The data is there; the org structure is not

Advertisers have spent years building clean rooms and data pipelines; the awkward next step is proving any of it improves advertising. "There's no shortage of AI systems and there's no shortage of data, but they live in silos with the brands and with the publishers," said Denise Colella, vice president of Adobe's Global Digital Strategy Group, on a Cannes Lions panel with Omnicom Media's Ben Hovaness and NBCUniversal's Peter Randazzo. The pivot the panel described is away from knowing exactly who someone is and toward inferring receptivity: NBCUniversal's Randazzo said AI can "find those special moments to reach people," and Hovaness pointed to Google's Performance Max as proof AI can find likely customers without a predefined audience.

The crux

The industry's constraint is no longer technology or data volume, it is organizational - assets sit in silos on both the buy and sell side, and the winners will be the ones who actually wire them together.

Sell-side read

Publishers hold the content and context that inference-based targeting now depends on; the sell-side pitch is less "we know the audience" and more "we know the moment," which is what AI-driven buyers are optimized to reward.

Watch

Whether contextual-plus-inference targeting commands a measurable price premium over identity-based segments in the next upfront cycle.