CANNES, France—In a year where budgets are under intense scrutiny, agencies, platforms and even the biggest of the big tech scaled back their presence in Cannes this year. But for the companies and their clients who did attend—estimates range from 12,000-15,000 people—it’s all about finding growth in an otherwise down year.

“We have reduced numbers of people that have come from Meta. But in terms of what the clients are talking about, it’s very much about who can help us get the best growth, who can help us get the best return,” said ad business veteran Nicola Mendelsohn, head of the global business group at Meta.

Adweek caught up with Mendelsohn to find out where that growth is coming from, the efficiencies of AI and an update on the metaverse: “We’re all in,” she says.

Adweek: It is day 4 here in Cannes, what are your takeaways so far?
Nicola Mendelsohn: We’ve been running all week. Reels School is having a moment here at Cannes. Advertisers are really saying, ‘what are the top tips and tricks that we should be thinking about in order to reach the consumer?’ We’ve got 2 billion Reels that are being shared every single day. That kind of energy and the momentum, makes it one of our fastest growing products we’ve ever had.

Last year here, you had a demonstration of brands diving into the metaverse using the Quest headsets. Where is Meta with the metaverse now?
We’re all in on the metaverse. You can go and test it again and experience it (points to Meta’s Quest demonstration area). We’ve always been really clear that when Mark set out the vision, this will be something that will be realized in five to 10 years time. We’re seeing lots more use cases being experienced, lots more of the headsets being sold. But we couldn’t talk about the metaverse, without talking about AI. One of the fundamental building blocks of the metaverse has always been AI and generative AI and the ability for people to be able to imagine a world that they want to create. So, yeah, still very present.

Back to AI real quick, and this whole existential crisis of what AI might evolve into. What are your feelings on that?
I love history. And if you look back on history of any new technology, you get very similar patterns. We all fall in love with it. It’s all so exciting. And then you get people that get very worried. And then you go through a period of stabilization and normalcy. What’s interesting in this one is it’s kind of all happened at once. I had this conversation just last week with Yann LeCun, who’s our chief AI scientist. He is so positive on the amazing implications of generative AI and AI in general. Do I think that there can be challenges? Yes. But we set up a responsible AI team many years ago. So we really understand the need to make sure that as we’re building our products that we’re thinking through that responsibly.

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