The organizers of Cannes Lions have announced a completely new program at Cannes Lions titled the “Innovation Festival.”  It will be a two-day program, June 25th & 26th held at the Grand Palais.

The program will recognize the impact of data on the creative advertising process.  (It happens concurrently with the overall festival.)

A number of adtech companies and media agencies are sponsoring the program  including Google, MEC, Oracle/DataLogix, MediaMath, Quantcast the Rubicon Project and The Trade Desk.  The two-day program will conclude with an awards gala awards ceremony on Friday night, June 26.

Unlike most of the Cannes Lions awards submissions,  which are generally limited to agencies, the awards process is open to adtech and data vendors and publishers.  The new award is titled the Creative Data Lions.  The jury president is David Sable, global CEO of Y&R.

Submissions for award close on March 27.

Last June in France, we spoke with Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas about the emerging impact of of data on creativity and his plans to bring this topic to the Festival, to the main stage.