Unplugged Sessions @ AWNY 2026

Unplugged Sessions: The Receipts examine three areas attracting enormous attention and investment: AI, live spectatorship, and real-time culture. Industry leaders will explore how buyers separate useful AI from hype, how brands value audiences gathering across sports, gaming, and creator media, and how marketers respond when culture moves faster than traditional planning cycles. The focus is practical: where value is being created, how it should be measured, and what the evidence says marketers should do next. For sponsorship inquiries: 📧 [email protected] Note: An Advertising Week badge is not required to attend Unplugged State of Mind events. 1:00PM - BURDEN OF PROOF: THE AI RECEIPTS SESSION Marketing now puts 15.3 percent of its budget into AI, yet only 30 percent of CMOs say their organizations are ready to scale it. An MIT study found that 95 percent of enterprise generative AI pilots in its dataset produced no measurable P&L impact. Everyone bought AI. Almost nobody has shown receipts. This session moves past demos, declarations, and decks that say AI eleven times. How do buyers separate deployable technology from expensive slop before signing the contract? How should operators measure the real return of AI once it enters a live workflow? And what should every vendor be prepared to prove about adoption, accuracy, cost, incrementality, and business impact? The question is no longer whether a company uses AI. It is what the AI actually does, what it replaces or improves, and whether anyone can prove it paid off. 1:45PM - THE SPECTATOR ECONOMY: THE BUSINESS OF WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE PLAY The World Cup final drew 66.4 million US viewers this July, while the tournament generated a record $1.19 billion in advertising revenue. The WNBA begins a landmark new rights era this season, and streaming platforms are projected to spend $14.2 billion on sports rights in 2026. Yet media and marketing still cover sports, gaming, and creator livestreams as separate categories. They are increasingly expressions of the same behavior: watching other people play, live, alongside a crowd. This conversation maps spectatorship as a single attention economy, from what rights cost and audiences convert to the value created around the event through conversation, fandom, reaction, and shared ritual. Media knows how to count the person watching. It still does not know how to value the audience watching together. 2:30PM - BIG SPLASH VS. ALWAYS ON: THE GREAT CREATIVE DEBATE (presented by Mark Allen & Co.) Advertising has traditionally been built around major campaigns developed over several months. Now, social listening, creative testing, engagement signals, and creator performance allow marketers to produce and optimize content continuously. That can improve short-term performance, but what generates clicks is not always what builds lasting brand memory. This debate puts both models head to head. Do brands need fewer, bigger ideas that create cultural impact, or an always-on system that responds and improves in real time? And as marketers generate more creative variations than ever, how do they maintain the consistency and distinctiveness that make a brand memorable? Click Here for the Full Agenda Cannesversations is our quick hit interview series featuring leaders across brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms. Hosted by Mike Richter and Stephanie Beach. Have something to say? Submit a Thought Leader 🚨 A Quick Note About Space:We’d love to welcome everyone with open arms (and an extra-large dance floor), but space is limited. This RSVP lets you raise your hand for the experiences you’re most excited about. From there, we’ll send out formal invites to confirm attendance. We promise—it’s nothing personal, just physics.