• by Chris Harihar , Op-Ed Contributor, 10 hours ago

The festival is just getting underway, and one of the first things attendees are greeted by each year is a flood of out-of-home advertising -- both static and digital -- as we all make the long walks up and down the Croisette. There are plenty of moments that inspire with reactions ranging from “Wow, that’s clever” to “Wait, that company still exists?”

So who has the best OOH ads this year? Who missed the mark? And which ones left us scratching our heads? Let’s get into it.

THE BEST

If I had to pick five favorites (in no particular order), these would be on the list:

Yahoo

Yahoo arrives in Cannes with an “Explorers Society” theme and the submarine is a nice touch. It’s playful and hard to miss.

Vibe

It’s brutally hot in Cannes, so Vibe’s ice cream-themed creative reminded me of a nice cool breeze. Sometimes timing and context matter as much as the creative itself.

Viant

Viant is making a big push around attention, and “Be audit you can be” is a clever play on words.

Braze

I found Braze’s ad genuinely funny because it leans into the fact that no one can explain exactly what Braze is. Martech? Adtech? Customer engagement platform? The ad embraces the confusion.

Snap

Snap’s old-fashioned mini train escorting attendees around Cannes is a nice change from the endless wall of static signage. It feels “cute” and not overly self-promotional.

Honorable Mention: Emirates

Simple, clean, and visually striking. A strong example of a great message and strong, clean copy.

THE WORST

We’ll keep this light. Rather than a full “worst five,” here are three ads that didn’t quite land for me.

Criteo

Unfortunately, a tree makes it difficult to tell that the ad belongs to Criteo from most angles. The message itself also feels fairly rote compared to some of the more creative executions around Cannes.

QuickFrame AI

Sorry, but this feels like word slop. OOH tends to work best when the message can be understood almost instantly, and this one required some effort.

Adobe

Adobe has a huge presence throughout Cannes (logos galore), but none of the individual executions really stuck with me. There’s certainly scale, but not much that feels particularly memorable.

THE WEIRDEST

“Weird” is hard to define. It’s one of those categories where you know it when you see it.

Optimizely

When I first saw this ad, I immediately Googled, “Who is Mark Eting?” Maybe that’s on me after a red-eye flight into Cannes. Either way, it felt odd. I also wasn’t entirely sure whether the image was AI-generated or intentionally stylized to looks that way.

Tatari

This one left me thinking. The creative prominently features several DSP logos, and I found myself spending as much time looking at those as I did thinking about Tatari’s message. That may have been intentional, but it created an unusual dynamic. 

If you’re in Cannes and spot a great, terrible, or wonderfully weird OOH ad, post it on X and tag @MediaPost and @chrisharihar. The week is just getting started.