Everyone said AI. The 2026 Cannes Lions meant humanity.

Every conversation at Cannes this year was about AI. The message between the lines confirmed the opposite: the future of monetisation lies in humanity.

Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc., provocatively defined the 2026 Cannes Lions as “the first post-ad tech, post-open web Cannes” on Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting podcast while advocating for the focus on trust, engagement and loyalty that come from a direct relationship with the audience.

Whenever I listen to Neil Vogel, I get angry. Not about what he says but because not enough people say it. The caveat: there isn’t one single “digital advertising” and Neil is right from his premium media perspective. What People Inc. are doing doesn’t grow on trees: it requires a strategic vision and an immense, disciplined determination in implementing it. It means choosing the long-term route while the rest of the market defaults to the same old self-damaging shortcuts, hoping for different outcomes this time (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

For those outside the premium tier, the opposite is true: ad tech is here to stay, and so is the open web (while you’ll be running on a treadmill 24/7 to provide ad slots to the “machine”).

I wrote recently that Gen AI will make the delusion of infinite reach at good enough quality a reality for ad tech companies that will be able to finally run the show by themselves, without any need for premium media. The open web becomes utility content: nobody will care whether a human or a machine wrote it, as long as it is accurate.

Cannes 2026 screamed in our faces that the advertising world we have known is ending and that we need different perspectives and strategies.