The Digiday Podcast

Instacart's CMO, Laura Jones, at Cannes discusses making every surface shoppable for advertisers. Instacart's retail media offering, omnichannel strategy, and collaborations with major brands like Pepsi and P&G are highlighted. The podcast also touches on data privacy, AI in marketing, and AI's role in enhancing productivity and creativity at Instacart.

We’ve made it to the halfway point of Cannes Lions, where Lee Brown, global head of ads business and platform at Spotify joins this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast. The audio streaming platform has spread its wings a bit, taking a swing at visual content, like music videos and lyrics to follow along with music content. In expanding its content offerings, it has also expanded its opportunity to take in more ad dollars. Keeping pace with the AI boom, Spotify recently announced the launch of its first AI ad format, where marketers can leverage AI for voice ads.For the last 10 years, Spotify Beach has been a Cannes Lions staple, most notably for its concerts on the beach, featuring big-name performers like Dua Lipa or Foo Fighters. For this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast, Brown talks about Spotify’s Cannes anniversary, its play for more ad dollars and becoming a main line item in advertisers’ budgets.

We’re on day three of Cannes, joined by Megan Ramm, global director and head of CPG partnerships at Uber, for this episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast.This is Uber Ads second year in business and simultaneously, second year at Cannes. Just a few days ago, the company announced that it was expanding its programmatic ad business to include partnerships with demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk, Yahoo's DSP and Google’s Display & Video 360. As of late, programmatic has had a rough go with shrinking ad budgets, uproar around made-for-advertising sites and more.As Uber Ads continues to grow its business, Ramm stopped by the Digiday Podcast at Cannes to talk about Uber's approach to challenges in programmatic, the rise of artificial intelligence and the company’s trajectory.Recorded in Spotify’s studio on the beach at Cannes Lions, tune into the conversation with Ramm.

On day one of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the Digiday Podcast is joined by Dow Jones CMO Sherry Weiss live from the Wall Street Journal’s new location — WSJ has relocated from on the pier to its new location next to the famous Carlton Hotel.Thus far, it's been the usual wheeling and dealing of Cannes Lions with dinner parties and happy hours. Much of the conversation at Cannes has been dominated by the topic of artificial intelligence, a focal point for Weiss. On the ground here at Cannes, Weiss said she's looking to chat with partners about leveraging AI tools for the creative process, something that's become mainstream amongst marketers at this point. But as the AI hype cycle continues, data privacy, safety, and return on investment become bigger talking points."Honestly, that's going to be a lot of what I'm gonna be doing this week," Weiss said, "is talking with some of our tech partners to figure out how we can start using some of their technology."In the second episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast, Weiss talks about AI tools in marketing, data privacy within AI and WSJ’s new ad campaign to boost readership.

Hilton CMO Mark Weinstein discusses the ongoing AI hype cycle and its impact on Cannes Lions. He highlights the need for meaningful discussions on AI's role in marketing strategies. Tune in to learn how Hilton is incorporating AI internally and navigating the evolving landscape of creative AI at Cannes.

Molly Burke and Tyler Oakley joined YouTube more than a decade ago and built their respective online followings by advocating for the causes and communities of people that were important to them — even if it wasn’t always the easiest way to rapidly grow given the platform’s algorithm.Since then, Burke and Oakley both expanded to additional platforms, like Patreon and Twitch, to continue garnering meaningful relationships with their followers. While Burke said she’s been able to learn a lot about her viewers personally through Patreon, Oakley said that two-way direct communication on Twitch has been instrumental in how he creates content in the moment.In the fourth and final episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Burke and Oakley discuss why advocacy and speaking from the heart has always been central to their strategies as long-form video content creators, and why that’s helped grow their audiences and businesses.

In a world where video has become the predominant medium for content creators, Substack offers a reprieve in the form of the written word.The subscription-based newsletter platform received a surge of interest during the pandemic, garnering hundreds of new creators — including Hunter Harris and Caroline Chambers — who were interested in monetizing their ideas without always needing to jump in front of a camera. And less than four years later, the platform has enabled these creators to monetize their content via thousands of paid and unpaid subscribers — not to mention advertiser sponsorship, affiliate links or even book deals.In the third episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Harris and Chambers discuss how they’ve transitioned their Substack subscriber bases into communities that ultimately help them feed the funnel of audience engagement.

Ben and Lazara Martin, a family of social media creators with nearly 8 million followers, share their journey from part-time vloggers to full-time content creators. They discuss navigating the influencer world, maintaining relevance across platforms, engaging with their audience, and building successful brand partnerships. The podcast highlights the challenges and successes of being a family of social media mavens in the ever-evolving creator landscape.

As a platform, X (formerly Twitter) has seen better days. After Elon Musk took over back in 2022, the platform has fallen from grace with advertisers and creators alike, due to the reinstatement of previously banned accounts, an increase in bots and simultaneous decrease in brand safety. However, X hasn’t managed to scare away everyone.In fact, Jessica Davis, a part-time creator who focuses on career content, has managed to build out a following of more than 40,000 people since starting her account in 2021. Since then, she's been able to convince subscribers and brands to shell out for her tweets, pulling in revenue from monthly subscriptions and funds from the platform's ad revenue sharing program, which launched last summer.In the first episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Davis talks about being a text-based content creator in the short-form video era, navigating brand safety on X and the future of content creation in the ever changing landscape of social media.

Formed in 2020 after TPG bought Goal.com from DAZN, FootballCo has been steadily growing an international audience of soccer fans across its portfolio of nine brands.But this year, FootballCo is making a concerted effort to appeal to the burgeoning fandom of U.S.-based soccer enthusiasts under the leadership of Jason Wagenheim, CEO, North America.Wagenheim, previously the CRO of Bustle Digital Group, joined FootballCo having never before worked in sports media, but that’s what he said his bosses were interested in. Having led the advertising businesses for many lifestyle media companies in his career, Wagenheim said his goal is to convert “soccer curious” advertisers into active spenders by blending lifestyle and sports content into a video-dominant mix that appeals to non-sports native brands.And with many global soccer sporting events coming up in North America over the next couple of years, culminating in the men’s World Cup in 2026, Wagenheim is hitting the ground running, using these tentpole moments to appeal to advertisers and audiences alike in this market.