If there was any doubt that Commerce Media had infiltrated nearly every aspect of advertising, the presence of retail media networks in Cannes sealed it.

Not only did Target, Walmart and of course Amazon take their now standard positions along the Croisette, but Cannes newbies United Airlines, Kroger and even Chase were out in force.

In addition to the pure RMNs, there were numerous sessions on shoppable everything, including lots of talk about the growth of TikTok Shop. YouTube looks to be trying to catch up here by inking a deal with Instacart, which in turn just announced partnership with the New York Times, which allows users of its cooking app to add everything needed for recipes to their carts.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and The Trade Desk entered Cannes in something of an ad tech war, while Amazon - with it's new Relevance product - seemed to take a shot at The Trade Desk.

"To replace cookies with a single ad identifier is not a viable long-term strategy," said Brian Tomasette, director of product and engineering for the Amazon DSP, in AdExchanger. Which is exactly the plan for The Trade Desk-backed cookie-replacement UID 2.0.

Of course, it's easy for Amazon to take that position, given that it's got more consumer data than perhaps anyone on the planet.

Dig Deeper With These Links:

• Why commerce media networks are making a bigger play at Cannes Lions 2024 - Kristina Monllos [Digiday]

• The Trade Desk Threatens to Demonetize Yahoo Video - Catherine Perloff [Adweek]

• Instacart is betting on YouTube to turbocharge its $871M ad business - Allison Smith [Modern Retail]

• United’s New Ad Network Has Programmatic On Its Flight Plan - Allison Schiff [Adexchanger]

• Amazon’s Post-cookie Ad Plan—how It Thinks About Alternative Ad Ids And What It Built Instead - Garett Sloane [Ad Age]

• How Retailers Became Ad Platforms - Sebastian Gabel, Duncan Simester & Artem Timoshenko [Harvard Business Review]