Adobe’s Ryan Fleisch Wants Marketers to Escape the Data Silo Factory
Marketers spent years building first-party data systems to escape their dependence on third-party cookies. Then many discovered that the solution came with its own collection of clean rooms, technology integrations and fresh silos. Apparently, data infrastructure follows the same rule as household storage: The more containers you buy, the more clutter you find.
Ryan Fleisch, head of product marketing and real-time customer data platforms at Adobe, said data collaboration can help brands connect their customer information with publishers, media networks and other companies. He discussed the strategy with Next in Media’s Mike Shields at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Three letters, endless confusion
“The three letters ‘CDP’ are the most confusing letters in the industry,” Fleisch said. Some companies have a customer data platform, others are shopping for one and still others have declared the entire category dead. This being advertising technology, all three positions can probably coexist inside the same company.
Fleisch argued that CDPs are becoming more important as brands prepare for agentic artificial intelligence. However, data collaboration was not originally considered a core CDP function. Brands often responded by adding separate clean rooms, applications and publisher integrations. The technology designed to eliminate silos gradually became another silo.
Adobe decided to incorporate data collaboration directly into its real-time CDP. The goal is to let marketers activate audiences in clean-room environments without repeatedly constructing new integrations. “On average, brands are working with three to five different clean rooms,” Fleisch said. That is less a clean room than a small office park.
Privacy without a permission slip for everything
Adobe’s platform is designed to leave customer data in its original location while allowing participating companies to analyze audience overlaps. Fleisch said personally identifiable information is not exchanged between parties and campaign results are not returned at an individual level.
The controls are meant to give marketers room to operate while reassuring technology departments that nobody has handed the customer database to an intern with a USB drive. The objective, Fleisch said, is to give IT confidence that “I can let some teams loose with my data and they’re not going to misuse it.”
This kind of collaboration can help an advertiser compare its high-value shoppers with a publisher’s audience data, build a seed audience and find similar prospects without relying on third-party cookies. It also can support brand-to-brand partnerships. An airline, for example, could combine insights about travel behavior with a credit-card partner’s knowledge of shopping activity.
AI gets another bumper sticker
No Cannes conversation would be complete without artificial intelligence arriving before the rosé got warm. “Agentic and AI gets slapped onto just about everything like a bumper sticker right now,” Fleisch said.
He sees two practical roles for the technology. AI can make CDP and collaboration tools easier to operate through natural-language instructions. At the same time, clean and current customer data can provide the foundation that AI agents need to respond accurately.
That makes real-time processing more consequential. A customer speaking with an AI agent generates a rapid series of prompts, responses and changes in intent. The system must continually update its understanding of that person. Real time therefore is no longer merely about suppressing an ad before the customer sees it for the 47th time.
“Can I actually keep up with the speed of customer conversations in my agentic strategy at large?” Fleisch asked. For brands, the answer will depend less on how many times they mention AI at Cannes and more on whether their data can keep pace after everyone flies home.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Axonet and Uber Advertising. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
Marketers spent years building first-party data systems to escape their dependence on third-party cookies. Then many discovered that the solution came with its own collection of clean rooms, technology integrations and fresh silos. Apparently, data infrastructure follows the same rule as household storage: The more containers you buy, the more clutter you find.
Ryan Fleisch, head of product marketing and real-time customer data platforms at Adobe, said data collaboration can help brands connect their customer information with publishers, media networks and other companies. He discussed the strategy with Next in Media’s Mike Shields at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Three letters, endless confusion
“The three letters ‘CDP’ are the most confusing letters in the industry,” Fleisch said. Some companies have a customer data platform, others are shopping for one and still others have declared the entire category dead. This being advertising technology, all three positions can probably coexist inside the same company.
Fleisch argued that CDPs are becoming more important as brands prepare for agentic artificial intelligence. However, data collaboration was not originally considered a core CDP function. Brands often responded by adding separate clean rooms, applications and publisher integrations. The technology designed to eliminate silos gradually became another silo.
Adobe decided to incorporate data collaboration directly into its real-time CDP. The goal is to let marketers activate audiences in clean-room environments without repeatedly constructing new integrations. “On average, brands are working with three to five different clean rooms,” Fleisch said. That is less a clean room than a small office park.
Privacy without a permission slip for everything
Adobe’s platform is designed to leave customer data in its original location while allowing participating companies to analyze audience overlaps. Fleisch said personally identifiable information is not exchanged between parties and campaign results are not returned at an individual level.
The controls are meant to give marketers room to operate while reassuring technology departments that nobody has handed the customer database to an intern with a USB drive. The objective, Fleisch said, is to give IT confidence that “I can let some teams loose with my data and they’re not going to misuse it.”
This kind of collaboration can help an advertiser compare its high-value shoppers with a publisher’s audience data, build a seed audience and find similar prospects without relying on third-party cookies. It also can support brand-to-brand partnerships. An airline, for example, could combine insights about travel behavior with a credit-card partner’s knowledge of shopping activity.
AI gets another bumper sticker
No Cannes conversation would be complete without artificial intelligence arriving before the rosé got warm. “Agentic and AI gets slapped onto just about everything like a bumper sticker right now,” Fleisch said.
He sees two practical roles for the technology. AI can make CDP and collaboration tools easier to operate through natural-language instructions. At the same time, clean and current customer data can provide the foundation that AI agents need to respond accurately.
That makes real-time processing more consequential. A customer speaking with an AI agent generates a rapid series of prompts, responses and changes in intent. The system must continually update its understanding of that person. Real time therefore is no longer merely about suppressing an ad before the customer sees it for the 47th time.
“Can I actually keep up with the speed of customer conversations in my agentic strategy at large?” Fleisch asked. For brands, the answer will depend less on how many times they mention AI at Cannes and more on whether their data can keep pace after everyone flies home.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Axonet and Uber Advertising. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
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