At Cannes, advertisers are still hunting for an alternative to...

At Cannes, advertisers are still hunting for an alternative to Google and Facebook


The biggest spenders and personalities from the advertising and media worlds descended on the French Riviera this past week for Cannes Lions, an extravagant week-long party full of elaborate dinners, exclusive concerts and a limitless supply of rosé.

Tech companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rented out sprawling beachside cabanas for the week to host meetings and schmooze with business partners.
Others, like Spotify and Verizon’s newly formed AOL-Yahoo tie-up, Oath, threw big parties with expensive musical performances. (In Oath’s case it was Fleetwood Mac front-woman Stevie Nicks; Spotify had Solange Knowles, sister of Beyonce.) Medialink and iHeartMedia threw their very exclusive dinner party again this year where R&B star The Weeknd performed for celebrities like Ryan Seacrest and CEOs like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.
But despite all the distractions — and there were plenty — Cannes is also a place where actual deals get done. Many ad buyers and ad sellers use the week to plan out spending for the second half of the year, and who shows up and who makes a scene can give you a good idea of the current pecking order for the industry.
Who’s No. 3?

The big, 60,000-foot takeaway from dozens of conversations this week is something that we’ve all known for a while: Facebook and Google are absolutely dominating the digital ad market, and buyers are eager for a third player to offer some competition.
What was different this year from years past is that folks no longer believe that the third player, if one ever emerges, will be another platform, like a Twitter or Snapchat. Instead, it feels like No. 3 might be a content provider, a company like Verizon-owned Oath or Comcast-owned NBCUniversal*, that has more control over the content they distribute.
There are a couple of reasons why this matters. One is that advertisers claim they don’t get enough data from Facebook and Google about who, specifically, they’re reaching with their ads.
The hope is a third player might share more of that info. But the other important reason is “ad adjacency,” which is ad industry speak for making sure your ads don’t appear next to something offensive, like an ISIS video.

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