CANNES – A powerhouse panel of marketing and technology executives convened at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity under the moderation of AJL Advisory founder Lou Paskalis to explore how innovation is transforming media strategy.
The panel included Dave Morgan of Simulmedia, Brian Mandelbaum of Attain, Jonah Goodhart of Mobian and Sam Bloom of PMG, each touting how their companies are helping marketers move beyond outdated KPIs and into an era of automation, precision and accountability.
Marketers are losing sight of the message
Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and chief executive of Mobian, described how marketers lost the plot when digital and programmatic advertising came to dominate.
“We’ve gotten to this place where we’re operating without any transparency,” he said. “We spend 70% of all dollars, $700 billion a year, in digital advertising, and the vast majority of marketers today don’t know where their ads are running.”
Goodhart criticized legacy definitions of context, saying, “A bunch of men in front of a hotel” might be flagged as brand-safe content, but clearly lacks nuance. His company focuses on measuring deeper signals such as attention, emotion, sentiment and tonality.
“At the end of the day, what anyone in measurement does is help our clients make smarter decisions with information,” he said.
Rebuilding trust with the CFO
Brian Mandelbaum, chief executive of Attain, said the disconnect between CMOs and CFOs has persisted for over a decade.
“Media isn’t just about performance. It’s about accountability,” Mandelbaum said. “Are you actually making an impact on the top line, and more importantly, is the efficiency there to drive the bottom line?”
He pointed to the importance of uniting marketing and finance around credible outcome data.
“We’re marshaling the CMO and CFO to get better acquainted, so they can evaluate investments at every stage of the funnel with meaningful metrics,” he said
Marketers must embrace empirical decision-making
Dave Morgan, chief executive of Simulmedia, echoed that sentiment, arguing marketers must deliver “predictable, provable, profitable outcomes.” He warned that many in the industry are not prepared for the accountability AI and data bring.
“No one in the industry soon will be able to outrun the truth,” Morgan said. “Our industry is terrible at small data… we don’t plan and buy TV ads on an optimal basis in the U.S. today.”
He criticized marketers for relying on “art” over empirical insight, saying, “They actually don’t have the capacity to operate empirically… That’s why there’s no relationship between the CFO and the head of marketing. They can’t talk to them.”
PMG’s Alli Marketplace aims to streamline activation
Sam Bloom, head of partnerships at PMG, positioned the company’s Alli Marketplace as a frictionless solution to integrate top-tier tools and data partners into marketers’ workflows.
“We’ve built technology so that marketers can harness the smartest brains and the smartest data in a seamless way,” he said.
Introduced at Cannes Lions, Alli integrates outcome data, emotional measurement and media planning tools to allow for real-time adaptation. Bloom compared it a GPS for marketing strategy.
“The tools are allowing us to connect better with consumers,” he said. “But if it’s on a sh**ty video… and we’re not aiming at the right North Star, it’s never going to resonate.”
AI Personas, agentic decision-making, future of automation
Mobian’s Goodhart elaborated on a new layer of AI-driven automation he calls “agentic AI,” where systems not only act autonomously but improve themselves over time.
“The idea is you assign a task to a system, and it collects information, makes decisions, and improves performance without constantly checking back,” he said. Mobian’s “AI Personas” help marketers move beyond keyword targeting and understand their audiences based on behaviors, interests, and emotional resonance.
“The agentic world we’re moving into will simply say: automate that for me,” he said. “Make decisions about what content I’m running on YouTube in order to drive outcomes.”
From a scoreboard to a feedback loop
As the discussion concluded, Mandelbaum said, “We’re definitely in the renaissance. We’re moving from a scoreboard to more of a feedback loop.”
Morgan cautioned that this evolution would require a mental shift from assembly-line marketing to a world of rigorous, data-driven decision-making.
“It’s going to require retraining,” he said. “Are we comfortable with data-driven arguments rather than consensus meetings?”
Goodhart closed by emphasizing the need to connect systems that have traditionally worked in silos.
“Once you trust Attain for outcomes and Mobian for context, why can’t those systems talk to each other?” he asked. “That’s what Alli is enabling. That’s the exciting future.”
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