For more information about the Tapad Device Graph™, or to request a demo, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync About TapadTapad Inc. is a marketing technology company renowned for its breakthrough, unified, cross-device solutions. The company’s signature Tapad Device Graph™ connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world’s largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious, and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2015, Tapad began licensing the Tapad Device Graph™ and swiftly became the established gold-standard throughout the ad tech ecosystem. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Oslo, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo. Tapad’s numerous awards include: Forbes’ Most Promising Companies, Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, Crain’s Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award, and Global Startup Award’s “Startup Founder of the Year”. In 2016, Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group, one of the world’s largest mobile operators. About ThrotleThrotle is a data onboarding company focused on deterministic matching and identity resolution, empowering brands with true individual-based marketing. Our data centric onboarding approach guarantees the highest level of accuracy, scale, and responsiveness for our clients. For more information on Throtle, please visit, throtle.io. Contact us today
Tapad, a part of Experian, and Autotrader partner to deliver more meaningful cross-device connections for automotive brands
Featured stories from Experian MarketingAutotrader leverages The Tapad Device GraphTM to achieve higher performance and reach new audiences across all devices New York, NY – September 6, 2017 – Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, today revealed findings from a campaign conducted with Autotrader which connects with more actual car buyers than any other third-party listing site.* Autotrader’s premium audience, combined with the Tapad Device GraphTM, delivered significant audience extension across desktop, mobile, and tablet to drive awareness and maximize both reach and delivery across screens. To help analyze shopping behaviors across multiple devices, the global automotive brand for this campaign turned to Autotrader and Tapad, who created a cross-device pre-roll video strategy with a focus on viewability, concentrating on potential customers already searching for vehicles. By using a one-to-one connection, instead of look-alike modeling, Tapad also ensured that the automotive brand discovered only new consumers across all of their devices. This approach discovered a new potential audience of more than 14 million consumers, eliminated communication waste and the risk of duplicates, increased overall performance, and ensured more of their campaign dollars reached meaningful audiences. Overall, this case study represents a leap forward in terms of audience-based targeting and the highly-sought after multi-touch attribution modeling. “We really enjoy working with the team at Tapad to help execute our Audience Extension campaigns”, said Lynne Green, product manager at Autotrader. “Their ability to meet the demands of an ever-changing industry, as well as their dependable customer service has allowed us to confidently deliver against our unique in-market automotive audience and provide our clients ongoing messaging opportunities to our audience beyond Autotrader.com.” “How identity relates to conversion behavior is a complex part of any advertising campaign,” said Jeff Kelosky, RVP and head of global automotive at Tapad. “After identifying auto consumer’s behavioral patterns and device usage while shopping for vehicles, we knew we could successfully help Autotrader and its automotive brand clients maximize campaign viewability and drive results.” To learn more about using Audience Extension with Autotrader, click here. For more about the Tapad Device GraphTM, or to request a demo, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync Contact us today
Tapad, now a part of Experian, announces forward progress through The Trade Desk integration
Featured stories from Experian MarketingWith campaigns applied to seven major holding companies, Tapad continues to see healthy adoption with The Trade Desk clients NEW YORK, NY – August 23, 2017 – Tapad, now a part of Experian, the leader in cross-device marketing technology, today announced its ongoing momentum with The Trade Desk, Inc. (Nasdaq: TTD), a global technology platform for buyers of advertising. Tapad is providing cross-device segments from the groundbreaking Tapad Device GraphTM through The Trade Desk’s platform. Since 2015, Tapad has seen steady growth in the use of its cross-device data across The Trade Desk platform. This forward progress continues, as 1H2017 saw important milestones for Tapad. Seven major private and independent holding companies now apply Tapad’s data to their campaigns, in addition to more than 1,500 unique brands. Tapad’s proprietary Device GraphTM connects billions of devices, providing unified and insightful data for brands, agencies, and marketers across the globe. Several of these clients, representing varying industries from financial, to auto, CPG and retail, apply Tapad’s data across a number of key tactics and strategies, including: first party CRM extension, third party audience extension, cross-device retargeting, cross-device frequency management, and more. Clients in these verticals continue to rely on Tapad’s cross-device data, as Tapad saw the amount of usage by financial and retail clients grow by four times over the past year, and double for automotive and CPG clients. “We are pleased to offer our clients access to Tapad’s device graph”, said David Danziger, VP of Data Partnerships, The Trade Desk. “Their cross-device identification capabilities have been a powerful addition to our omnichannel platform.” Contact us today