At Cannes Lions, where the advertising industry gathers each year to pitch the future over rosé, Digitas North America CEO Amy Lanzi delivered a refreshingly blunt message: AI is not going to magically save advertising.
Speaking with The Verge’s Nilay Patel for a live Decoder interview, Lanzi argued that the industry is once again chasing a familiar promise — total automation, cheaper production, perfect targeting, and effortless growth. Her comparison was pointed: AI, she said, is starting to sound a lot like programmatic advertising did years ago.
Back then, the pitch was simple: machines would automate media buying and remove the need for messy human judgment. That never fully happened. And according to Lanzi, the same fantasy is now being repackaged for generative AI in advertising.
AI in Advertising: Useful Tool, Bad Miracle Cure
Lanzi is not anti-AI. Digitas and its parent company Publicis have invested heavily in data, intelligence platforms, and AI-assisted workflows. But she draws a hard line between using AI to improve work and pretending it can replace the strategic, creative, and operational work brands actually need.
Inside Digitas, AI is being used to help employees move faster, automate repetitive tasks, and test more ideas before presenting work to clients. Lanzi described the goal as making talented people “better unicorns,” not removing them from the equation.
That distinction matters because many agencies, platforms, and tech vendors are now making aggressive AI promises in pitches. Publicis even released a satirical ad before Cannes calling out “wrong promises” around AI, including offers that sounded too good to be true — because, in many cases, they probably are.
Why the CMO Role Is Changing Into a Growth Role
One of Lanzi’s strongest arguments was that the traditional chief marketing officer role is fading. Not because marketing matters less, but because marketing is now expected to connect directly to commercial performance.
In her view, the old model of the CMO — show up, launch a few big campaigns, hope for brand lift, and leave after two years — no longer works. Modern marketing leaders need data systems, customer intelligence, commerce strategy, creator partnerships, and the ability to prove business impact.
That is why the industry is talking more about the chief growth officer, or CGO. It is also why Digitas has reorganized around roles such as chief intelligence officer, chief systems officer, and chief transformation officer. The point is not just to make better ads. It is to build marketing systems that help brands grow.
Meta, AI Creative, and the “Creative Is the New Targeting” Debate
A major tension in the conversation was Meta’s vision for AI advertising. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly suggested that brands may eventually give Meta a product image, a budget, and a business goal — while Meta handles the audience, creative, placement, and optimization.
Lanzi pushed back on the idea that “creative is the new targeting,” calling the phrase uncomfortable for an industry built on emotion, story, and brand meaning. Her concern is that endless AI-generated ad variations could turn creative into disposable content, optimized for clicks but detached from what makes a brand trusted or memorable.
She also noted that people do not live on one platform. A customer may use Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, and search for completely different reasons. Brands that hand all control to one platform risk losing the broader consumer context.
The Creator Economy Is Becoming a Marketing Channel
While AI dominated Cannes, creators were everywhere too — and many are now openly positioning themselves as marketers. Lanzi sees creators as a serious channel, not a side tactic.
Publicis’ acquisition of Influential was part of that bet. By connecting creator data with identity and performance systems, Digitas can better understand which creators reach which audiences and whether that activity actually drives business results.
Still, Lanzi warned that creator marketing only works when there is a real fit between the creator, the audience, and the brand. A creator can bring authenticity, but without strategy and brand discipline, the work can quickly become shallow promotion.
Websites, GEO, and the Future of Search
Lanzi also said brands are suddenly asking for more website work again — but not for the old reasons. Websites are being rebuilt as “knowledge sites” that serve both humans and AI systems.
That shift ties directly into generative engine optimization, or GEO. As consumers ask chatbots and AI search tools for answers, brands need to be known for something clearly enough that large language models can surface them accurately.
For marketers, that means SEO is not dead. It is expanding. Digitas’ SEO work has reportedly grown as clients try to understand how they appear in AI-generated answers, Reddit threads, YouTube content, publisher coverage, and other sources that feed modern search systems.
AI Won’t Replace Great Storytelling
Asked whether AI creative will ever become good enough to replace human storytelling, Lanzi was direct: she does not think so.
AI can help teams move faster, build concept boards, generate drafts, and produce everyday commerce assets more efficiently. But the heart of great creative — human insight, emotional tension, humor, taste, surprise — still comes from people.
Her broader message was simple: AI will change advertising, but it will not rescue it from weak strategy, poor incentives, platform dependency, or lazy creative. The brands that win will be the ones that use AI as infrastructure while still investing in people, systems, and stories that customers actually care about.
Tags: #AIAdvertising #Digitas #CreatorEconomy #MarketingStrategy #GenerativeAI
About the Author
