AI-Powered Creativity Takes Center Stage at Cannes Lions 2025

One of the loudest themes out of Cannes Lions 2025 was the generative AI wave sweeping creative workflows. Meta, TikTok and Adobe all rolled out new AI-driven tools to churn out campaign content faster and at scale.

• Meta’s Advantage+ suite now auto-generates video ads from still images, complete with music, overlay text and even product highlights.

• TikTok’s new Symphony tools likewise turn single images or text prompts into five-second branded clips, and even animate products via digital avatars.

• Adobe’s GenStudio for Performance Marketing lets teams drag-and-drop assets into on-brand social or display ads, including short-form videos.

In short, the “barrier to entry” for video creative is collapsing – small businesses can now spin a product collage into a polished clip without an agency or studio. At the same time, Cannes speakers stressed that AI is a co-pilot not a replacement: humans set the vision and tone while AI accelerates execution.

These tools also aim for smarter personalization:

• Meta’s “GEM” generative recommendation model and its new tone-of-voice AI help serve ads that match a user’s identity and interests, boosting performance without ad fatigue.

• Pinterest’s labs unveiled auto-collages, an AI that repackages a brand’s product catalog into trendy shoppable boards – in tests these saw double the saves of standard product pins.

• Adobe announced an LLM Optimizer that analyzes how content ranks on AI-powered search/chat systems, recommending tweaks for better discoverability.

Put simply, creative teams can now iterate thousands of ad variations and placements automatically, but success still depends on strategy. Performance marketers will want to experiment with these new tools – but remain hands-on about brand consistency and messaging tone.

Shifting Content Discovery and Consumption

People aren’t consuming media the same way they did even a year ago. Cannes highlighted how streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping (the “4S” behaviors) now define discovery.

Video dominates – OTT and social video now reach hundreds of millions of Americans – and short-form clips are prime discovery moments. In Google’s view, 78% of viewers agree that trusting creators helps them make quicker purchase decisions, with 98% trusting their favorite YouTubers over other platforms.

TikTok reinforced this: they pointed out that 81% of video app users say TikTok surfaces topics they didn’t know they liked. In practice this means audiences jump between formats – for example moving from scrolling “Shorts” videos to streaming a full show – and brands need to be present at each touchpoint.

Search itself is evolving. TikTok executives even called TikTok the new “home of search,” noting that a quarter of users search within the app within 30 seconds of opening it.

TikTok’s new Search Center tool (announced at Cannes) brings keyword planning and ad buying in-app so marketers can show up on these in-app queries. Likewise, Google highlighted that visual search is surging: Google Lens does over 20 billion searches monthly and 1 in 5 lens queries have shopping intent. Gen Z in particular is adopting image-based “Circle to Search” and augmented reality lookups for quick inspiration.

For performance marketers, this means optimizing beyond classic SEO. Brands should optimize imagery (alt-text, schema) and short video metadata for AI and visual queries, and ensure listings are ready for “as-you-watch” shoppable ads on YouTube and TikTok.

At the same time, attention spans and platforms are fragmenting. Cannes panels noted that consumers want content when they want it, across a growing slate of channels. For example, Amazon’s star-studded “Port” event emphasized that storytelling must be authentic and on the consumer’s terms. As Jamie Lee Curtis quipped, brands need to “tell the truth and sell shit” – meaning ads must entertain or educate, not just interrupt.

The takeaway: mix your video and social strategy. Invest in creator-led content (since audiences trust peer voices), embrace livestreams and short clips, and target ads to the emerging “scroll + purchase” moments.

Retail Media and Search: Converging Ecosystems

Retailers are no longer just “places to buy” – their ad networks are morphing into full-featured media platforms. Cannes saw retailers partnering across the ecosystem to meet users where they search and shop.

A standout was CVS Media Exchange partnering with Reddit. This tie-up makes CVS’s first-party shopper segments available on Reddit forums, letting brands target high-intent audiences in authentic community conversations.

As Reddit’s CMO said, “high-intent shoppers [use Reddit] to engage in real conversations about health and beauty… connecting that intent with CVS’s reach to create a seamless path to purchase”.

Similarly, Pinterest and Instacart announced an integration: advertisers can layer Instacart’s purchase data onto Pinterest campaigns, making pins shoppable through Instacart. In practice, a user pinning a recipe could instantly buy ingredients via Instacart.

These partnerships show retail media blurring into search and social: your product data and first-party analytics now help seed audiences on Reddit, Pinterest or other non-retail channels.

What it means for search and SEO: brands must think of retail networks as owned-media extensions. First-party commerce data (from Amazon, Instacart, CVS, etc.) can now feed into audience-building in paid search and programmatic buys.

SEO pros should monitor these new “stores” as potential SERP-impacting platforms (for example, optimize product listings for voice assistants or live shopping queries). And with privacy-driven signal loss, retailers’ logged-in data (like Amazon’s and Instacart’s) could become critical for media targeting and attribution.

Retail media is “the new black” – it’s reshaping how search audiences are defined and will increasingly require aligning shopping signals with content across all channels.

AI in Planning, Personalization and Visibility

AI was woven through sessions not just in creative but in media planning and content optimization. Adobe’s Cannes announcement of its new LLM Optimizer illustrates this: it analyzes how a brand’s content performs in generative-AI search (think Bing Chat, Google Gemini, etc.) and suggests edits to boost visibility.

In other words, SEO is extending into AI chat: marketers will need to tune FAQs and on-site content for conversational queries, not just keyword search. Similarly, TikTok’s data shows search is now a performance channel: their new Search Center in Ads Manager recommends keywords and creatives for in-app queries. As TikTok reported, search ad CTRs rose 66% and CPAs fell 33% for one advertiser using search ads.

Personalization also got an AI upgrade. Meta pointed out that its “GEM” AI model can increase ad frequency by keeping messages personalized – letting them scale impressions without annoying users.

Amazon Ads, meanwhile, highlighted new Roku and Prime Video partnerships: by linking Amazon DSP with Roku’s CTV ID graph, advertisers gain cookieless reach to 80M logged-in TV households. It suggests that retail DSPs (like Amazon) are bridging into traditional search and video inventory – a reminder that even in “search” marketing, non-Google channels like Amazon and CTV matter more every year.

AI is also humanizing advertising. Reddit’s new Community Intelligence suite brings community voice into ads: its Conversation Summary add-on pulls positive Reddit comments under an ad, adding social proof and boosting CTRs (tests show +19% lift).

For SEO/SEM pros, this signals that user reviews and Q&A snippets might become part of ad creatives or knowledge panels – reinforcing that user-generated content drives trust. In short, AI is speeding up planning (like Amazon’s automated audience signals for live shopping and Pinterest’s AI trend forecasts), but it’s also demanding transparency and relevance.

Strategic Takeaways for Marketers and SEOs

Cannes Lions 2025 sends a clear message: visibility now spans many surfaces. Ads and content must be optimized not just for a Google SERP but for TikTok’s For You page, shopping feeds, CTV screens and AI chats. Performance and SEO professionals should:

• Embrace creative AI cautiously. Use tools like Meta’s image-to-video or TikTok Symphony to scale fresh content, but keep brand oversight. Focus on iterative testing of AI-generated creatives and measure their lift – remember Meta claims 22% higher ROAS on average for campaigns using Advantage+ automation.

• Optimize for new discovery paths. Leverage Google Lens and visual search by tagging images and products properly. Invest in shoppable video ads (YouTube/shorts, TikTok) and ensure your product feeds are compatible with these platforms. And watch out for TikTok Search and Amazon DSP as legitimate search channels – try search ads on TikTok and product listing ads on Amazon if not doing so already.

• Leverage first-party retail data. Syndicate your retail media segments into other channels. For example, use your Shopify/Instacart data to build custom audiences on Facebook/Meta; or collaborate with social platforms like Pinterest to make your product pins shoppable. Conversely, feed social trend insights back into retail campaigns: Pinterest’s new AI Trends tool feeds what users are saving and shopping into brand forecasts.

• Partner with creators and communities. The Cannes emphasis on “authentic content” means branded content alone won’t cut through. Co-create with influencers (who 98% of users trust) and tap into subcultures on forums like Reddit or Discord. Monitor social discussions (using tools like Reddit Insights) to discover emerging search intent and incorporate those themes into your SEO content calendar.

• Invest in media efficiency and measurement. Make sure your tech stack (demand-side platforms, analytics) can ingest these cross-channel signals. And use AI planners for budget allocation: for example, TikTok’s Market Scope analytics helps identify which audience behaviors move the needle.

In summary, Cannes Lions 2025 underlined that visibility is evolving. It’s no longer just about search rank or impressions, but about appearing where people are searching and consuming.

The brands that win will treat AI as an enabler of human creativity and insight – scaling personalization without losing soul – and will treat every platform (retail site, social feed, creator channel) as a potential “search engine” for their products. By marrying creative agility with data-driven targeting, marketers and SEOs can ride these trends rather than be overtaken by them.