At Cannes, the Great Gusher of Content Comes With Warning Signs
Given that the limit is no longer the number of channels on the television dial
but the daily human capacity to consume media, the rush is on to get even better at divining what you want before you even know you want it — and to make sure it’s available in ample supply.
As Ben Lerer, a big media investor and a co-founder of Thrillist Media Group said during a seaside stroll here with me, “The cable pipes of yesterday are the social pipes of today.”
That means the personalized feed is going to regulate even more of the digital oxygen we breathe.
“It’s chaos,” Shane Smith, the brash co-founder and chief executive of Vice Media, told me Thursday afternoon as he
sipped wine on the rocks at his sumptuous seaside villa in Cap d’Antibes, Cannes’ even more exclusive neighbor.
There’s never been more stuff being sold, and for me on my end, there’s never been more people buying content.”
Mr. Smith was a coveted dance partner at the festival, which was founded as a celebration of quality advertising
but is now overwhelmed by deal making and schmoozing.
And there was the creeping realization that no one really knows where it’s all going — how
the new digital media innovations will reshape politics, culture and even the world order.
CANNES, France — I imagine that covering the annual Cannes Lions advertising festival here is a little bit
like covering the great Texas oil boom a century ago — only with better food, cocktails and scenery.
