At Cannes Lions 2025, one message came through loud and clear: in a fragmented digital landscape, the most powerful brands are those that blend creativity, technology, and tangible real world presence. The festival once again served as a global pulse check on the future of advertising. Amid the buzz around AI and content saturation, marketers across industries emphasized the need for meaningful, human-centered storytelling, and a renewed focus on channels that foster real connection, not just clicks.
Out of home played a standout role in those conversations, reminding the industry of its unmatched ability to bridge creativity and context in the physical world. Cannes conversations and activations underscored why OOH is more relevant than ever: it’s bold, brand-safe, measurable, and rooted in the environments where people live, work, and play. As advertisers look to break through the oversaturated digital landscape, OOH offers a powerful platform for storytelling at scale.
“This year at Cannes, Out of Home was undeniably front and center. From JCDecaux’s immersive ‘The Avenue’ experience to OAAA’s ‘Real World Advantage’ cocktails and conversation event with GSTV, Intersection, Lamar, and StackAdapt in The Female Quotient Lounge, OOH took center stage across conversations and activations. The Croisette itself felt like a living case study in the medium’s ability to create meaningful and engaging brand connections.
That presence was echoed in the Outdoor Lions, where KitKat and the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony Paris 2024 earned the Grand Prix. Both campaigns redefined how brands can show up in real life, showcasing the impact of brands as experiences,” said Anna Bager, President & CEO of OAAA.
We asked the OAAA community who attended this year’s Festival to share their top takeaways, and what those insights mean for the OOH industry. Here’s what they had to say:
Cannes made one thing clear: creativity is still the most powerful driver of business growth—and now, AI is the accelerant. When harnessed intentionally, AI doesn’t replace big ideas; it unlocks them at scale. The future belongs to brands that lead with imagination and use technology to move at the speed of culture. Oh, and while we all have enough industry swag, it was the fans, parasols, and heat hacks that truly earned their place in the tote bag. – Randi Stipes, CMO, The Weather Company
AI was the dominant theme at Cannes Lions this year, from creative generation to programmatic. What also really stood out to me is how OOH continues to be a creative powerhouse, which we heard in a lot of the great conversations at JCDecaux’s The Avenue experience, proving that in an AI-driven world, real world context still matters deeply to brands. – Faith Garbolino, Chief Commercial Officer, JCDecaux
This year’s Cannes conversations echoed several of the key themes from OAAA’s OOH Media Conference, particularly the persistent challenges of fragmentation and measurement. Of course, no 2025 Cannes takeaway would be complete without mentioning AI and automation, the consensus is there’s quite an opportunity for ad tech to unify around these solutions.
What was most exciting to me, however, was the chatter around OOH no longer being seen as a top funnel awareness driver. With the integration of data, it has become a full funnel medium, including performance, and is poised for continued growth.
Overall, all the Cannes activations (and OOH billboards) I saw on La Croisette were fantastic, most especially Perion Beach! – Kira LeBlanc, SVP of Global Activation, Perion
Challenger brands continue to pursue innovation and activation. Cannes has long been a place for legacy brands to show up and show out, but we’ve started to see more “challenger brands” along La Crosiette, signaling the importance of upper funnel brand marketing and IRL experiences. Brands that truly stood out this year included Viator, Mozilla, Chime & E.L.F. – Brian Rappaport, Founder & CEO, Quan Media Group
There’s a renewed energy around OOH as a medium for real world connection in an increasingly virtual world. Brands are recognizing the unique power of physical presence—to stop people in their tracks, to create moments of wonder, and to anchor campaigns in culture. As digital channels become more fragmented, OOH has emerged as a unifying force that drives both reach and resonance, IRL. – Esther Raphael, CMO, Intersection
One of the key themes at Cannes Lions was how marketers are rethinking the balance between brand and performance marketing. There’s a growing consensus that the pendulum swung too far toward performance, with a heavy reliance on data from digital media – perhaps due to COVID – and is now shifting in search of a more optimal mix. That’s where OOH enters.
Research presented in Cannes showed that 46% of marketers plan to increase investment in brand strategy, while just 8% plan to decrease. During the ANA Growth Council session, it was noted that the median revenue ROI rises by over 90% when moving from a performance-only to a mixed approach.
Today’s OOH not only delivers reach, awareness and relevance, but also offers the same level of data-driven insights and optimization metrics modern marketers expect from other channels, bridging the gap between brand building and performance marketing with measurable impact. – David Kahn, VP, National Client Solutions Team Leader, Clear Channel Outdoor
Our conversations at Cannes underscored the importance of real world advertising as the media landscape becomes more fragmented and filled with artificial content. Humans are craving shared experiences, and OUTFRONT’s IRL presence is a superpower we feel a responsibility to leverage as we work to build trust between brands and consumers. – Brad Alperin, SVP, Head of Enterprise Brand Solutions, OUTFRONT
La Croisette has always been a catwalk for giant posters, but 2025 felt different. The best work wasn’t just seen, it served. Billboards behaved like apps, bus-shelters became utilities, and public space turned into an operating system running quietly in the background of everyday life.
Utility beats spectacle. The most potent ideas didn’t add pixels to the skyline; they subtracted friction from daily life. They treated real world surfaces as APIs—interfaces where citizens could scratch, sip, win, breathe, or simply look up and feel acknowledged.
The brief has evolved from “make them look” to “make them live better for having looked.”
So here’s my standing ovation for 2025: a salute to every creative who stopped decorating space and started upgrading it. Outdoor is no longer the world’s oldest broadcast channel; it’s the newest help-desk – open-air, open-source – and, if we keep our wits about us, wide-open to the next idea you can’t believe what was hiding there all along. – David Shing, Digital Prophet
Cannes Lions 2025 highlighted the powerful synergy between Digital Out of Home (DOOH) advertising and the creator economy, positioning both as crucial to modern media.
DOOH is a dynamic, data-driven, and unskippable platform, leveraging real-time data for personalized messaging and bridging digital and physical worlds. Its “magic” lies in using data analytics and location tech for targeted engagement, especially when paired with social content, amplifying reach exponentially. The creator economy has evolved beyond niche marketing, with creators becoming strategic co-authors of brand narratives. Their authentic voices and community trust are invaluable. Pairing on-platform (social media) and off-platform (DOOH) content creation with creators creates new discovery and engagement avenues.
The “Billboard Famous” phenomenon exemplifies this, showing creators’ desire for DOOH amplification to boost their brand and legitimacy, extending their influence beyond digital platforms. – Michael Girgis, Co-Founder & Principal, DIVE
Published: July 1, 2025