AI’s new era and a live sports showdown: The biggest takeaways from Cannes Lions 2025

The lines between tech, creativity and culture continue to blur at Cannes Lions. The melting pot that is the International Festival of Creativity saw the industry move beyond buzzwords and into business mode this year.

AI was once again the dominant force driving most conversations, but unlike last year, marketers came armed with real use cases.

Like in past years, streamers seem to be conquering the Croisette, where everyone from Netflix to Tubi talked up their offerings while competing over who offers the best live sports coverage. News outlets, too, made their presence known, lest they be forgotten.

When it came to experiential cachet, Pinterest stole the spotlight again, with its immersive Manifestival blending AI tools and Gen Z trend forecasting into a real-life Pinterest board experience.

And as per the norm, star power permeated the air, with the likes of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Reynolds making appearances. Cardi B and Mark Ronson showed up to a Spotify concert too.

But this is a festival celebrating creativity, after all, and to that end, Cannes Lions saw 26,900 award submissions this year. Submissions for design, creative B2B and entertainment Lions for sport grew by double digits.

Without further ado, here are the biggest takeaways from Cannes Lions 2025, where The Current was on the ground:

‘Moving from the wow to the how’

The business implications of AI were on display at panels like “From Buzz to Business: Unlocking AI’s Real Value in Marketing,” which featured Carla Hassan, CMO at JPMorgan Chase, Rankin Carroll, chief brand officer at Mars Snacking, and Alison Wagonfeld, CMO of Google Cloud.

“This year is the wow to the how,” Wagonfeld said. “Last year felt like a lot of bespoke projects. Now it feels very real and the effects of using AI are coming through.”

Mars’ Carroll points to a Snickers AI-powered multiparty partnership that deploys a fully authorized AI clone of the popular Portuguese football manager José Mourinho, to answer fans questions. He said that unlike the metaverse, AI has a “real” and “massive impact to our business.”

“We’re embracing AI in all its forms,” Carroll said, including turning data into actionable insights to clean up the supply chain. “We’re trying to understand what it can add to the brand experience.”

‘An embarrassment of riches’

At the Axios House on Wednesday, executives from nearly all the major streaming platforms were ready to joust for the title of “best in live sports,” including Anjali Sud, CEO of Tubi, Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, and Charlie Collier, president of Roku Media.

Tubi had bragging rights this year as the first FAST streaming platform to air the Super Bowl. Sud, who jests that Tubi is “free Netflix,” dove into its Super Bowl stats during the panel: 24 million viewers on game day, with 40% aged 18 to 34 — an audience she described as “younger, more female, more diverse.”

She further discussed how, as the exclusive free platform for games like the English Premier League, Tubi is now doing more live sports rights in Mexico. Sud hopes she can bring the same model to the U.S., but the price factor currently gets in the way. “When you can offer live sporting events that are also cultural moments … for free — it works. It expands the pie.”

NBCUniversal’s Marshall continued this year’s upfront pitch, homing in on NBCU’s wealth of live sports content that spans its linear channels as well as its streaming platform, Peacock.

“We actually have more professional sports than ESPN has,” Marshall claimed. “There are a lot of articles written about Netflix and Amazon getting into sports. … The fact is it’s not even close in terms of scale.”

He added it’s “an embarrassment of riches.”

Meanwhile, Roku’s Collier zoomed in on Roku’s 84% year-over-year growth; 90 million logged-on users, 125 million daily users, and its many sports zones, including its popular women’s sports zone.

“That’s Super Bowl-size reach, every day,” he said.

As always, sports continue to entice advertisers jockeying for attentive audiences.

“That’s the beautiful things about sports and storytelling. It brings people together,” Reynolds said on a panel at Stagwell Sport Beach that discussed the United Airlines sponsorship of his Wrexham A.F.C. football team and Meta Quest 3 partnership.

“We live in a world right now where identity politics are almost a religion,” he said. “And for that to be checked at the door, in sports, in theatrical film, in music, concerts … we all walk in and go together. The French call it ‘collective effervescence.’ We’re all feeling the same thing, at the same time, at the same moment, and it’s almost like oxytocin.”

Making the case for news

But the focus wasn’t all on entertainment content. Stagwell CEO Mark Penn fiercely defended the value news brings advertisers in a panel titled “Future of News: Why News Junkies Are the Real MVPs.”

Penn kicked off the session by recalling his days overseeing a $2 billion media budget at Microsoft.

“I asked, ‘How much are we spending on news?’ The answer was zero. When we actually ran the models, it should’ve been 20%,” he said, pointing out that news readers — often highly educated and affluent — are ideal consumers for categories like finance and technology.

Despite this, many brands still avoid news because of outdated brand-safety fears. But Penn and the panelists argued that those concerns are overblown, citing the Stagwell news study.

Executives from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Gannett and The Trade Desk reinforced the case.

“Marketers want to be next to things that matter,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company. “When you’re with a brand like ours, your brand inherits some of that importance.”

Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, made the business case crystal clear: “We’re not asking for charity. The efficacy is there. This is where high-value audiences live — and it works.”

Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase, added a powerful buyer’s perspective.

“News isn’t a charitable choice. It’s a business decision — and one that drives real results,” she said, noting that news should be a consistent investment, not a seasonal or “fleeting” one.

As AI’s role in media buying continues to grow, the panel emphasized the need for thoughtful use of algorithms, so journalism is not erased from media plans.

“If your brand claims to value trust, then investing in news is the ultimate test of that,” Lim said.

Passion for Pinterest

As always, selective brand experiences on the Croisette drew crowds.

Arguably the largest, perhaps outside of Amazon Port, belonged to Pinterest again. This year, the social platform’s activation, called Pinterest Manifestival, leaned into new visual search features, largely based on Gen Z search trends.

Judy Lee, senior director of global brand experiences at Pinterest, calls it “a bigger and bolder activation” than ever. Roughly 60 people worked across various elements — from ideation to creative development — over a nine-month span.

“Through a series of personalized experiences — all celebrating creativity, self-expression and Pinterest Predicts trends — guests can take a step into a real-life Pinterest board,” Lee tells The Current, adding that Gen Zers remain its largest growing demographic, representing over 40% of monthly active users.

Pinterest Manifestival’s offered no shortage of cutting-edge entertainment blending technology and style. An AI assistant (powered by Adobe Firefly) decoded visitors’ personal style and Pinterest Patisserie cooked up personalized treats. A custom beauty bar provided makeup refreshes and resets, while a Mars partnership featured an option to decorate your own tin wallets.

Across it all, one thing was clear at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: From AI to streaming to live experiences, what was once hype is now the new marketing playbook.

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.