
Show Notes
Cannes Lions Day 3: Moloco CMO Paul Darcy on AI Disruption, Brand vs Performance + Festival Voices & Award Highlights
On day three of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, host Conor Byrne records The Cannes Sessions in partnership with The Digital Voice and interviews Paul Darcy, CMO of Moloco, fresh off an Adweek panel on how AI and LLM-driven consumer behavior are disrupting digital brands and acquisition channels. Darcy discusses the growing importance of brand as a signal to LLMs, the rising opportunity cost and measurement challenges of brand media versus increasingly optimized performance marketing (including CTV and in-app video), and Moloco’s focus on expanding modern performance surfaces. He also summarizes Moloco and BCG’s report on AI disruption by industry, highlighting discovery and customer-relationship durability, and notes AI overviews reducing clicks. The episode also features Cannes attendee perspectives (Amir Rasekh of Nectar 360, Beatrice Bordel Grant, Pauline Yoo from Samsung Ads, and Max from Adnormally) and Conor’s press-room roundup of select Cannes Lions winners. 00:00 Welcome to Cannes 01:15 Meet Paul Darcy 01:39 AI Disrupts Brands 02:43 Brand vs Performance 04:29 Performance as Brand 05:19 Fixing Ad Inefficiency 06:44 Moloco Growth Mission 07:19 BCG Disruption Report 10:33 Digital Voice Street Chats 10:56 Nectar 360 Goals 11:50 Amazon Port Surprise 14:24 Samsung Ads Highlights 16:12 Networking at Cannes 17:34 Press Room Winners 20:07 Wrap and Tomorrow That’s What I Call Marketing is where marketers come for real conversations about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession. Hosted by Conor Byrne, the show features conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, authors, thinkers and practitioners about what good marketing looks like in practice.
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