Cannes Lions: Ad agencies are subsidising their own AI displacement
It may have been all smiles at Cannes, but behind closed doors the future of AI poses a huge threat to ad agencies, writes Paul Armstrong
Cannes wrapped last week with sun, celebration and (Meta) spectacles. Brands congratulated themselves on big ideas, bold storytelling, some disgraceful headlines and culture-first thinking. Behind the scenes, platforms continued methodically reshaping customer access and removing marketers from the equation while leaving them with the bill.
Google’s clampdown on robocalls has been positioned as an anti-spam measure. But functionally, it is an elegant removal of human sales from customer journeys. Google Assistant can now wait on hold, transcribe calls and complete basic service interactions without requiring direct brand contact. Customers are learning that they never need to speak to a business again, and that should terrify a lot of businesses, not just sales teams. Your customer relationship doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Google.
Meta is also shifting. Zuck and co have publicly committed to automating the ad generation process by 2026. Not just creative assets but audience targeting and media buying, too. No strategic brief, no agency, just objectives and inputs. The Cannes crowd will undoubtedly argue the output will be trash, but most consumers would argue a lot of ads made today weren’t made by humans with any sense of a grip on reality. Profit grows when human ‘variables’ get removed from the system. Meta is not interested in creative collaboration; the endgame is full-stack automation of brand communication within a walled garden. Zuck knows the big companies will use agencies but the 90 per cent of SMEs, well, now they’ve got more to play with.
How ad agencies are responding to AI
No agency or marketing team can afford to ignore these shifts. Platform incentives do not reward brand nuance, emotional resonance or craftsmanship. Conversions, watch time and performance are optimised by models that care only about outcome. Messaging may survive as decoration, but influence now sits inside the interface. While AI may not have been positioned as a huge threat at Cannes, behind closed doors, very different scenarios are being planned.
Agency efforts to keep pace with this shift are both encouraging and troubling. A recent report by the 4As and Forrester found that 75 per cent of agencies now incorporate AI into their operations, up from 61 per cent last year. Adoption no longer feels optional. At the same time, 75 per cent of those investing in AI are covering costs internally; 12 months ago, that number was 41 per cent. Margins are being squeezed to support tools that may eventually remove the need for the agency altogether.
Replacing repetitive tasks with automation is sensible. Funding that automation by cutting strategic capacity is not. If clients are not paying for efficiency gains, agencies are subsidising their own displacement. Without clear value redefinition, competitive advantage evaporates.
Creative work built on AI-enhanced tooling must be paired with context-aware thinking. Automated content is rarely strategic. Models are not brilliant at understanding timing, cultural nuance or risk appetite. High-performing agencies will anchor themselves in insight, judgement and pattern recognition across systems and sectors, but execution now belongs to the platform. Interpretation still remains up for grabs, but for how long would have been good to see discussed at Cannes.
Digital attention is increasingly shaped by AI-driven pathways. Google’s assistant not only manages calls, it structures the entire interaction flow. We’re only just starting to see customers are now outsourcing refund requests, complaint calls and purchase issues to AI (imagine when the floodgates open), but more than these, customers are being conditioned to prefer brand avoidance. Fewer interactions mean fewer opportunities to differentiate, convince and convert.
Meta’s vision for campaign automation builds the same reality on a different track. Brands upload assets, define a goal and leave the rest to the machine. Any person can see there are multiple issues with that system to say nothing for more nuanced emotional storytelling options.
Big Tech are now talking to your customers
None of this should surprise anyone, the platforms are not remotely trying to enhance anything, let alone your brand communications. Every new feature is designed to increase dependency and reduce variation. Personalisation now comes from user data, not from brand strategy. Decisions are made based on behavioural inputs and real-time model inference, not on crafted copy or careful design. Is that all bad? Of course not.
Response to these shifts cannot be tactical; brands need to move fast to build owned infrastructure. First-party data, community-driven engagement and value-driven loyalty over automation should be a focus or brands will quickly be screened, blocked and hacked. Rented attention feels like 2020 thinking; automation just cheapens it further. Owned audiences offer brands multiple avenues that ad automation and outsourcing never will. Agencies have an opportunity here – adapt or die. Clients still need help navigating complexity, managing change and protecting equity in an environment increasingly designed to flatten equity.
Avoiding automation is not the goal, but repositioning to lead in a post-truth, maybe post-persuasion, world is. Agencies should become the ones that help brands understand when not to automate, how to intervene in model behaviour and where human creativity still drives commercial return. Right now, if Cannes is anything to go by, the old guard are ready to party into the sunset, throwing the keys to the rest of the team who are looking at a burning dumpster.
Cannes may have closed with rosé and press releases, and no doubt there was good work celebrated, but behind the glamour, customer access has shifted again. Google owns your conversation layer. Meta is redesigning your campaign engine. AI now mediates (or soon will) almost every touchpoint. There’s a reason why independent AI advice clubs for agencies like BILL[AI]ABLE have a waitlist. Businesses need to start lasering in on the creative marketers who reliably find ways to connect. Agencies will still matter, if they change fast enough. What cannot happen now is complacency, because your customers are not waiting, the platforms have already answered the call for you.
Paul Armstrong is founder of TBD Group and author of Disruptive Technologies.