AI Is Breaking Advertising’s Favorite Hobby of Putting People in Boxes: GumGum’s Laura Foster
CANNES, France — Marketers have spent years treating consumers like neatly labeled storage bins. Business traveler. Leisure traveler. Luxury shopper. Bargain hunter. Put a person in a segment, check a box and call it strategy.
Laura Foster, senior vice president of global marketing at contextual advertising company GumGum, thinks that approach is overdue for a reality check.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Foster said marketers have misunderstood the very concept of mindset.
“The reality is mindset is something that shifts continuously,” she said.
That sounds simple enough until you remember that most marketing plans are built months in advance and often rely on static audience categories. Foster’s view is that consumers change faster than the spreadsheets designed to describe them.
The travel intender who may need a vacation from vacation
Foster took particular aim at audience segmentation, one of advertising’s longest-running traditions and favorite security blankets.
“I love that you brought up segmentation,” she told Kaplan, before explaining that marketers often apply rigid yes-or-no logic to behavior that refuses to cooperate.
Her example was travel.
“Am I a travel intender? Always. But should I always be in the segment of travel intender? No.”
Whether someone wants to travel, she said, can change based on something as random as a stressful email, family obligations or the realization that a holiday wasn’t nearly as relaxing as advertised.
“My idea of do I want to travel or not travel changes by how mean the last email I received was,” Foster said.
In perhaps the most relatable insight to emerge from Cannes this year, she added that after spending time with family during the holidays, many people discover they need “a vacation for my vacation.”
Somewhere, an airline marketing executive is probably turning that into a campaign slogan already.
AI arrives with a crowbar
For decades, advertisers could only approximate consumer intent through broad categories and historical behavior. Foster believes AI changes the equation because it can process signals humans never could in real time.
“If I asked you as a human being to understand my mood, my emotion, what I’m reading, what I’m doing” and combine all of that with demographic information before serving an ad, she said, “your brain’s going to explode.”
That, she argued, is why mindset marketing becomes practical only in the AI era.
Rather than relying exclusively on pre-assigned audience buckets, marketers can begin responding to what consumers are actually doing, reading and experiencing in the moment.
“I think AI makes it easier to ignore a segment,” Foster said.
That statement may cause minor chest pains among anyone whose career depends on maintaining audience taxonomies.
Stop treating segmentation as a deity
Foster wasn’t calling for the complete elimination of audience data. She acknowledged that segments can still be useful. Her objection is to treating them as the final answer.
“The only way to do that is to stop using segmentation as your god,” she said.
The remark landed as one of the sharper observations in a week filled with discussions about AI, personalization and consumer relevance.
Her broader argument is that marketers have become too comfortable with categories because categories are tidy. Humans, unfortunately for marketers, are not.
The next chapter of personalization
Foster also pushed back against the industry’s tendency to chase ever-more-granular personalization.
Years ago, dynamic creative optimization promised advertisers the right person, the right message and the right moment. Foster said the goal today is less about generating endless variations of ads and more about finding the appropriate context for a consistent brand message.
“I’m interested in how do I take my brand message and make it find the right moment for that individual,” she said.
That’s a notably different ambition from creating millions of hyper-customized ads featuring someone’s location, favorite snack and probable mood after a difficult Tuesday.
Even AI doesn’t have one right answer
Looking ahead, Foster expects marketers to become more comfortable with ambiguity as they gain experience using AI tools themselves.
At Cannes, she said, one recurring question has been: What’s your favorite AI tool?
Her answer is usually another question.
“The real question is for what?” Foster said.
For quick tasks such as writing emails, she prefers ChatGPT. For more strategic work, she said she often turns to Claude. The point isn’t which tool wins. The point is that different situations require different approaches.
“I think if we point ourselves too distinctively into there is a right or wrong answer, a yes or no answer, we miss the beauty of the end,” Foster said.
That may be an uncomfortable message for an industry that loves certainty, dashboards and categories.
Then again, uncertainty appears to be having a pretty good year.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
CANNES, France — Marketers have spent years treating consumers like neatly labeled storage bins. Business traveler. Leisure traveler. Luxury shopper. Bargain hunter. Put a person in a segment, check a box and call it strategy.
Laura Foster, senior vice president of global marketing at contextual advertising company GumGum, thinks that approach is overdue for a reality check.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Foster said marketers have misunderstood the very concept of mindset.
“The reality is mindset is something that shifts continuously,” she said.
That sounds simple enough until you remember that most marketing plans are built months in advance and often rely on static audience categories. Foster’s view is that consumers change faster than the spreadsheets designed to describe them.
The travel intender who may need a vacation from vacation
Foster took particular aim at audience segmentation, one of advertising’s longest-running traditions and favorite security blankets.
“I love that you brought up segmentation,” she told Kaplan, before explaining that marketers often apply rigid yes-or-no logic to behavior that refuses to cooperate.
Her example was travel.
“Am I a travel intender? Always. But should I always be in the segment of travel intender? No.”
Whether someone wants to travel, she said, can change based on something as random as a stressful email, family obligations or the realization that a holiday wasn’t nearly as relaxing as advertised.
“My idea of do I want to travel or not travel changes by how mean the last email I received was,” Foster said.
In perhaps the most relatable insight to emerge from Cannes this year, she added that after spending time with family during the holidays, many people discover they need “a vacation for my vacation.”
Somewhere, an airline marketing executive is probably turning that into a campaign slogan already.
AI arrives with a crowbar
For decades, advertisers could only approximate consumer intent through broad categories and historical behavior. Foster believes AI changes the equation because it can process signals humans never could in real time.
“If I asked you as a human being to understand my mood, my emotion, what I’m reading, what I’m doing” and combine all of that with demographic information before serving an ad, she said, “your brain’s going to explode.”
That, she argued, is why mindset marketing becomes practical only in the AI era.
Rather than relying exclusively on pre-assigned audience buckets, marketers can begin responding to what consumers are actually doing, reading and experiencing in the moment.
“I think AI makes it easier to ignore a segment,” Foster said.
That statement may cause minor chest pains among anyone whose career depends on maintaining audience taxonomies.
Stop treating segmentation as a deity
Foster wasn’t calling for the complete elimination of audience data. She acknowledged that segments can still be useful. Her objection is to treating them as the final answer.
“The only way to do that is to stop using segmentation as your god,” she said.
The remark landed as one of the sharper observations in a week filled with discussions about AI, personalization and consumer relevance.
Her broader argument is that marketers have become too comfortable with categories because categories are tidy. Humans, unfortunately for marketers, are not.
The next chapter of personalization
Foster also pushed back against the industry’s tendency to chase ever-more-granular personalization.
Years ago, dynamic creative optimization promised advertisers the right person, the right message and the right moment. Foster said the goal today is less about generating endless variations of ads and more about finding the appropriate context for a consistent brand message.
“I’m interested in how do I take my brand message and make it find the right moment for that individual,” she said.
That’s a notably different ambition from creating millions of hyper-customized ads featuring someone’s location, favorite snack and probable mood after a difficult Tuesday.
Even AI doesn’t have one right answer
Looking ahead, Foster expects marketers to become more comfortable with ambiguity as they gain experience using AI tools themselves.
At Cannes, she said, one recurring question has been: What’s your favorite AI tool?
Her answer is usually another question.
“The real question is for what?” Foster said.
For quick tasks such as writing emails, she prefers ChatGPT. For more strategic work, she said she often turns to Claude. The point isn’t which tool wins. The point is that different situations require different approaches.
“I think if we point ourselves too distinctively into there is a right or wrong answer, a yes or no answer, we miss the beauty of the end,” Foster said.
That may be an uncomfortable message for an industry that loves certainty, dashboards and categories.
Then again, uncertainty appears to be having a pretty good year.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
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