At Cannes 2026, we teamed with Onetag to chat to some ad tech experts on the state of programmatic and the open web...

As programmatic advertising matures, questions around transparency, addressability, and sustainable monetisation continue to dominate industry conversation - nowhere more so than on the Croisette.

At Cannes Lions 2026, ExchangeWire teamed up with Onetag to sit down with a cross-section of ad tech leaders and get an unvarnished read on where programmatic stands today. From the fallout of cookie deprecation to the rise of curation and the ongoing debate over supply path optimisation, the conversations that follow offers a snapshot of an industry still working out what open really means in 2026.

What emerged wasn't consensus, but something more useful: a set of different perspectives on where the money, the trust, and the innovation are headed next:

• George Odysseos, Planet Sport
• Rhys Denny, @curate
• Alex Newberry, Content Ignite
• Emma Lacey, Onetag
• Mike Murray, Omnicom
• Lou Nylander, Wildflowers of London
• Sam Edmonds, Venatus