It was a big year for optimism at Cannes Lions 2025, from new creator economy and sustainability sessions to Brazil’s win as the first-ever Creative Country of the Year. Yet beneath the festival buzz, tougher questions persisted around attribution, accountability, and how traditional media like TV can thrive in an AI-led world dominated by big tech.
EDO CEO Kevin Krim joined one of those critical dialogues in the panel "Currency & Beyond: The Vision for Outcomes-Based Advertising." Alongside industry veterans like WPP's Nicholas Grand, Human Ventures' Joe Marchese, and OpenAP's Chris LoRusso, the group explored why TV has fallen behind in measurement and how AI can unlock its fair value.
Watch the full panel video here and see below for the panel’s key takeaways.
The measurement gap between TV and digital advertising stems from different industry evolutions. While digital platforms built attribution capabilities from day one, TV has for decades operated on reach-based principles — from CPMs to GRPs – and is still migrating towards better metrics tied to business outcomes.
"The lack of clarity or consistency in goals in TV created this opportunity for walled gardens,” explained LoRusso. “It was called 'reminder advertising.' When you reach everybody, you can just claim last-touch attribution."
Krim similarly recognized this disparity throughout his career journey from digital to TV. "Search and social were fulfilling a lot of demand, and they were taking credit for stuff that TV was doing,” he said.
Without a correction, this bias towards digital can trigger a vicious cycle. Sitting on the agency side, Grand observed that when models “[focus] too much on lower-funnel performance, that ultimately kills brands and impacts tomorrow's performance.”
Media owners face their own unique challenges in the outcomes debate. Rather than committing to metrics they can't control, multiple panelists argued for focusing on what they can deliver: quality audience engagement in premium content environments.
Marchese offered a provocative spin on this point: "Units of time are what we sell. We give you oil. If you take it out, refine it, and turn it into sludge, that's your problem.”
Krim added that, for publishers and agencies, signing up for bottom-funnel results without understanding all the variables that influence sales can be dangerous territory. "Your job is to provide quality media with an attentive audience, and your job is to drive behaviors into the funnel," he said. "Beyond that, there's product, price, inventory, competition, weather — I would say, don't sign up for the bottom-of-funnel."
Of course, modern consumers don't just passively consume advertising content. As TV audiences actively engage, search, and pursue brand interactions after seeing an ad, Krim explained how EDO's TV outcomes data measures these responses in near real-time, using big data and behavioral signals rather than slow, expensive panels or surveys.
As TV’s great convergence accelerates, artificial intelligence (AI) represents another economic game-changer for media leaders. The technology makes sophisticated measurement accessible and affordable, at an efficiency and scale previously thought infeasible.
Grand affirmed this general enthusiasm for AI's potential: "I've been in this business for 25 years now, and I've never seen anything like [it], so I'm more optimistic than I've ever been." He noted WPP's Open Intelligence platform which uses federated learning to measure the value of every touchpoint and media type while optimizing towards client KPIs.
Krim highlighted how AI is already disrupting long-standing unit economics. For network clients, EDO’s cross-screen TV intelligence reduces measurement costs from over $25,000 per campaign to under $2,500 — an over 10x improvement. "You can't do that with people," he noted. "If we try to throw humans at this, first, no one wants that job; second of all, you just don't have the capital for that."
Others cautioned that the potential impact of AI could backfire. "Does it level the playing field? Does it democratize access?” asked LoRusso. “On the flip side, does it actually structurally entrench walled gardens even further? There is an opportunity and a risk here."
While Marchese noted his excitement at AI touching the full workflow, from planning and measurement to creative, he conceded the challenge of growing content volumes. “There’s still 24 hours in a day, which means it will be even harder to fight for people's time,” he said.
While digital has proven susceptible to closed platforms and siloed apps, TV’s history reveals a strength around open, competitive marketplaces. "The upfront is essentially an open auction,” said Krim. “It's highly negotiated, but it's still open. It's not a walled garden, and we need to keep coming back to that."
To nurture those fairer markets, LoRusso stressed the need for more industry collaborations like OpenAP. “TV is fragmented,” he emphasized. “[That] by design requires collaboration and consistency. We [have] evidence that when there’s common standards and workflows across data-driven linear, it absolutely grows the market, and we’re excited to take that vision to streaming next.”
Throughout the discussion, panelists emphasized that technology alone won't solve the industry's challenges. "I think mindset is more of an issue than the tech and the data," Grand explained. "I think AI is going to allow us really to measure things better, but ultimately humans will make the final decisions."
The path ahead for sustainable change requires action from all stakeholders: Publishers must embrace transparency, agencies need to evolve beyond cost-focused negotiations, and advertisers should demand measurement that aligns with their actual business goals. What remains is the collective will to adapt, or cede further ground to digital alternatives.
Ready to discover the true value of your TV advertising? Contact our team to learn how EDO's AI-powered outcomes measurement can maximize your advertising effectiveness.