Cannes POV: Speed Is Table Stakes. Proof Is the Differentiator.

The advertising industry has entered the Outcome Era.

The brands winning aren’t automating old playbooks — they’re building new ones. At Cannes 2026, three signals were impossible to ignore: AI has finally matured from hype into craft, measurement has hit a genuine reckoning, and the gap between intelligence and outcome is where the next cycle of spend will be won or lost.

1. AI matured — from a buzzword into a craft tool

The question at Cannes 2025 was “What do we do with AI?” This year, it was harder and more honest: how do we organize around it and actually get ROI? The pilots are over. Everyone is in production. The organizing word of 2026, according to PMG’s leadership: orchestration — designing for omnichannel outcomes, not individual channels.

The craft is real. But so is the discipline required. As Mike Treon of PMG put it on InMarket’s In The Know series at Cannes:

Data is everywhere. Intelligence is not.

— Mike Treon, PMG · In The Know, Cannes 2026

Stan Turek, InMarket’s GM of Measurement, put the tension plainly on stage at Brand Innovators’ Marketing Leadership Summit: “AI is accelerating execution faster than the decision layer can keep up. That’s the problem worth solving.” That’s not a technology critique — it’s an organizational one. Speed without a reliable decisioning layer doesn’t create an advantage. It creates scale in the wrong things. As Natalie Bastian noted on the Salesforce Beach panel: “You can’t blame [AI] for the output — it’s only as good as the question you ask.”

That’s exactly the problem Maestrø — InMarket’s newly launched agentic media optimization platform — was built to solve. Maestrø acts as an accountability layer for AI-powered media: an orchestrator that feeds causal outcomes back into a campaign while it’s still running, so every agent action is grounded in real-world store visits and purchases, not correlation-based proxies. We launched it in beta at Cannes because the timing was right — and because the conversation in every room confirmed the need.

Putting real-time causal measurement directly into clients’ hands before seeing it ourselves is a bet — and a vulnerability. But it’s one InMarket made with confidence in the data infrastructure we built over a decade, with the belief that marketers are hungry for this kind of transparency. By 2028, this will be table stakes. Every platform should be building toward it now.

AI takes everyone to the middle. Outcome Intelligence — the ability to convert signals into actions that measurably move a business — is what separates the brands pulling ahead from those that generate impressive dashboards and cut budgets anyway.

2. Measurement got teeth — incrementality is now the price of admission

According to eMarketer’s June report, only 22% of measurement outcomes are actually used to re-optimize campaigns.¹ Stan cited it from the Brand Innovators stage, and the room felt it — 46% of marketers blame slow processes for the gap, and 41% blame siloed teams.¹ That’s not a measurement problem. That’s a decision problem — and AI is about to make it exponentially more expensive. When media buying execution accelerates, a broken decisioning layer doesn’t stay flat. It compounds.

BCG’s Brian Gouch noted on the Salesforce Beach panel that only ~40% of organizations trust the data entering their AI systems. You cannot build reliable Outcome Intelligence on an unverified foundation. The answer isn’t more data — it’s accountability over the data you already have. As Natalie put it on the same panel: “With accountability comes accuracy in the output.”

Michael Della Penna, InMarket’s Chief Strategy Officer, made the stakes concrete on TikTok’s panel at Cannes: “Measurement moves your business. Optimization drives it.” InMarket’s own meta studies bear that out — TikTok campaigns consistently deliver 2x the average benchmark across other platforms when measurement is connected to real-time in-flight decisioning. The speed of insight matters as much as the insight itself. The platforms that capture budget in the next cycle will be the ones that can prove causation — not just model correlation — and get that proof into the right hands in real time. Incrementality isn’t a methodology upgrade. It’s the price of admission.

3. Causation is the new currency — and the brands that speak it fluently will win

The measurement conversation has grown up. For years, correlation was the default because proving causation was slow, expensive, and impractical at scale. CFOs accepted it because they had no alternative. That’s changing — and fast.

Julia Fedor, Head of Brand Marketing & Measurement at United Airlines, put it plainly on InMarket’s In The Know series:

The goal is to position marketing as a growth driver, not a cost center.

— Julia Fedor, United Airlines · In The Know, Cannes 2026

The marketers asking that question fluently — not who we reached or what we served, but what we actually caused — are the ones walking into budget reviews with confidence. That’s the question Outcome Intelligence is built to answer.

Intelligence Without Action Is Just Noise

The brands defining the next era of advertising aren’t the ones moving fastest. They’re the ones converting intelligence into measurable outcomes. Proof is the differentiator — and the platforms that deliver it will capture budget as the Outcome Era plays out.

InMarket’s Outcome Intelligence platform turns real-world signals — store visits, purchases, and buyer behavior — into causal proof of what your media actually drove. If proof, not just pace, is what’s going to win your next budget conversation, let’s talk. Get in touch at InMarket.com/Contact.

1. Source: eMarketer & TransUnion, “The MMM Actionability Gap,” June 2026.