Cannes, France — June 2026. At Cannes Lions, Conscious Advertising Network brought one of the industry’s most urgent conversations to the stage: whether advertising is funding an online ecosystem that captures attention, amplifies harm and risks repeating the same mistakes with artificial intelligence that it made with social media.
In the session “A Sense of Impending Doomscrolling: Rebooting AI and Social Media,” Jake Dubbins, Chair of Conscious Advertising Network, was joined by Ian Russell, Chair of the Molly Rose Foundation, Charlotte Scaddan, Senior Advisor on Information Integrity at the United Nations, Rupen Desai, CMO of Una Terra, and Anna Zeiter, CEO and Founder of W, for a direct challenge to marketers, agencies, media owners and technology platforms.
The message was clear: the advertising industry cannot treat platform safety, AI governance and information integrity as someone else’s problem. If advertising money powers the digital economy, then advertisers have both the responsibility and the leverage to reshape it.
Dubbins opened the discussion by framing the current moment as pivotal not only for advertising and creativity, but for society. As more countries debate restrictions on social media access for young people, he questioned whether the platforms that dominate Cannes beachfront activations can still be considered safe environments for children, communities or brands.
His challenge to the industry was blunt: are advertisers monetizing addiction? The panel argued that the “attention economy” has increasingly become an addiction economy, where infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendation, outrage, misinformation and harmful content create more inventory, more impressions and more revenue.
That concern now extends to AI. Dubbins warned that as AI platforms move toward advertising-funded models, the same incentive structures that shaped social media could be rebuilt inside conversational technology. The risk is not simply more content; it is infinite prompts, infinite engagement and a new generation of digital experiences optimized for time spent rather than human well-being.
Ian Russell brought the human cost of platform failure into sharp focus. Speaking as the father of Molly Russell and Chair of the Molly Rose Foundation, he described the online harms his daughter encountered before her death and the long fight to hold platforms accountable. His intervention turned the conversation from abstract policy to lived reality.
Russell said harmful content remains readily available online and that algorithms continue to recommend damaging material to young and vulnerable users. He argued that online harms must be tackled at the source, including addictive design features and algorithmic amplification. His call was not only for governments to act, but for individuals, workplaces and industries to make choices that stop supporting harmful technology practices.
The panel then widened the lens through Charlotte Scaddan’s global perspective from the United Nations. She explained that the information ecosystem is now affecting every area of the UN’s work, from climate change and public health to democracy, elections, conflict and peacebuilding.
For Scaddan, misinformation is not a communications inconvenience; it is a global vulnerability. She warned that trust is eroding to the point where even reliable information is questioned when it reaches the public. That loss of trust has direct consequences for public health responses, democratic participation, crisis management and social cohesion.
Her message to advertisers was especially important: the advertising community has power because it controls incentives. The UN’s work on information integrity calls on governments, platforms, media, civil society and advertisers to help build healthier information environments. For brands, this means using creativity and budgets to support transparency, reliable information and trust before the opacity of AI becomes permanently embedded into the system.
Rupen Desai pushed the argument further by reframing big technology platforms as what they fundamentally are: advertising platforms. He argued that every additional click created by hate speech, misinformation, disinformation or clickbait becomes additional inventory. In that model, the commercial incentive to remove toxic content is structurally weak unless advertisers demand better.
Desai warned that marketers may be underestimating their own power. With massive global advertising budgets flowing into a small number of dominant platforms, brands are not passive participants. They are economic engines inside the system. His point was clear: a better dollar spent, a more transparent dollar spent and a more responsible dollar spent can produce stronger marketing effectiveness, not weaker results.
The panel also connected platform accountability to AI governance. Desai stressed that AI itself is not inherently bad, but that AI controlled by a narrow group of powerful actors risks accelerating the same problems already visible in social media: more synthetic supply, more clutter, more opaque measurement and more low-quality content. For marketers, that means the future could become a larger and faster version of “garbage in, garbage out” unless stronger principles are built now.
Anna Zeiter closed the discussion by presenting a different kind of platform logic. As CEO and Founder of W, she described a new social media platform built in Europe and available globally, designed around verified humans, privacy-first access and meaningful interaction rather than doomscrolling or addictive engagement.
Zeiter argued that bots are an open gate for misinformation, disinformation and targeted manipulation. W’s proposition is based on a simple but commercially relevant idea: advertisers should know they are reaching real people. By prioritizing verified humans, users over 18, privacy and quality journalism, the platform seeks to offer an alternative to legacy environments where bots, young users, manipulation and opaque inventory create both ethical and effectiveness risks.
The session’s central marketing lesson was that brand safety can no longer be reduced to keyword blocklists or adjacency checks. In the AI and social media era, brand safety must expand into societal safety, youth safety, information integrity and platform design.
For advertisers, this requires a new operating mindset. Media investment is not neutral. Every dollar sends a signal about which platforms, behaviors and business models deserve to grow. The panel challenged brands to stop treating responsibility as a reputational add-on and start treating it as a core part of media effectiveness, consumer trust and long-term brand value.
The discussion also made a strong case that creativity has a role beyond persuasion. Creativity can help redesign incentives, make safer platforms desirable, support quality journalism, explain complex risks and create digital experiences built around human flourishing rather than compulsive engagement.
At Cannes Lions, where the industry celebrates the power of attention, Conscious Advertising Network asked a more difficult question: what kind of attention are brands paying for, and at what cost?
The answer from the panel was urgent but constructive. The industry does not need to reject technology, AI or social media. It needs to reboot them. That means demanding transparency from platforms, investing in healthier information environments, refusing to fund addictive design, protecting young people from algorithmic harm and building digital spaces where verified humans, trusted content and responsible advertising can thrive.
As the advertising industry enters a new AI-powered phase, “A Sense of Impending Doomscrolling” positioned responsible media investment as one of marketing’s most important strategic decisions. The future will not be shaped only by platforms or policymakers. It will also be shaped by the brands, agencies and marketers willing to use their budgets as a force for accountability.
