CANNES – Kicking off one of Beet.TV’s fireside chats at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Lou Paskalis, founder and chief executive of AJL Advisory, said advertising technology has finally “caught up to the aspiration,” enabling marketers to engineer relevance into every interaction with consumers. Paskalis praised Sam Bloom, head of partnerships at digital marketing agency PMG, for helping clients break free from conventional wisdom that has historically limited innovation.
Bloom agreed that the landscape has never been more complex.
“Consumers are seamlessly consuming content across multiple devices and channels, sometimes all at once,” he said. The challenge for marketers is turning vast amounts of data into insights, translating those insights into action and doing it quickly, he said. That pace is only accelerating with AI.
As Bloom put it, “We’re all being chased by the bear, and the bear is AI.”
From channel management to business objectives
Both speakers noted a shift in how agencies must support brands. Paskalis reflected that agencies once acted like “waiters” delivering whatever the client asked for, but had become pigeonholed into transactional execution. He argued the industry needs to return to a more consultative, collaborative model that educates clients on new capabilities.
Bloom agreed, adding that PMG’s platform, Alli, was designed to automate repetitive tasks and free space for higher-level strategy.
“Our mission is not just about marketing goals but business objectives,” he said. Alli, he noted, is helping clients tackle broader growth challenges, not just manage media channels.
Harnessing cloud computing and AI
Bloom highlighted cloud computing as a breakthrough enabling PMG’s Alli Marketplace to combine client and partner datasets in new, anonymized, “permissionable” ways. He cited partnerships with firms like Simulmedia, Mobian and Attain to create richer insights into video performance, sentiment, and audience behavior.
“Combining those data sets is building new playbooks we haven’t seen before,” he said, calling the trend “revolutionary.”
Paskalis underscored the significance, noting that for decades marketers ignored emotion as a key performance indicator simply because the tools didn’t exist. With AI-powered analytics, emotional resonance can finally be measured alongside traditional performance metrics.
Delivering on bold claims
Addressing PMG’s marketing statement that Alli is “more than a marketing platform” and instead an “operating system for modern marketing,” Paskalis pressed Bloom for proof. Bloom responded with case studies showing structured data integration driving measurable performance lifts, including a 60% increase in contextual campaigns with Mobian and real-time success for a quick-service restaurant client using Attain data.
“The basics matter,” Bloom said. “If you don’t have clean, structured, contextualized data, you’re going nowhere. Alli solves that first, then builds applications on top.”
Keeping humans in the loop
Despite the growing reliance on automation and AI, both leaders stressed the continued importance of human judgment. Paskalis reminded the audience that advertising remains a mix of science and art, with creativity at the center. Bloom agreed, noting, “Culture cannot be AI’d.”
PMG, he said, has designed its systems to be transparent so humans can intervene and make decisions.
“No matter how much we automate, there is a human in the loop,” Bloom said. “Transparency allows everyone to see how the machine is working and step in where it matters.”
No More Silos: PMG’s Sam Bloom on How Its Alli Marketplace is Rewiring Brand Strategy
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