At Cannes Lions, The COOL Company Founder & CEO Zack Dugow joined industry leaders for two conversations about the future of advertising. Different topics. Same conclusion: the biggest advantage isn’t AI itself. It’s how marketers use it.
Watch both conversations below discussing AI and the future of advertising.
Panel: Consumers Hate Ads. So Why Do Great Ads Still Work?
Consumers don’t hate advertising. They hate advertising that feels irrelevant, repetitive, or disruptive.
The ads people remember do something different. They entertain. They inform. They create an emotional connection. And increasingly, AI is helping marketers deliver those experiences at a level of speed and personalization that wasn’t possible before.
In this conversation, Zack Dugow joins Lauri Baker (KERV.ai), Greg Stuart (Marketing + Media Alliance), and moderator Ruth Mortimer (Advertising Week) to discuss why creativity still matters, how personalization is evolving, and why AI is moving beyond being faster and cheaper to becoming genuinely better.
Panel: Advertising After the Algorithm
The advertising industry spent years chasing better targeting, better measurement, and better optimization. Now those capabilities are the baseline.
The next advantage comes from connecting creative, media, measurement, and optimization so every signal improves the next decision across channels. AI makes that possible, giving marketers the ability to test, learn, and optimize at a scale no human team could achieve on its own.
In this session, Zack joins Brian Benedik (The Weather Company), Rachel Vardon (Tripadvisor), and moderator Ana Milicevic (Sparrow Advisers) to explore what comes next as AI reshapes the way brands create, activate, and optimize advertising.
