{"slug": "media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai", "title": "Media Buying Briefing: The holdco tech heads expound on the ups and downs of building AI", "summary": "At the Cannes Lions festival, technology heads from major holding companies discussed the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI into advertising, emphasizing the need for speed, experimentation, and new roles like orchestrators. They highlighted that AI is changing consumer journeys and agency operations, requiring agility and a focus on brand building.", "body_md": "# Media Buying Briefing: The holdco tech heads expound on the ups and downs of building AI\n\nDigiday covers the latest from marketing and media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. [More from the series →](https://digiday.com/series/cannes/)\n\nThe topic of AI was inescapable no matter where you went during last week’s Cannes Lions, and very much was said on panels, along the Croisette and in the suites and meeting rooms of the big hotels. Digiday even hosted a video interview series whose primary topic was AI’s disintermediation effect on how CPG marketers and their agencies try to reach consumers these days.\n\nOne effective encapsulation of how agencies are going about embracing and figuring out AI was a discussion that 4As CEO Justin Thomas Copeland moderated featuring the technology heads of the major holding companies (in alphabetical order): Helen Lin, Publicis; Jarrod Martin, Omnicom; Slavi Samardzija, Stagwell; Amy Thorne, Dentsu; and Lauren Wetzel, WPP.\n\nOne of his best observations/questions was when he addressed them as people, not tech masters: “There’s a lot of rethinking, and I’m hearing a lot of reimagining, reframing [in this session]. There are probably a lot of existential moments where you’re having to think, ‘How do I do this?’ and get an inner circle to help you figure that stuff out. … Those learning curves can be tough because a lot of people are looking at you in your organizations and thinking you’re gonna have the answers.”\n\n**Consumers, bots and AI **\n\nWetzel: “It’s not about the technology, it’s about brand building. I also think it’s not about how agencies are adopting AI or agentic, it’s actually about how consumers are — and the consumer journey is changing so much. It’s more intelligent, it’s more fragmented, and it’s frankly more AI-mediated. As a result, I think the agency needs to be more intelligent, more connected, and also more accountable as it relates to AI.”\n\nSamardzija: “We are advertising to bots, but we’re also advertising to humans. We still need to have that creativity and innovation. We need to be able to build emotional resonance and emotional connection. But at the same time, also feeding bots — bots are never sleeping… Agility is the new battleground.”\n\n**The need for speed and to be OK with breaking things**\n\nThorne: “With AI, we can experiment at a much faster clip. We have to be able to say, you know what? We’re going to break some shit, and that’s OK … Be unapologetic and go for it, and you know what, we’re going to be able to test out of it really quickly. It’s not to say that we’re not considerate of the governance parts of it — that is a huge part of it, and something that we’ve been working really closely on.”\n\n**The new role: orchestrator**\n\nWetzel: “You need more orchestrators, you need more connectors, you need more people who are fluent across the different disciplines. Creative and media are coming together in better ways. It’s all powered by data and technology and connected intelligence. And with that, I just think there’s actually a really good career opportunity, whether you’ve sat within a creative agency or whether you’re interested in getting into the agency business.”\n\nSamardzija: “We used to talk about generalists and specialists from our perspective. An orchestrator is a resource, an individual that has deep expertise in multiple areas. They need to know deep, deep subject matter expertise to make those quick decisions The orchestrator needs to be a master at everything. Where do you find those people? Now upskilling and training, and still teaching people in the industry that they have to be masters of their craft, deep, deep down into the belly of the beast is critical. And that is a challenge that goes well beyond technology.”\n\n**Opening up black boxes**\n\nMartin: “What AI is going to do in the ecosystem is it’s going to create more fragmentation and more complexity inside the ecosystem. Because SSPs will become DSPs. There’ll be direct integration from advertiser to publisher. That creates a whole mess of data that needs to be stitched together, so having those train tracks is super important… If you can’t measure in a deduplicated way how you’re contributing to a client’s outcome, then you can’t prove that outcome.\n\n“It’s not a technical challenge. The challenge is more around certain platforms willing to integrate to be open. I’m not going to name names, but I’ve met with all of the platforms that we might be thinking of, and there is a sea change in the openness. But I would say that’s the biggest hurdle to overcome, and make that real. That’s not a technical challenge at all.”\n\n**The big challenges**\n\nLin: “On the client side, the stomach for risk taking on experimentation, I never seen the appetite be stronger. But the disheartening part is we get to a place where all of our tools can help identify better opportunities, and then you present it to your client … and they can’t act on it. Because they don’t have the assets, they don’t have the budget. It’s AI-driven, so they have to get the internal AI governance [approvals] … The client doesn’t benefit if we don’t help them untangle themselves.”\n\nMartin: “We do what we do as fast as we can, [but] the client works in the same way that they work today. Then we nudge them forward. That could be in terms of reducing numbers of approval gates. Where we want to get to is approving a system rather than approving a specific plan. That system [could be]: What’s the playing field of creative, not what’s the specific creative? What’s the playing field of plus and minus max/minimum values for different platforms of media spend that we want to create? What’s the playing field for how much we can move money around between those times? If we approve that playing field, we can be agile.”\n\n## Color by numbers\n\nGiven how dominant AI was all during Cannes Lions, it’s worth exploring a bit more in-depth what the numbers show. A Forrester and 4As collaboration study showed some promise for some AI providers (Google primarily), but also uncovered just how nascent and unstable the business is in the relationship between agencies and marketers. Of all the below subsets of use, one thing was clear. Google has become the top AI provider among agencies, unseating OpenAI from last year’s assessment. Some stats:\n\n- 74% use genAI to summarize documents and communications, and\n**70% apply it to research and competitive intelligence**. - Challenges such as\n**accuracy and bias (63%), legal concerns (62%), and privacy and security risks (55%)** continue to slow deeper integration. For AI agents specifically, lack of expertise (54%) and data infrastructure gaps (51%) further complicate adoption. **61%** of agencies still classify AI as a “cost of business,”**while 31% of agencies plan to monetize it within the next 24 months****70% of respondents “always” or “sometimes” use genAI for research/competitive intelligence,** while 25% use AI agents for the same purpose; 61% use genAI and 13% use agents to develop briefs; 57% use genAI and 12% use agents to jump-start idea territories.\n\n## Takeoff & landing\n\n- Dentsu’s\n**Carat** won the Cannes Lions Media Network of the Year, a week after its North American CEO**Michael Law** left the agency to take a position with a top sales position at TelevisaUnivision. Meantime, Dentsu landed**Air India’** s media account in India, as it takes on more work from the airline’s parent company Tata Group.**Initiative** had been the incumbent. Finally, Dentsu and**CreatorIQ** revealed a data partnership that integrates Dentsu’s audience platform, dentsu.Audiences with CreatorIQ’s AI-enabled platform **Worldwide Partners**, the anti-holding company that includes a network of independent agencies, signed up comms agency** Keino Group.***Personnel move:*** Novus**hired Krithika Rosenthal to be managing director, strategy & integrated outcomes, coming over from** Wavemaker**where she was a group director of strategy.\n\n## Direct quote\n\n“The challenge that agencies have today is principally that what they’re selling today is people hours — that’s still the economic unit they get paid on. And that’s not going to hold up over time.”\n\n— Tim Castree, CMO of DoorDash[speaking with Digiday at Cannes Lions].\n\n## Speed reading\n\n- I covered a series of CTV-related developments and partnerships that Omnicom Media revealed during Cannes Lions, with\n[Netflix](https://digiday.com/media-buying/omnicom-media-kicks-off-a-series-of-partnerships-at-cannes-lions-with-a-first-time-netflix-deal/),[Disney Advertising](https://digiday.com/media-buying/omnicom-media-and-disney-advertising-collaborate-to-enable-sequential-ads-in-streaming/),[Paramount](https://digiday.com/media-buying/omnicom-media-and-paramount-partner-on-dynamic-fixed-ad-units-in-the-streamers-premieres/)and[NBCUniversal](https://digiday.com/media-buying/at-cannes-omnicom-media-and-nbcu-say-theyre-crafting-dynamic-contextual-ads-for-content/). - Sam Bradley looked into how agencies are developing how to use AI agents, while clients figure out the same thing — only\n[using them to further in-house](https://digiday.com/media-buying/agencies-look-to-ai-agents-for-edge-but-must-fend-off-brands-looking-to-in-house-with-the-same-tech/). - Kimeko McCoy reported on Amazon announcing its new ad format,\n[Alexa+ Agentic Ads](https://digiday.com/marketing/amazons-latest-ad-format-offers-a-glimpse-of-advertisings-agentic-future/), which lets Amazon users complete a purchase within an ad they see in an LLM.\n\n### More in Media Buying\n\n####\n[\nAt Cannes, Omnicom Media and NBCU say they’re crafting dynamic contextual ads for content ](https://digiday.com/media-buying/at-cannes-omnicom-media-and-nbcu-say-theyre-crafting-dynamic-contextual-ads-for-content/)\n\nMetadata from NBCU is key to adapting Omnicom clients’ creative be dynamically contextual to the shows in which they run.\n\n####\n[\nWalmart buys ‘the Google Ads of streaming’ Vibe in a deal tipped at a $1 billion-plus valuation ](https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/walmart-buys-the-google-ads-of-streaming-vibe-in-a-deal-tipped-at-a-1-billion-plus-valuation/)\n\nThe deal would bring Vibe’s 10,000 SME advertisers to the platform, equipping Walmart to better compete with Meta and Pinterest.\n\n####\n[\nOmnicom Media and Paramount partner on dynamic fixed ad units in the streamer’s premieres ](https://digiday.com/media-buying/omnicom-media-and-paramount-partner-on-dynamic-fixed-ad-units-in-the-streamers-premieres/)\n\nSponsor units in the media company’s streaming premieres are dynamically adapted to enable advertisers to tell a sequential story in those ad breaks, the first time Paramount has added a dynamic insertion capability to streaming.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai", "canonical_source": "https://digiday.com/media-buying/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-building-ai/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss", "published_at": "2026-06-29 04:01:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-29 04:08:40.617386+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Publicis", "Omnicom", "Stagwell", "Dentsu", "WPP", "Digiday", "4As", "Cannes Lions"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/media-buying-briefing-the-holdco-tech-heads-expound-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-ai.jsonld"}}