Estimated reading time:

4 minutes

After a two-year hiatus, the Cannes Lions festival made its long-awaited return, with thousands of global representatives from the creative industry making their way to the picturesque resort town. 

Under the gaze of the hot sun, business relationships were nurtured, and thought-provoking discussions relating to a rapidly changing industry permeated the air.

Showing up in full force, Ogury demonstrated how we have been at the forefront of adapting to the changing ad tech landscape.

If you had the chance to attend this year, it would have been difficult to miss the Ogury yacht docked in the Old Port of Cannes. The yacht was positively brimming with activity, including two topical panel sessions, exclusive parties and witty comedy sets.

For those who didn’t get the chance to make the trip this year, you can find a summary of the key learnings below.

Moving from personalized to personified advertising

Consumers have awakened and realized the value that their data holds. The demand for privacy has become predominant in an era where they spend increasingly more time on their devices.

As regulators continue to crack down on data collection and ID tracking, those still relying on personal data collection practices are beginning to feel the pressure.

The market now demands privacy and respect – and advertisers want relevance,” said Marcello Grupo, Ogury Insights Director Southern Europe. “Sometimes these don’t match. We have to find a balance that gives us the right combination of the two. And now we must do that without using personal information.”

Marcello continued to explain how Ogurys’ initial goal of creating bespoke user journeys while respecting user privacy formed the basis of Personified Advertising.

We translate the needs users have had in the past, bridge them with other sources of information, and without using sensitive or personal information, we drive results.”

Ogurys’ proprietary technology is powered by seven years of consented user mobile data, continually enriched via surveys and combined with best-in-class contextual and semantic data.

We’re in a transitional moment,” explained Dan Hagen, Global Head of Mx Development at Havas Media. The advertising environment is quickly changing to reflect a privacy-first approach. 

Because we don’t know how long that moment will last, we need to get really good at what we do. The way to do that is to fall back on some of the principles that have been around for decades in advertising but which we forgot because we had data as a crutch”.

Ad Tech Tax: How advertisers and publishers can join forces with active curation

With the continuing rise of The Ad Tech Tax, advertisers have been attempting to mitigate spending by cutting off intermediaries and moving investments from the open market.

Meanwhile, publishers have been working towards reducing the middlemen across the value chain and getting closer to media spending. 

Diving deeper into this topic, Ogury VP of Publisher Development Americas Jonathon Matthews chaired a discussion panel regarding arbitrage within the Adtech market.

There are lots of vendors out there measuring the same space with the same technology,” said Alex Payne VP Global Ad Operations at Vice Media Group. 

That’s also a tax on the publisher and the advertiser. There needs to be trust in a solution that provides the report in one place, to the publisher. Not both sides comparing and contrasting.” 

A hot topic during the panel was trust issues within digital advertising. Jonathon Matthews explained how Ogury has positioned itself as the middleman to avoid duplication across publishers and advertisers. 

Before we automate, we need to build trust,” added Oleg Korenfeld, Chief Technology Officer at CMI Media Group. “We often go back to manual processes before we create an automated marketplace. We do this to build trust.”

With the depreciation of third-party cookies, it has become more difficult to monetize audiences, and therefore businesses have had to reevaluate how they approach their media plan.

Companies that previously made good use of contextual targeting have now found themselves in an advantageous position compared to those who over-relied on third-party data.

Ogury has been prepared for the inevitable end of cookies for quite some time. Personified Advertising was born out of a need for a future-proof solution to a rapidly changing industry.

A massive thank you to everyone involved with Cannes 2022, it was such an amazing return, and we can’t wait for the next one. See you all next year!

Share this article: