Cannes Lions Day 3: Moloco CMO Paul Darcy on AI Disruption, Brand vs Performance + Festival Voices & Award Highlights

On day three of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, host Conor Byrne records The Cannes Sessions in partnership with The Digital Voice and interviews Paul Darcy, CMO of Moloco, fresh off an Adweek panel on how AI and LLM-driven consumer behavior are disrupting digital brands and acquisition channels. Darcy discusses the growing importance of brand as a signal to LLMs, the rising opportunity cost and measurement challenges of brand media versus increasingly optimized performance marketing (including CTV and in-app video), and Moloco’s focus on expanding modern performance surfaces. He also summarizes Moloco and BCG’s report on AI disruption by industry, highlighting discovery and customer-relationship durability, and notes AI overviews reducing clicks. The episode also features Cannes attendee perspectives (Amir Rasekh of Nectar 360, Beatrice Bordel Grant, Pauline Yoo from Samsung Ads, and Max from Adnormally) and Conor’s press-room roundup of select Cannes Lions winners.

00:00 Welcome to Cannes

01:15 Meet Paul Darcy

01:39 AI Disrupts Brands

02:43 Brand vs Performance

04:29 Performance as Brand

05:19 Fixing Ad Inefficiency

06:44 Moloco Growth Mission

07:19 BCG Disruption Report

10:33 Digital Voice Street Chats

10:56 Nectar 360 Goals

11:50 Amazon Port Surprise

14:24 Samsung Ads Highlights

16:12 Networking at Cannes

17:34 Press Room Winners

20:07 Wrap and Tomorrow

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