Reflecting on the Cannes Lions ad festival taking place this past week, IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur sees an industry which may be a step slow in an opinion piece on LinkedIn.

He writes:

“Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year—but here’s the catch: it still feels like the industry doesn’t quite grasp how profoundly AI is already impacting our workflows, business models, and creative output. Many sessions focused on tools, personalization, and productivity, but AI’s disruption runs deeper.”

Among other points, Mr. Katsur urges industry colleagues to adopt new “open” standards in light of AI which “bring visibility into how AI systems make decisions across the ad ecosystem.”

Read this piece.

The IAB Tech Lab, and the IAB, has a potential new area of stewardship on behalf of the industry.

ICYMI, Reddit AI demo

From Cannes this past week, Reddit released Reddit Insights which, courtesy of AI, scrapes “questions from specific subreddits related to a chosen keyword” and provides insights on popular content to marketers.

See the demo on RedditInsights.ai .

As the Reddit narrator suggests in the video, this product is a proprietary look at Reddit users. You’re not going to find this type of look at the Reddit “walled garden” from other tools.

Local ad sales

Local TV owner, operator Nexstar Media is exploring sales enablement across its digital and linear product lines with Salesforce’s Agentic AI capabilities.

A press release (see it) explains:

“This agentic AI solution will help Nexstar streamline the advertising sales process by automating proposal creation, enhancing product discovery and enabling ad sales representatives to more efficiently find the right products and generate new opportunities or create customized pitch decks. This will reduce the time spent on manual tasks, allowing advertising staff to focus on building stronger relationships and closing sales.”

The question for Salesforce is: can they stay ahead of LLMs when it comes to offering workflow solutions? Amazon Web Services (AWS) discussed its AI-based, proposal creation solutions for publishers with tipsheet[dot]ai last week.

more: Nexstar Media Is All In On Agentic AI, But Human Ad Sellers Shouldn’t Worry (Yet) (June 19) – AdExchanger

Zero Click world

Meta Connection Planning Director Pete Buckley is warning that “The Four Horsemen are coming for DR advertising.” Specifically, the click is dead.

He outlines “The Four Horsemen of the Clickpocalypse” as follows.

“LLMs – Why click when you’ve got the answer? Ahrefs found a 34% drop in CTR when AI summaries are present.”
“Video Reels, TikTok, Shorts – most social is now video, video is less clicky. On Meta, Reels typically see lower clicks than feed. But Reels are where attention is shifting.”
“Age – The younger the user, the lower the click rate. CTR is consistently correlated with age.”
“Privacy Tracking is broken. The journey after the click is increasingly invisible or inaccurate.”

But, fear not, Buckley offers up “How to survive in a Zero Click world” on LinkedIn yesterday. Read it here.

McKinsey AI chatbot

Global consultant McKinsey has released a “beta” version of its own AI. Jokes aside, the consulting company is upfront that the AI chatbot is only an “experiment” and currently only uses McKinsey sources. See it (sign up required).

Prompt: Five years from now, what role will consultants play in advertising and marketing given the evolution of AI?

Response from AskMcKinsey:

The role of consultants in advertising and marketing is expected to evolve significantly over the next five years due to advancements in AI, particularly generative AI. This evolution will impact the skills required and the nature of work performed by consultants.

The evolving role of consultants

Shift from analytics to activation
- Consultants will likely focus more on activating insights rather than performing analytics to generate them
- This shift will require consultants to possess skills in empathy and diversity, enabling them to work effectively with a broader range of people
- The emphasis will be on creating a higher quality impact through diverse and empathetic interactions

Read the full response on tipsheet[dot]ai.

Incrementality rage

Let’s put a stake in the ground on this topic: incrementality.

Incrementality attribution is all the rage with direct response (DR) marketers who are running campaigns through Meta and elsewhere. Emphasis “rage.”

First, if you want a definition on “incrementality”, try this one from incrmntal. But, note the company name.

Next, visit Reddit where an anonymous user (known as “FineSort1463”) “raged” a month ago to a receptive audience:

“If you’re running Meta Ads and still relying on the classic 7-day click + 1-day view attribution window… heads up. Meta has introduced a new metric inside Ads Manager: Incremental Attribution. It’s easy to miss, but it changes a lot. Unlike standard attribution (which credits your ad for any conversion after someone clicks/views), this one tries to tell you which conversions actually happened because of the ad.”

Sounds good. But, don’t believe the “anon”? Let’s keep going.

A story yesterday by Adweek’s Ryan Joe says that Bose CMO is turning off its paid search campaigns (in a rage?) because they were “taking too much credit for driving sales.” Read it. Last click is over? Incrementality attribution in play?

In April, AdExchanger’s James Hercher covered incrementality and Meta’s new attribution feature which had already been in beta for a year in addition to incrementality tracking capabilities from Amazon, TikTok and AppLovin among others. Titled “Beware The Platform Incrementality Trap,” Hercher concluded from his sources, “Incrementality reporting by a platform may be useful and directionally correct, but it is not true.” Read that one.

BUT, earlier this week, Barry Hott, a DR marketer, raged on X that there may be something to Meta’s attribution feature.

Hott tweeted, “The best use case I see for Meta’s incremental attribution optimization setting is retargeting existing customers. For a long time, I have recommended most advertisers avoid targeting existing customers as the system does a terrible job of driving incremental actions when it’s not incentivized to, but this new setting works much better.” Read more on X.

To be continued.

More stuff

Brands’ AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) strategies face technical hurdles—here are tactics to fix them (June 19) – Ad Age (subscription)
The How-to-pitch-Outcomes pitch – Joe Zappa on LinkedIn
“I do concur with my colleagues and friends. Cannes Lions is still the absolutely unrivaled best place to connect with the industry and get stuff done. There are conferences and there are events, but Cannes Lions wins every single time…” – Cory Treffiletti, Rembrand on LinkedIn
Why Big Tech cannot agree on artificial general intelligence (June 18) – Financial Times
Trump extends TikTok ban deadline for a third time, without clear legal basis (June 19) – AP

IAB Tech Lab CEO Katsur Sounds AI Alarm