I came home with sore feet, a camera roll that needs serious help, and pages of notes.

After hosting conversations across AI, creators, and marketing all week—from our Women in AI lunch with Glance and Microsoft to a creator lunch with Dhar Mann and Later, the Impact Lounge on AI for social impact, and the Wellness Oasis at LinikedIn discussing self-worth in the creator economy—one thing became impossible to ignore:

The creator economy didn’t just arrive at Cannes. It took over.

Hollywood Reporter event noted that it felt more Hollywood than the film festival this year. I’d take it one step further: it felt like New Hollywood—where creators are becoming the studios, media companies, and distribution channels all at once.

Business Insider counted more than 250 creators, but it felt WAY beyond that. The lineup said the rest: Steven Bartlett, Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, Alex Cooper, Keith Lee, Colin and Samir, all getting full A-list treatment. UTA opened its first dedicated VIP Creator Lounge on the beach, and one of its agents put it perfectly when she said that on her first trip to Cannes, spotting ad legend Martin Sorrell felt like the big celebrity moment. That era is gone.

Creators weren’t tucked away on some side stage this year. They anchored the biggest activations on the Croisette, and the whole week felt like Coachella for the business crowd (or as creator Amanda Mccants joked, “for the 30+ crowd”). While there’s still room to evolve beyond selfies and impressions into measuring business outcomes and real ROI, I don’t necessarily agree with TheWrap’s sentiment that many creators got treated more like a prop than a partner.

This year, creators weren’t just attendees (although there were a lot of first timers). They were the hosts, the press and the amplifiers. Everywhere you looked, creators were filming trends, interviewing executives, taking meetings, collaborating, and creating content in real time.

The definition of “creator” also expanded this year.

Cannes wasn’t dominated by lifestyle creators alone. Knowledge creators, founders, AI educators, LinkedIn voices, business podcasters, and niche experts had just as much of a seat at the table. That says a lot about where creator marketing is headed.

And it wasn’t confined to one beach or one activation.

From the official Cannes Creator Beach, hashtagpaid’s creator ambassador program, creator breakfasts, dinners, panels, Villa parties with Epidemic Sound, Teachable and Stan, plus programming across Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Spotify, YouTube, Reddit, Canva, Microsoft, Amazon, and more, creators weren’t a side conversation. They were woven into nearly every part of the festival.

The traditional celebs seemed to understand the assignment, too. From Oprah, Keke Palmer, Hoda Kotb, will.i.am, Paris Hilton, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the conversations centered around entrepreneurship, ownership, AI, investing, and building companies. The smartest celebrities weren’t acting like celebrities; they were acting like founders.

One thing also became clear: Media buying is changing. Nearly every major company is building some version of a creator ambassador, creator advisory, or influencer program. The undercurrent is that marketing dollars are moving from traditional media buys toward creator-led distribution and partnerships. That’s a meaningful shift.

The next challenge is moving beyond one-off campaigns to true strategic partnerships. I think we’ll see more creator-in-residence roles, long-term consulting relationships, and creators helping shape products, communities, and marketing strategy, in addition to the content promoting them.

A note of caution: as creator demand grows, so does the temptation to rely on unpaid or in-kind relationships. Cannes is increasingly valuable for creators as a business development opportunity, and many are willing to invest in being there because the relationships often pay off over time. But that shouldn’t become an excuse to replace fair compensation with access. The next phase of the creator economy isn’t just bigger creator programs, it’s better and more equitable partnerships.

AI didn’t disappear this year, it became embedded.

Rather than endless existential debates, the conversations shifted toward implementation and ROI. AI was everywhere: powering creator, business, data and advertising tools.

The brands behind the tools didn't stay quiet either. OpenAI made its first-ever Cannes appearance and called itself "clearly in the advertising business now," reframing the moment as a shift from the attention economy to the intelligence economy. Agentic AI was the phrase you couldn't escape. Adobe opened day one with an entire announcement built around it. Microsoft, Glance, Meta, TikTok, and nearly every major platform showcased how AI is becoming embedded into creative and marketing workflows. AI wasn’t the spectacle. It became the operating system behind everything.

Then the contradiction.

Award entries dropped about 25 percent, which leadership softly called a "reset." The real reason was last year's mess, when winning campaigns lost their Lions after agencies got caught using AI to fake results. So the festival tightened its rules to crack down on AI deception, then threw its biggest AI party yet.

Make it make sense.

The Croisette was basically a platform theme park. Meta Beach, Amazon Port, Spotify Beach, the YouTube Drive-In, TikTok's Carlton garden, the Reddit Community Deli, Pinterest's Manifestival, Canva's Creative Cabana, Microsoft Gardens… and nearly every platform arrived with product news.

TikTok launched Symphony Agent, an agentic AI tool that builds video ad campaigns from text prompts and image inputs, powered by ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 model, plus a Custom Creator Networks feature.

Meta folded its creator marketplace and partnership ads hub into one Creator Marketing Hub and started testing horizontal video on Instagram while doing exclusive demos of the Kylie Jenner Meta sunglasses.

LinkedIn rolled out creator collaboration tools. Thank you!!!

Audio had its moment, with Spotify hosting top creators for podcast conversations including Jay Shetty, and throwing their nightly beach concerts. Amazon’s Wondery struck a wide-ranging deal with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's Boardroom, taking exclusive distribution and ad-sales rights across podcasts, digital series, and live events, with distribution on Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Fire TV starting early 2027.

Boardroom joins a roster that already includes Oprah's Harpo Entertainment (announced back in April), the Kelces' "New Heights," and LeBron James and Steve Nash's "Mind the Game." Video podcasts are spreading fast too, with Jay Shetty's show heading to both Spotify and Netflix for a whopping $100 million.

A few more things also worth noting before I let you go:

A few lessons from someone who just survived the week:

One final thought: I went straight from Cannes to VidCon (where I got to collaborate with Pew Research/The Knight Foundation and pop.store). While the two events couldn’t feel more different, they also feel more connected than ever.

Cannes is where brands, platforms, agencies, and executives shape the future of the creator economy. VidCon is hoping to continue to be where creators and their communities bring that future to life.

Both are evolving (owned by the same company Informa) and won’t overlap next year thankfully. Both still have work to do—especially Vidcon, which many think was a bust this year. They will need to work their identity and how to make a serious comeback. But after spending the week in Cannes and heading straight into VidCon, one thing feels certain:

The creator economy isn’t a trend anymore. It’s becoming the connective tissue between media, marketing, entertainment, and technology. If Cannes was any indication, 2027 won’t just be bigger, it will be even more creator-led. So if you’re thinking about going, start planning now!

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