Ahead of Cannes Lions 2026 · Digital Twins Study
2,000 marketers ranked the conferences.
They can't agree on Cannes.
We modeled 2,000 senior marketers as Digital Twins, grounded in real, observed behavior, and asked them to rank the industry's biggest conferences. Cannes Lions splits them hardest, and it is far from the only one. This is the Marketing Conference Power Index 2026.
Where each side ranks Cannes Lions
Read the full reportThe full report is yours to download. The banner crosstab, every question, every cut, and every one of the 2,000 respondents, is available on request.
01 · The Power Index
The conferences that win the room aren't the ones that win the trophies.
We asked 2,000 senior marketers to rank 34 conferences across three lists. Start with the twelve industry flagships. Power Index = 13 minus the mean rank, so higher is better; the working events lead and the spectacle trails.
List 1 · Industry flagships (12)
Power Index = 13 minus mean rank across the 12 flagships. n = 2,000.
02 · The full field
We ranked 34 conferences, not just the flagships.
The flagships are one of three lists. The same 2,000 senior marketers also ranked the CMO-level summits and the vertical and specialty events. Here is where the rest landed.
List 2 · Senior-marketer & CMO summits (10)
- 1.Forbes CMO Summit7.0
- 2.WSJ CMO Network Annual Meeting6.7
- 3.Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo6.5
- 4.MarTech Conference (Scott Brinker)6.2
- 5.Brand Innovators CMO Summit (flagship)5.9
- 6.AdAge Next: CMO5.6
- 7.Effie Awards Effectiveness Summit5.1
- 8.World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) Global Marketer Week4.5
- 9.Marketing Brew Summits4.1
- 10.The Drum CMO Summit3.5
List 3 · Vertical & specialty events (12)
- 1.Programmatic I/O (AdExchanger)8.2
- 2.Adobe Summit8.1
- 3.Dreamforce (Salesforce)7.8
- 4.Digiday Summits7.4
- 5.IAB NewFronts (digital video upfronts)7.3
- 6.HumanX (AI-focused conference)6.6
- 7.Adweek Convergent TV Summit6.3
- 8.The Beet Retreat (CTV and video)5.7
- 9.CommerceNext5.6
- 10.Shoptalk (retail and commerce)5.6
- 11.NRF Big Show / Retail's Big Show5.0
- 12.VidCon (creator economy)4.4
Power Index, higher is better, scored within each list. The full crosstab carries every conference and every cut.
03 · The Cannes Paradox
One conference, three verdicts.
Cannes Lions ranks sixth overall, but the average is a mirage. Agencies place it near the top. Vendors place it near the bottom. No other flagship splits the industry this hard.
48% of agencies rank Cannes top-three. 48% of vendors rank it bottom-three. It is the same conference.
Agencies sell creativity, so Cannes is their showroom. Vendors sell software, and Cannes returns no pipeline. Same week on the Riviera, opposite math. Report a single average and you brief every client wrong.
04 · Beneath the badge
Why senior marketers really show up.
We asked what truly drives attendance, setting aside the public answer. Relationships and business outcomes dominate. The keynote is not why they came, and that unspoken motive is exactly what a Digital Twin surfaces and a show-of-hands survey misses.
Two-thirds of the room, 67%, come for relationships, business outcomes, or learning. The rest come for visibility, FOMO, or lifestyle. Substance outranks the badge.
05 · In their own words
Every ranking came with a reason.
A Digital Twin does not just pick a number. It explains itself, in its own voice, and that reasoning is what makes the split make sense. Six of the 2,000, verbatim from the study.
“Cannes realizes its creative peak status. The jury sessions and the beach classes are direct fuel for pitches, and the after-party deals landed us two retainers.”
“ANA Masters tops my list for exec B2B strategy. Cannes Lions, last: awards and creativity mismatch enterprise software and a US business.”
“Cannes sits at the bottom for me. All showy creativity, suited for ad shops, not our B2B enterprise software.”
“I go for the impromptu hallway talks and the dinners with contacts I've known fifteen years. We push the content publicly, but it's those bonds that land the deals.”
“A steak dinner at Advertising Week extended a multimillion-dollar contract. Impossible on Zoom. Decade-deep bonds fill half my pipeline.”
“The closed-door CMO sessions top my list. Benchmarking ROI with a VP at the Forbes CMO Summit prompted a 15% budget shift that hiked conversions.”
Verbatim from the study's recorded rationales. Every answer traces back to a specific respondent.
What a conference is worth depends entirely on who you ask.
06 · Inside the study
We went deep, and cut the data every way.
Each of the 2,000 marketers answered 18 questions and ranked 34 conferences across three separate lists: the industry flagships, the CMO-level summits, and the vertical and specialty events. We asked not just what they rank, but why they attend, which formats actually produce business, and where they expect momentum to build.
The same data, a different room each time
Because every respondent is a full Digital Twin, every finding cuts cleanly. Rank the flagships across all 2,000 and Advertising Week and ANA Masters lead. Narrow to CMOs and ANA Masters takes the top alone. Split by organization and Cannes swings from #2 to #11. Same answers, a different verdict for every audience.
It reads forward, too
We asked where the calendar is heading. HumanX is the event marketers most expect to grow, MAICON was the top emerging pick at 15.8%, and pre-scheduled one-on-ones and closed-door peer sessions rated the most valuable formats in the room.
07 · How Digital Twins work
Real people. Identity stripped. Generated responses.
Digital Twins are survey respondents simulated from real people in PeopleGraph, our patented identity graph of roughly 150 million US adults, and the hundreds of observed behavioral signals in KnowledgeGraph. Identifying information is stripped before any response is generated. The attributes are real, the responses are generated, and every answer traces back to a specific respondent and rationale.
From roughly 150 million observed profiles down to the 2,000 VP-and-up marketers in this study, calibrated to Census and Pew benchmarks before any response is generated.
Real people, not invented personas
Every twin is an actual person from PeopleGraph carrying hundreds of observed behavioral signals, not a character a model dreamed up.
Calibrated before the model runs
We match the sample to Census and Pew benchmarks across dozens of dimensions before generation, so it is representative by design.
Validated against the benchmarks
Across 30+ external benchmarks, Digital Twins land within an average 3.3 points of the measured result. Checked against ground truth.
Traceable end to end
Every answer traces back to the cohort, its rankings, and the rationale behind it. Every claim is sourced.
This is one study. Imagine it for your audience.
Digital Twins run a full study in days, not months, on any audience you can define, grounded in real observed behavior. See what they reveal about yours.