Day two considerably sharpened the conversations on La Croisette. Across Les Monks Café, Adweek House, and the WPP and Empower stages, four distinct sessions surfaced the same underlying tension – between ambition and the foundations required to hold it, between what AI makes possible and the trust that determines whether organisations are given the license to do it. Here is what stood out.
What orchestrating the agentic supply chain actually requires
Day two featured Stelia’s Paul Heathcote joining a panel session alongside Chris Wilhelmi of Monks, Tom Smith of GWI, Matt Groshong of NVIDIA, and Meg Moss of Canva, to address a question the industry is increasingly having to answer with specificity rather than ambition: what does the agentic supply chain actually require to effectively deliver at scale?
The conversation landed shortly after our collaboration was announced with Monks yesterday, alongside their launch of Monks.Flow 2.0. Together, Stelia and Monks have built a first-of-its-kind solution that deploys fine-tuned prediction models trained on brand-specific performance and historic campaign data to pre-validate an ad creative’s projected algorithmic delivery before media spend is committed, and improve return on ad spend.
The session made the case for what that kind of engineering-led approach represents at a structural level. The craft of marketing is being re-architected, and the organisations treating that as an infrastructure question, not just a creative one, are the ones able to move at the speed the market now demands.
What the panel made clear is that the ambition to move at the speed of culture isn’t ultimately a creative challenge. It is a foundations one. The difference between organisations that can deliver on that ambition and those that cannot is increasingly found in what has been built underneath, and whether the foundations are reliable and scalable enough to hold it.
How the agencies winning today are rewiring around AI
The conversation at Adweek House between Sir Martin Sorrell of S4 Capital, David Bell, and Dstillery CEO Michael Beebe was among the more candid of the day. Two architects of the agency holdco model being asked directly: what does the agency business actually become from here?
The framing that cut through is one we have recently addressed within the market. Agencies have navigated every significant shift in the media landscape historically and found a way to adapt and thrive. But the argument brought to yesterday’s session is that AI is different in kind, not just degree. It isn’t simply another medium to work with. It demands a fundamental rewiring of how agencies operate, compete, and create value.
The pressure is coming from multiple directions simultaneously. Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey found that nearly four in ten CMOs were already planning to cut agency budgets as a direct result of AI-driven productivity gains. And JPMorgan’s analysis this year confirmed what the industry has been feeling: brand pressure for measurable ROI and competition from self-service platforms in forcing agencies into build-or-buy decisions, with a widening divide between what can now be automated and what still requires human strategic oversight.
But what the session at Adweek House made clear is that the agencies pulling ahead have understood one key factor: optimising what exists and reorganising around what is possible are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where competitive advantage is now being won and lost.
The agencies treating AI as a capability to layer onto existing structures are now moving in the wrong direction, while the ones coming out ahead are asking how their agency model needs to change entirely, and then executing on that change.
Why trust has become the defining advantage in AI-driven media
Two sessions on day two approached the same question from different directions.
At Empower Café, Trust or Bust: Advertising’s License to Grow spotlighted leaders from across the advertising ecosystem addressing whether the industry is building the kind of trust that gives it the license to keep doing what AI makes possible.
On the WPP stage – featuring Eva Longoria of Hyphenate Media Group, Cristina Diezhandino of Diageo, Liz Taylor of Ogilvy, and photographer J Rankin – the conversation was about where distinctly human value sits in a world where AI can generate content at scale, and why authenticity and storytelling that makes people feel something remain beyond what a model can produce.
Both sessions made the same underlying argument Stelia’s VP of Media and Entertainment had addressed in depth ahead of this week, and yesterday at Cannes it was clear how live the tension between AI, trust, and authenticity remains.
The personalisation opportunity in media has genuinely never been greater – AI capability now enables hyper-personalised experiences at a scale that was not possible even two years ago, bringing the right content to the right audience at the right moment. But the pressure to personalise has accelerated considerably faster than the frameworks for doing so responsibly.
The data at stake in the creative industry is in a category of its own. Understanding viewing behaviour, emotional responses to content and engagement patterns unlocks a different category of exposure. When personalisation starts to feel like surveillance, audiences disengage.
Trust is built in everyday moments: through consistency, transparency, and experiences that feel like genuine value rather than extraction.
The session at Empower Café confirmed that those that will grow advantage over time will treat trust and capability as conditions to be designed for together, not reconciled after the fact – building governance into the architecture of how data is used and how AI is deployed from the beginning.
The consistent argument beneath the noise
The thread running throughout is consistent: the gap between the organisations pulling ahead and those watching them do it isn’t ambition – that is in plentiful supply here this week. It is the seriousness with which the foundations are being treated: the infrastructure, the rewired operating models, and the trust that makes any of it sustainable. The Stelia team is on the ground for the rest of the week, join us if these conversations are on your radar.
