At Cannes, the Great Gusher of Content Comes With Warning Signs<br />Given that the limit is no longer the number of channels on the television dial<br />but the daily human capacity to consume media, the rush is on to get even better at divining what you want before you even know you want it — and to make sure it’s available in ample supply.<br />As Ben Lerer, a big media investor and a co-founder of Thrillist Media Group said during a seaside stroll here with me, “The cable pipes of yesterday are the social pipes of today.”<br />That means the personalized feed is going to regulate even more of the digital oxygen we breathe.<br />“It’s chaos,” Shane Smith, the brash co-founder and chief executive of Vice Media, told me Thursday afternoon as he<br />sipped wine on the rocks at his sumptuous seaside villa in Cap d’Antibes, Cannes’ even more exclusive neighbor.<br />There’s never been more stuff being sold, and for me on my end, there’s never been more people buying content.”<br />Mr. Smith was a coveted dance partner at the festival, which was founded as a celebration of quality advertising<br />but is now overwhelmed by deal making and schmoozing.<br />And there was the creeping realization that no one really knows where it’s all going — how<br />the new digital media innovations will reshape politics, culture and even the world order.<br />CANNES, France — I imagine that covering the annual Cannes Lions advertising festival here is a little bit<br />like covering the great Texas oil boom a century ago — only with better food, cocktails and scenery.
