Cannes Lions: Luca Filardo CRO, Adlook on AI, Accountability and the Future of Programmatic

For years, programmatic advertising has been optimised around clicks, viewability and other proxy metrics. But marketers increasingly want a much simpler answer: what did this investment actually do for the business?

Recorded live at Cannes Lions, John Horsley sits down with Luca Filardo, Chief Revenue Officer at Adlook, to explore how AI is changing the economics, speed and expectations of digital advertising.

Luca explains why marketers are moving beyond media metrics towards ROAS and real business outcomes, and how AI is making it possible to change targeting, creative and campaigns in real time as market conditions shift.

They also get into conversational campaign building using LLMs, AI-powered audience creation, connected TV, attention and creative optimisation, the growing problem with publisher ad overload, fraud, and why the role of a modern CRO now extends far beyond simply running a sales team.

Plus, Luca shares why relentless curiosity matters in an industry moving this quickly, and the Japanese principle of Kaizen: getting a little better every single day.

A conversation about what happens when programmatic stops simply buying media and starts responding intelligently to the world around it.