Cannes Lions 2026: Everything you need to know

On June 22 to 26, leading voices in advertising and creativity came together. Several key topics, including agentic AI, creators, sport, and retail media, and their increasing connection were highly discussed. A greater focus was also placed on ad effectiveness, that can bring greater sales and growth, rather than novelty alone.

As Primelis CEO Cyril Bourgois put it: “The future of our industry won’t be built by creativity or technology alone, but by those who know how to combine both.“

That shift is exactly why full-funnel came up in nearly every room this year. When the platforms owning the Croisette are also the ones owning the data, the distance between a brand story and a tracked sale keeps shrinking, which means creative and performance can no longer be planned, or measured, apart.

Festival themes: What matters for B2C, e‑commerce and retail

For B2C brands, e-commerce players, and retailers, several hot topics stood out:

• Agentic AI in Advertising: AI is now dynamically orchestrating audiences, bids, and messages across channels to drive incremental sales.
• Retail Media and Commerce Media: The rise of retailer ad platforms (i.e., Amazon) grows. Product pages and marketplaces become a powerful upper- and mid-funnel touchpoint closing the gap to lower-funnel conversion in the same environment.
• Creators and Social Commerce: Influencers are playing a bigger role in product discovery on formats like Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp. Content, ad recommendations, and shopping are blending into one seamless experience, upper-funnel attention and lower-funnel purchase, on the same screen.
• Connected TV (CTV): Streaming services are becoming important for brands to run video ads. Campaigns can be planned and tracked, allowing marketers to see how building awareness translates into sales in a single view.

These themes are shaping how consumer-focused companies design full-funnel journeys, from attention-grabbing stories to shoppable experiences and measurable revenue, proof, as Bourgois puts it, that neither the creative nor the infrastructure wins alone anymore.

Festival themes: What matters for B2B

For B2B marketers, the conversations underscored a few key shifts:

• Brand as a performance driver: increased recognition that strong, consistent brand platforms improve pipeline quality and deal velocity, especially in complex buying cycles.
• Data and AI as infrastructure: using AI to enrich accounts, prioritise opportunities, and personalise content and outreach at scale, rather than treating AI as a stand-alone “innovation.”
• Content and communities: thought leadership, events, and creator-style B2B voices that build trust and category authority before buyers ever fill in a form.
• Full-funnel orchestration: tying brand, demand generation, and sales enablement together so marketing can show impact from awareness through to revenue and retention.

The overall takeaway for B2B brands is that the winning strategies are those that connect creative storytelling with rigorous, account-level execution and measurement, full-funnel thinking applied to a longer, more considered buying journey.

Primelis On-Site

At Cannes Lions, Primelis met with senior leaders from Google, Meta, and Amazon to anticipate the next wave of advertising capabilities.

• Google: Focus on agentic AI and unified measurement to scale performance across search, YouTube, and beyond, reinforcing Primelis’ ability to drive ROI at scale, including in the US market.
• Meta: Emphasis on AI-powered creative and the rise of WhatsApp as a commerce channel, with early access enabling clients to test conversational and creator-led experiences.
• Amazon: Strong alignment on CTV and DSP as key full-funnel levers, connecting brand storytelling with measurable, commerce-driven outcomes.

What it means for our clients

For B2C companies, success relies on combining attention, commerce, and conversion within connected ecosystems. Meanwhile, for B2B, it means aligning brand, data, and content across the full buying journey. In both cases, the logic is the same one Bourgois named on the Croisette: creativity and data are no longer separate disciplines to sequence, but a single capability to build. Primelis’ close partnerships with these platforms ensures early access to innovations, sharper strategies, and a competitive advantage.