17521: Dentsu Difference Disappearing & Disappointing.

 

MediaPost reported from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Dentsu Global CEO Takeshi Sano, who admitted facing the same problems as other holding companies—which he hopes to address with the same solutions including agility and adaptability, simplifying the portfolio, and client-centric focus. Oh, and he made references to AI integration too.

 

Things are bad in Adland when the only non-White holding company appears to be more vanilla than the White holding companies.

 

Dentsu Challenges: Pace Of Change, Complexity, Sameness, Says CEO Sano

 

By Steve McClellan

 

Dentsu’s Takeshi Sano notched his first major industry appearance as Global CEO on the Cannes Lions main stage Tuesday in an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin.  

 

Dentsu’s major challenges, he said, are similar to the broader industry, including the pace of change, complexity, and competitive differentiation. 

 

Dentsu, he said, tries to remain agile in the face of constant change and has sought to simplify its business to make it more accessible to clients globally. 

 

Client stickiness hasn’t been a problem in Japan where many clients have been doing business with the firm for more than 100 years. In part Sano attributes the firm’s ability to sustain such long-term relationships via a culture focused on “client centricity.” 

 

Boorstin noted that such relationships aren’t common outside of Japan and wondered if one of Dentsu’s goals was generate “century clients” outside of the country. “Hopefully,” Sano responded. “If we focus on client results, we can achieve long-term relationships.” 

 

Asked how he is thinking about AI and innovation, Sano technology expands possibilities. The challenge for companies and talent is selecting and applying the right possibilities to optimal benefit. 

 

“AI can’t define the future, or identify issues or goals,” he said. Those areas will remain for humans to grapple with. 

17520: On Registration-Only Exclusivity At Cannes.

 

Advertising Age reported on the increased registration-only events at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which especially frustrated newer attendees denied access beyond velvet ropes.

 

Um, Cannes has always embraced exclusivity—marginalizing people based on status at White advertising agencies, country of origin, gender, sexual identity, race and ethnicity, etc.

 

Hell, even the Omnicom Inclusion Breakfast was an exclusive affair.

 

As for registration-only issues, don’t forget the initiatives to ban registered sex offenders.

 

Registration-only events make Cannes feel less democratic and overly programmed

 

By E.J. Schultz, Ewan Larkin, and Brian Bonilla

 

To thrive at Cannes this year, you needed two things: a fan and your name on countless registration lists. It was the hottest Cannes in memory and also perhaps the most exclusive one.

 

While the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has seen a steady rise in roped-off events, this year it seemed to reach a tipping point. The beach and harbor were again dominated by activations that required registration, including Stagwell’s Sport Beach, Amazon Port, Spotify Beach and others. This year, there was a noticeable encroachment inland, with multiple cafes overtaken by vendors and agencies, which used them to conduct invite-only programming or hold client meetings, effectively shutting them off from average festival-goers.

 

One big change from last year: Caffe Roma, a normally welcoming spot in the shadow of the Palais, was overtaken by Creative Artists Agency, where people guarding the entrance turned away anyone not on the list.

 

“People without a pay-to-play space are having to get real inventive about where to eat and meet this year, given the sprawling nature of branded spaces—they’ve exploded,” said Oliver McAteer, head of development and partner at Mischief @ No Fixed Address. “It feels like no inch of Cannes has been left untouched. Quiet restaurants you could sneak away to and take a meeting or grab a rare bite are now an AI firm you’ve never heard of. AI is likely the reason I am sunburned.”

 

The situation added more fire to the long-running debate over whether Cannes Lions has lost its appeal as a community gathering for creatives of all stripes, especially those without industry connections.

 

Take it from Fernando Machado, the chief brand officer of Chipotle, who has been coming to Cannes since he was a rising marketer at Unilever. “It was just the Palais,” he said in an interview this week, referring to the festival’s traditional home venue. “I would buy two cereal bars, two Gatorades” and “be there for the day.” He referred to this year’s festival as being filled with RSVP lists and Cannes “bouncers.”

 

“It makes it less democratic, right?” Machado said. “I’ve been in the industry for long now, and I know a lot of people, so I think it’s easy for me to get in.” But Fernando from 15 years ago would likely be shut out, he added.

 

Leeann Leahy, CEO of The Via Agency, shared a similar perspective. “It feels more like a ‘No, you can’t’ festival with all of its closed doors and over-programmed venues. And I have always loved the discovery of this festival,” Leahy said, noting that it took her “an hour to find a cafe that wasn’t taken over by some brand somewhere.”

 

Frances Webster, CEO of Walrus, said she had to take a breakfast meeting at the Gutter Bar, which is typically popular for late-night drinks, because so many Cannes restaurants were rented out this year.

 

WPP’s VML took over Beryte, a Lebanese restaurant, while tech brand InMobi took over another eatery to promote Glance, an intelligent shopping agent.

 

There was also some disgruntlement about the Carlton Hotel, which often serves as a watering hole for delegates beginning at night and extending into the early hours of the morning. Attendees reported being turned away by security unless they were meeting with somebody already inside, and voiced complaints about the hotel charging $100 per person to sit at a table. Tom Morrissy, chief growth officer of independent media agency Noble People, said such tactics hurt “the history and spirit of the festival.”

 

How the scorching heat affected Cannes

 

Of course, with scorching temperatures, drinking late into the night was not always the best idea. A historic heat wave gripped France for most of the week. The most common sight on the Croisette: People draped in event lanyards and wristbands holding fans. Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, summed it up quite nicely at a panel on WPP’s rooftop near the end of the week, suggesting her Oura ring “thinks I’m dead.”

 

The heatwave “made every indoor session a refuge and outdoor activations a genuine endurance test,” Lindsay Slaby, founder of marketing consultancy Sunday Dinner, wrote in her Cannes recap for clients. She noted that it “probably contributed to the intimacy premium: small dinners, air-conditioned villas, the sessions with 21 people at the art hotel beat everything happening at Croisette scale.”

 

She also observed that the “old Cannes energy was genuinely porous,” referring to past festivals of “creative directors running into clients at the Gutter Bar at 2 a.m.,” and “serendipitous collisions that turned into briefs.”

 

The corporate sprawl beyond the Palais is a physical manifestation of how Cannes continues to evolve into a business conference as much as it is a creativity festival. Ad tech players, who began descending on Cannes years ago, are now joined by a growing number of consultancies. Boston Consulting Group upped its Cannes presence starting about four years ago and this year ran its BCG House along the Croisette, with programming on topics such as organizational transformation and the path from CMO to CEO.

 

“Marketing is one of our biggest topics for us commercially,” said Jessica Apotheker, BCG’s CMO, managing director and senior partner. “It’s just a great opportunity to engage with marketing leaders. We will share some more thought leadership, connect with the right people, and also connect with the technical system.”

 

Cannes Lions itself is leaning into executive involvement. For the second year in a row, it hosted a Global CEO Forum. This year, the closed-door session at the Carlton ran on the festival’s opening day and was “strictly limited to 50 personally invited global CEOs,” according to its website, with McKinsey listed as a “lead insight partner.”

 

Still, there does appear to be a concerted effort to preserve the festival’s original creative spirit. Ciaran McCarthy, VP of brand and global advertising at Microsoft, told Ad Age on Monday that his whole team was in the South of France this week, spending lots of time walking the work and attending award shows.

 

“I hope others are doing the same,” McCarthy said. “It’d be a shame to come here and not.”

17519: On WPP Priorities At Cannes And Beyond.

 

Advertising Age reported how WPP CEO Cindy Rose is spending her time at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, prioritizing huddling with clients and investors over public events.

 

This semi-mirrors Rose’s global agenda; that is, she’s primarily focused on clients and shareholders versus employees—a worldwide community Wikipedia currently records as 100,000 humans. Losing clients and shareholders poses a big problem. Losing employees, not so much.

 

Besides, the single White operating company won’t threepeat as Holding Company of the Year/Creative Company of the Year—but only because the dubious award was nixed versus WPP is now recognized as a death-spiraling flaming dumpster.

 

Cindy Rose prioritizes clients and investors over public events during her first Cannes as WPP CEO

 

By Ewan Larkin and E.J. Schultz

 

Few executives have walked into Cannes Lions this year with quite as much baggage as Cindy Rose. Though the WPP CEO has helped orchestrate some momentum in the new business arena in her first nine months, she still helms a company working through a major restructuring, a string of client losses and a fall to fourth-ranked agency company.

 

Rose made her debut at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as WPP’s CEO without much fanfare, opting for few public speaking appearances and spending more time tucked away meeting clients and investors while explaining her turnaround plan.

 

Perhaps her most important meeting was with Manuel Arroyo, the Coca-Cola Co. executive VP and global chief marketing officer, who also met with Arthur Sadoun, Publicis Groupe’s chairman and CEO, during the festival, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

WPP is battling Publicis for the beverage giant’s media, data and technology business in most global markets outside of the U.S. The review, which is in its early stages, marks a high-stakes moment for Rose, as Coke incumbent WPP seeks to ward off further encroachment by Publicis, which took the North America media business from WPP in early 2025.

 

Arroyo did not tip his hand on which agency might have the advantage.

 

“We have a lot of confidence today in WPP,” he said in an interview at Cannes. “We also are seeing reasons why we should have a lot of confidence in Publicis based on the work in the U.S.” He credited Rose for bringing “a lot of new and great thinking” and “an increased focus on data, technology and AI.”

 

Coke’s marketing priorities moving forward include more emphasis on retail media and influencer marketing, he said.

 

Along with putting on an investor relations event atop the Hôtel Martinez, WPP’s home base for the week, Rose also hosted more than 30 consultants and intermediaries at a private terrace gathering. And she interviewed Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström at WPP’s Stream event, Ad Age confirmed with WPP.

 

Her focus on clients—more than 50 of whom she met with privately—prompted her to opt out of a speech she had been scheduled to give at the Palais. Rose’s agenda also included a Thursday night client dinner.

 

A WPP spokesperson said Rose was not available for an interview during the festival.

 

On the heels of WPP announcing an agentic partnership with Amazon Web Services, Rose made a public appearance for a luncheon at Amazon Port, where she discussed a set of “trust principles” she released at the start of the festival. Asked about that timing on the panel, Rose said that “consumer trust in brands is at an all-time low, and trust in agencies isn’t much better,” so it felt like the right time to “put a stake in the ground” on how WPP operates.

 

One of WPP’s principles is about clients owning and controlling their data, a point Rose emphasized during her time in Cannes with AWS. “Your data and your insights as a brand is your biggest source of asymmetric competitive advantage, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why CMOs would share that with anyone,” she said.

 

Rose later spoke about WPP’s marketing operating system, WPP Open, and said it is designed to give clients access to data insights and new technology without surrendering control. Her remarks come as research firms have warned that marketers risk becoming overly dependent on agency-owned AI platforms.

 

“It’s amazing to me how many of my CMO clients are willing to sign up to data solutions that lock them in,” Rose said. She added: “I want my clients to stay with me because we’re delivering superior growth, not because we’ve created some structural friction.”

17518: On WPP Media Global Ranking & Worldwide Tanking.

 

Advertising Age reported WPP Media maintained its lead global ranking; however, the trade publication foresees the White media firm losing its top position as Adland continues to dramatically churn.

 

Ironically, WPP Media could benefit from PR, promotion, and advertising—disciplines diminished in the WPP worldwide flaming dumpster—to hype its fuzzy success, suspect capabilities, and questionable innovations.

 

WPP Media clings to the lead in Comvergence’s global ranking, but likely not for long

 

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

 

WPP Media maintained its position as the top agency group worldwide in global media billings last year, but it is slipping from the leaderboard, according to Comvergence’s 2025 Global Billings and Market Share Report.

 

The holding company led the pack with 13% market share and $63.9 billion in 2025 global media billings, but that’s down from the 14.2% share it captured in 2024. Publicis Media is not far behind, posting the highest growth rate among the holding companies, with a 12.8% rise to $62.4 billion in global billings last year, per the report.

 

Omnicom Media Group ranked third with $48.5 billion in global media billings last year, which represented a 5.5% increase from 2024. However, Comvergence flagged that the report did not combine the media billings of the newly merged Omnicom Media Group and Interpublic Group of Cos., as the deal closed in late November. A combined Omnicom Media Group would have had $75.6 billion in global billings, according to the report, landing it well ahead of WPP Media.

 

Among agency networks, Omnicom’s OMD led with $26.9 billion in total media billings, up 1.7% from 2024. WPP’s EssenceMediacom came in second place with $23.3 billion, a 3.9% decline in global billings from 2024, while its Mindshare ranked third with a decrease of 5.5% to $20.5 billion in total 2025 billings.

 

Publicis Media’s Zenith and Starcom rounded out the top five agency networks, per the report, posting the highest growth rates among the rivals, at 11.4% to $17.2 billion and 9.5% to $17.18 billion in total billings, respectively.

 

The report represents 55% of global media spend, which Comvergence estimated to be at $478 billion across 49 markets, up 4.6% from $457 billion in 2024. It also covered 107 independent media agencies, which collectively account for 12% of global market share, according to the report, representing $32 billion in total 2025 billings. Horizon Media US was the largest independent agency worldwide with $7.4 billion in 2025 billings, according to Comvergence.

17517: On The Challenges For Gaining Entry To Cannes.

 

Advertising Age reported entries dropped over 25% for Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

 

There’s no data to indicate how the value of creativity has globally dropped in Adland—but the figure probably far exceeds 25%.

 

Of course, Ad Age’s examination doesn’t highlight the exclusivity of Cannes, whereby a limited community of privileged advertising agencies participate in a closed popularity contest.

 

A stricter submission process likely had 0% impact on Cannes cliquishness.

 

However, the revised requirements surely adversely affected the underrepresentation of non-White advertising agencies—but don’t expect Cannes to offer percentages and/or confirmation data.

 

Cannes Lions entries drop more than 25% as stricter rules kick in

 

By Tim Nudd

 

Award submissions to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity dropped more than 25% this year, a decrease due at least in part to the introduction of stricter eligibility and verification rules for entrants in the wake of last year’s cheating scandal.

 

The festival received 20,050 entries from 92 countries this year, down from 26,900 from 96 countries in 2025, organizers said Saturday. That is nearly a 25.5% drop.

 

In releasing the numbers, festival leaders pointed to a stricter entry process aimed at rebuilding confidence in the awards process. The festival introduced various measures this year to strengthen oversight and ensure submitted work can withstand greater scrutiny. The new rules include a new fact-checking process, stricter client sign-off and bans on agencies that submit fake or manipulated work.

 

The new process makes entering more challenging and time-consuming, according to agencies. The changes were instituted after the festival was rocked last year when multiple award-winning campaigns came under fire for AI-manipulated case studies, unverifiable campaign results and more.

 

“We have been working closely with our international community over the last year on what are considered and significant steps,” Simon Cook, CEO of Lions, said in a statement. “Together, we understand that these strengthened standards are not designed to restrict creativity, but to fortify it—ensuring breakthrough work gets the recognition it deserves, while preserving the integrity that makes the recognition meaningful and enduring.”

 

Other factors are likely at play in the decrease as well, such as entry fees becoming more prohibitive at agencies that are trying to contain costs and even having layoffs.

 

The festival released other entry data as well. Work submitted by brands accounted for 10% of entries this year, up from 8% last year. Independent agencies made up almost one-third of all entries, the festival said.

17516: On Trials & Tribulations Troubling Black Publishers.

 

Adweek published content spotlighting Black publishers who stayed in the black when White brands pulled back performative DEIBA+ commitments.

 

The authors even connected matters to Juneteenth, noting “how the Black-owned media community has continued to be conditioned by a long-standing lack of support from advertisers.”

 

Call it being conditioned for crumbs—and systemic racism.

 

Black Publishers Knew the Ad Commitments Wouldn’t Hold. So What?

 

The ones who stopped waiting on promised ad dollars and built revenue they could control are the ones still standing

 

By Rhonesha Byng & DéVon Johnson

 

Since brands began to pull back their commitment to diversity ads in 2023, publishers throughout the BOMESI network have not been surprised. Many have rebuilt their business models with the knowledge that these ad dollars allocated post-2020 were not going to be there.

 

The lessons we learned over the last six years while operating BOMESI, which launched around Juneteenth in 2020, are very real. 

 

The date commemorates when an enslaved population in Texas learned that they were free, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. 

 

This delayed revelation indicates how the Black-owned media community has continued to be conditioned by a long-standing lack of support from advertisers.

 

Today, BOMESI has connected more than 300 Black-owned publishers with over 2,500 diverse-owned publishers to create a larger network of publishers reaching over 90 million households on a monthly basis. Currently, Black-owned media receives less than 2% of the total U.S. advertising spend, according to Nielsen; yet Black Americans represent approximately 15% of the population and consume more than 81 hours of media per week, 31.8% more than the general population.

 

Publishers made an expensive choice: trade advertising as the backbone of the business for subscriptions, events, licensing, and branded work on their own terms. Audience trust became the asset that mattered. Some turned down ad revenue outright because the strings attached would have meant covering their communities differently than they wanted to.

 

Here’s how two Black-owned publishers successfully adjusted, when advertisers stopped their commitments.

 

Black Girl Nerds expanded its product portfolio and partnerships

 

Black Girl Nerds sits at the intersection of geek culture and Black feminism, built for an audience that wanted both taken seriously. Broadnax didn’t wait for ad budgets to come back. Founder and CEO Jamie Broadnax built a Substack newsletter, launched a subscription book club through Bindery, and joined the Yahoo Creators program. The shift cost time, nothing more. It grew her Substack readership, brought brands back into her inbox, and gave the business steadier income through Yahoo Creators.

 

Snackable Media made an acquisition to better monetize its audience

 

Snackable Media started as a multicultural ad network, helping smaller, minority-owned publishers compete for big RFPs through bigger players’ programmatic reach. In April 2025, it acquired adtech company AdGrid, picking up its own wrapper, an SSP, rich media tools, and a new unit, Content Zebra, that helps publishers grow traffic and monetize it at once. Founder Justin Barton’s bet: brand attention has faded since 2020, so revenue now has to come from the audience itself—one he calls culturally relevant, high-spending, and worth unlocking through partnership, not a single ad deal.

 

The case for building audiences with brands can be tracked. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study of 5,000 Black adults, 24% of respondents say they rely on Black-Owned media on a daily basis and 40% do so on a regular basis. Meanwhile, 63% of Black adults in this survey believe media coverage of Black people tends to be negative when compared to other minority groups. Additionally, 57% of respondents say they don’t get the full spectrum of news about Black communities.

 

Because brands are using the “general market” to reach their audience, they are essentially paying for something the audience has already decided is not relevant to them; therefore, brands are at a disadvantage when it comes to advertising to this group through general market channels. 

 

The DEI retreat makes the argument all even more clear. Since 2020, equitable advertising expenditures have served as a means of expressing values through inclusion as a separate line item for brands that include or exclude depending on optics. A Government Accountability Office report revealed that over the last 10 years, federal acquisitions of advertising accounted for $14.9 billion in total spent, but just 14% of that amount (which includes all businesses owned by minorities, women, and disadvantaged individuals) actually reached those businesses that the categorization was intended to serve.

 

Media owned by people of color was included in the 14% total, but not at the top. Publishers who were aware of that math before it was a “talking point” are the type of businesses to work with regardless of where the DEI falls on the public policy agenda.

17515: New Standard, Old Pitch Practices—Buyer Agent Buyers Beware.

 

MediaPost reported WPP Media is enacting IRL the theme emphasized in Publicis Groupe’s paradoxical propaganda.

 

That is, the White media firm unveiled a prototype for a new “buyer agents” standard for media-buying services.

 

The launch and ballyhoo pose questions, raise suspicions, and smell fishy—underscoring the lack of trust and transparency tainting the media field.

 

For starters, clients are not early adopters, typically waiting to see measurable proof of success before buying into innovations. So, it’s a safe bet WPP Media pitched with underhanded overpromising.

 

If WPP Media pushed outcomes-based payment schemes for the prototype, achievement in terms of revenue generation will likely integrate exaggerations and outright lies.

 

Finally, despite anything WPP Media might claim, utilizing a prototype means even executives at the White media firm are tinkering via trial and error, making things up while they plod ahead. As holding company wonks are wont to admit—at least internally—the plane is being built in flight.

 

In short, WPP Media appears to be introducing a new standard for bullshit.

 

WPP Media Unveils Prototype For New ‘Buyer Agent’ Standard

 

By Joe Mandese

 

An agentic bragging rights war appears to be heating up heading into the ad industry’s annual gathering in Cannes next week, with today’s news that WPP Media is developing a new industry standard for media-buying — specifically, for “buyer agents” purchasing video advertising inventory.

 

The first-mover announcement is consistent with big historical moves by WPP Media and its predecessor organization, GroupM, to move the industry forward by developing media research and/or technical standards for buying media — from Nielsen ratings to CTV — in order to prevent industry inertia around key media technology developments.

 

WPP this morning revealed it already is working with key media suppliers and industry standards bodies to “define how TV and video buyer and seller agents interact safely, transparently and at scale.”

 

WPP disclosed that the new agentic standards initiative includes Comcast Advertising and its FreeWheel ad tech unit, Disney Advertising, Fox, NBC Universal, Netflix and Paramount, as well as the IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org, which are helping to “define how the WPP Buyer Agent and media owner Seller Agents communicate, validate, support approved media transaction workflows, and escalate decisions.”

 

“Two decades ago, the move to programmatic marked a fundamental change in how media was bought and sold. We expect agentic media to have an even bigger impact on our industry in the months and years ahead,” WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser said in a statement announcing the standards initiative, adding, “The companies that lead this next era will be the ones that combine intelligence, interoperability, and governance to define how media decisions are made. That’s what we are building with our partners: a trusted buyer-agent strategy designed to operate in our clients’ interests, maximize the value of their media investments, deepen consumer relationships, and translate intelligence into growth.”

 

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur also disclosed that the initiative is benchmarking the new media buyer agent protocol on the tech lab’s AAMP (Agentic Ad Management Protocols) framework.

 

WPP said “initial testing” of the new media buyer agent has already begun with its supply-chain partners with a “goal of moving from alpha and beta testing to a model capable of supporting large-scale TV and video investment over the next 6–9 months” and plans to share its findings — as well as reference workflows, tech learning, and a formal proposed industry standard — in early 2027.

 

But the news is bound to generate even more agentic buzz at next week’s Cannes Lions festival, following a cheeky video released Tuesday by Publicis, as well as a white paper issued by influential advertising management consultant 3C Ventures late last week that cautions advertisers about using proprietary holdco agentic advertising systems.

 

And also this morning, Horizon Media announced a it has added its own proprietary “buying agents” to its HorizonOS Blu platform.