Fresh from the energy and insights of Cannes Lions 2025, our Sustainability Lead and Data Analyst, Dimitris Beis, attended the festival where he represented IAB Europe in a number of key discussions around the most pressing topics in the digital advertising ecosystem today: artificial intelligence and sustainability. From thought-provoking conversations on the future of AI in media to the latest developments in environmental standards like the Global Media Sustainability Framework, Dimitris captured valuable insights from industry leaders and innovators.
Here is what he has experienced and had to say:
“Attending Cannes Lions is an incredible opportunity to take the digital ad ecosystem’s pulse and understand opportunities, concerns, and the general direction of travel. Representing IAB Europe for the second time this year, I had the pleasure of joining a number of interesting discussions across a Croisette that is seeing more digital ad presence than ever before. Below I summarise what I heard relating to two topics at the core of my role: AI and sustainability. “
The big, hot topic of Cannes this year. Every conversation featured at least a reference to AI, every digital professional had an opinion on how it’s fundamentally changing the industry. Thankfully, most opinions were offered with wide error bars - an acknowledgement that nobody knows what a stable state in an AI-powered world really looks like. I noted a few consistent themes around AI-related talk:
Firstly, media owners are in a challenging position. The wide availability of LLM-based interfaces is widely perceived as another trend in a series of innovations that threatens the position of publishers in the digital ad landscape - another way in which the contact surfaces between users and the internet are moving away from their control. Most of the justification I heard was anecdotal; a publisher taking down all pages with evergreen (continually relevant) content because they’re not worth the cost of hosting or a power user sharing they no longer visit web pages for most things. In the IAB Europe AI Working Group, we have already covered initial figures on the impact LLM applications in search have had on publisher referrals. We’ll likely have more activity from outspoken publishers to cover as more of these innovations make their way to Europe. Before the IAB Europe Addressability & Measurement Roundtable at Chez Verve, I had the opportunity to catch up with Grant Gudgel, SVP Marketing at Verve and recent guest on an IAB Europe Digital Dawn podcast episode on AI. He shared that many elements of the thesis he laid out regarding the impact of chat-based interfaces are being confirmed: certain AI resilient types of media are doing better than others. Still, there are professionals that are more cautious about claims regarding widespread adoption of consumer-facing AI technologies. During the roundtable, Simon Halstead, Founder of Halstead Incubation Partners, cast doubt on the expected ubiquity of AI-based interfaces and highlighted that adoption of new technologies usually varies between different demographics.
Secondly, product development is now moving at an incredible pace. This was evidenced both by the multitude of companies reportedly investing a still increasing amount of resources into AI adoption in their product teams and a number of impressive product demos. At Google Beach, a crude sketch involving a couple of whiskers and kindergarten-level stars turned into a short video of a feline astronaut and an accompanying movie poster. It was the magic behind the magic that I was most interested in - a graph showing the architecture that enabled the demo, featuring a chain of Google’s latest models. Gemini created the prompts for Imagen (apparently pronounced similarly to 'imagine') and Veo, specifying the task down to the type of camera lens to be emulated. Each model was used multiple times, adjusting different aspects of the output on each pass. Perhaps one of the reasons for a company to invest in multimodality is the ability to build a strong case for keeping development within a single cloud ecosystem that offers robust AI options across different types of outputs.
I also had the opportunity to learn more about developments in agentic brand safety and what differentiates Scope3’s offering from incumbents in this area. While content analysis has been based on machine learning models for some time (in conjunction with simpler methods such as keyword analysis), part of the delta lies in the fact that the input on the advertiser side is now a prompt rather than a weighting across categories. The product includes granular reporting on blocked pages and can be paired with a number of other agentic tools across functions such as targeting. All in all, there are two questions I will keep in mind as I continue to follow products like these: whether applications relying on large language models and ‘reasoning’ overtake more traditional uses of machine learning (e.g. anomaly detection in IVT / fraud detection use cases) and whether scale ever becomes an issue due to the high demand for inference paired with real-time requirements that prohibit leveraging more cost-efficient batches. Scope3 is presenting their new solutions in our next IAB Europe AI Working Group meeting, during which we will also cover work on the environmental impact of AI. ‘An image is 17,043 words’ shared Anne Coghlan, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Scope3, referring to the equivalence between output types by carbon footprint.
Thirdly, there is a broad sense that media supply chains are going to become a lot simpler. Will it be agencies, due to advancements in AI-driven cross-channel campaign planning combined with the programmatization of channels such as CTV? The pace at which some have redefined themselves around AI might suggest they sense a threat. Will it be DSPs, as end-to-end platforms use AI to enhance their offering to advertisers while also maintaining a steady supply of eyeballs? Microsoft positioned the end of its DSP as a strategic response to AI trends, but many digital professionals still question the announcement. Meta’s big moves on AI might play a part in their push to secure direct relationships with advertisers. Will it be publishers for reasons covered in the first point above? Nobody can say for certain, but most argue the efficiencies and capabilities that advancements in AI are unlocking will force different supply chain segments to adapt the role they play to remain relevant and valuable. I noted that in most discussions, AI was presented as a catalyst rather than the sole driver of transformation. Exclusive data partnerships, the rise of curation, and longer-term media trends were frequently referred to as contributing factors.
In the second half of last year Ad Net Zero and IAB Europe set a clear objective with respect to the digital component of the GMSF project: clear, actionable guidance on how to implement the methodology and publicly available data that would enable application where inputs are currently missing. Both are vital to achieving equivalence and comparability across digital ad stakeholders taking account of campaign emissions. Thanks to Ad Net Zero’s leadership and our mutual commitment to achieving robust and representative methodology, we have been able to shape GMSF v1.2 as such. IAB Europe was involved both as the association representing one of the six covered channels and as a member of the Climate Science Expert Group.
During the event Sustainable Advertising with Google and Campaign UK, right before Anthony Falco, Global Media Sustainability Director at Ad Net Zero, took the stage to announce the release of the latest update, Seb Munden, Chair of Ad Net Zero, called the development process 'both Socratic and Darwinian'. He knew exactly what he was talking about. The Methodology & Framework Working Group (M&F WG), the Sustainability Standards Committee’s vehicle for technical work on environmental impact, has dedicated a substantial portion of its time debating which of the ecosystem’s carbon modeling practices should be integrated into the standard. Our success in producing a coherent proposal is directly attributable to our contributors’ common drive to arrive at the most robust yet feasible output possible. Feedback and challenges from our membership and the Ad Net Zero community were welcomed and decisioning was documented and shared with the industry at every stage. As the group looks back on this methodology marathon, I hope the learnings will fuel replication of the process across the other 5 channels included in the GMSF.
The prevailing narrative on ad sustainability in Cannes was characterised by measured optimism. There was a palpable sense that the topic, due to a variety of economic and political factors, has moved down the agenda. However, in the forums that did cover the environmental impact of advertising, the conversation has evolved. Discussions at the Duration Media Sustainable Roundtable Lunch on the validity of offsetting strategies and the interoperability between corporate emissions inventories and the GMSF were a great example of how the ecosystem’s collective understanding has grown. There is a trend of concepts that used to be confined to meetings with people such as Ad Net Zero Climate Science Expert Group Chair (and self-proclaimed climate nerd) Dr. Bill Wescott now coming up in broader exchanges including ad sustainability newcomers. During the roundtable, Bill shared that while the ad industry was late to the climate party, we are making quick and solid progress.
The work on emissions modeling methodology continues and in all likelihood there will always be work to do to develop the GMSF further. The M&F WG has data levels to operationalise and emissions factor updates to propose. Apart from the technical work, I’m looking forward to seeing what market-level impact Ad Net Zero’s progress with this project will amount to. Buy- and sell-side stakeholders alike have long hailed the lack of standards as an obstacle to more investment in optimising media campaigns and products for reduced carbon footprint. 'Lack of standards' has been the leading response to the question on key challenges to advancing digital ad sustainability in the IAB Europe State of Readiness Survey for the last three years. Now that we have actionable standards for digital and even the first GMSF v1.2-aligned case study, shared by Cedara Chief Operating Officer Eric Shih, it’s time to see whether they will truly be a catalyst. The ambition among vendors specialising in sustainability is that the industry can finally focus on impact - they want to compete with their peers over delivering the best optimisation tactics rather than spend too much time discussing why their methodology is superior. This point was highlighted by Audrey Danthony, Co-founder and CPO at Impact Plus, during the panel discussion that accompanied Ad Net Zero’s announcement of GMSF v1.2 at the Lions Sustainability Hub.
My presentations since late last year have featured two predictions on what’s next in the ecosystem’s path to maturity: verification that ensures sustainability standards are applied consistently and solutions to support the seamless exchange of information required to estimate scope 3 media emissions. In Cannes, Ad Net Zero also confirmed both of these topics are on its agenda moving forward. The latter is fairly straightforward at the trade body level; an open-source platform could be spun up overnight or stakeholders could share data in a decentralized fashion à la supply chain transparency standards. In fact, a proposal for green.json had been put forward by Good-Loop Senior Product and Research Analyst Dr. David Craig a year ago - the problem was that the standard was not yet operational and the data request to different stakeholders was not yet clear. Unsurprising given that David is usually a few steps ahead of the rest of us when it comes to GMSF development. The challenge with data exchange will rather be internal to supply chain stakeholders - publishers, ad tech companies, and agencies will need to build data pipelines to collect and then deliver the information required to apply the GMSF with increasing granularity. In many cases, data will need to be sourced from their partners (e.g. publishers requesting header bidding activity data from SSPs) or aggregated across accounts to avoid the disclosure of business-sensitive information. Sustainability vendors are reporting that many of their clients still require a substantial amount of support on this front.
Verification and the development of an auditing specification for media emissions models will test the ecosystem. It makes perfect sense in theory and 84% of respondents to our State of Readiness Survey agree. I have highlighted the need for trust and transparency in this space since my involvement in the GMSF project began; some kind of certification process is the natural next step to operational standards. The challenge with making this happen will be centered around two very practical questions: how large the bill will be and who is going to cover it. It’s no secret that the ad tech vendors specialising in sustainability often command significantly fewer financial resources than their media owner, ad tech, and brand clients. Still, they contribute a substantial amount of time to industry-level work to ensure their clients eventually receive equivalent figures from different sources. In Cannes, some of the most impactful contributors to the digital methodology shared that should they be expected to cover verification fees alone or face decreased demand for their services in the absence of a certification seal, the cohort of companies innovating on sustainable advertising will likely be thinner in the near future. Advertisers and digital ad stakeholders need to know two things: that their campaign and product emissions are being estimated consistently and that any divergence can be explained and managed. The M&F WG has already placed a standard disclosure form that will describe how each vendor is applying the digital component of the GMSF on its agenda - whether a declarative approach will suffice remains to be seen.
If you're interested in contributing to IAB Europe's efforts in these areas by joining the AI Working Group or the Sustainability Standards Committee, please get in touch with Dimitris at beis [at] iabeurope.eu.
