We hope you had a wonderful July fourth weekend. We’ve got a great host of content to share with you this month. From a Cannes Lion “on the ground” thought piece to the announcement of our brand new podcast with some of the brightest minds in our space. We hope you enjoy this month’s BSI newsletter.
Announcing Defend & Deliver BSI's New Podcast is Live
We're proud to formally launch Defend & Deliver, BSI's podcast hosted by Senior Fellow Louis Jones and produced by Creator in Residence Elijah Pysyk. Each episode examines the forces shaping content and the relationship between consumers and brands, spanning technology, digital advertising, consumer behavior, and brand safety. The aim is to equip listeners across the advertising supply chain to protect corporate reputation, stay ahead of trends, and strengthen consumer connection in a fast-changing landscape.
Three threads run through the series:
the AI revolution and its effect on authenticity, provenance, measurement, and verification;
brand reputation as an exercise in alignment rather than blocklists; and
the future of the open web as AI pushes content options and volume to new extremes.
Four episodes are available now, featuring Jeffrey Cole (USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future), Rob Norman (former GroupM/WPP), Vanessa Otero (Ad Fontes Media), and Donnovan Andrews (Aivanta). Look for new episodes this month with David Kohl (Morgan Digital Ventures) and a joint conversation with Andrew Susman and Dr. Anna McAlister (Institute for Advertising Ethics).
Cannes 2026 AI in Ads, Ads in AI, and the Human Counterweight
AI dominated Cannes for a third straight year, but the tone changed. The conversation moved from "look what it can do" to "has any of it worked, and can we trust it?" In his recap, AJ Brown covers two sides of that trust question.
AI in ads: a wave of disclosure regulation is arriving with little guidance on how to comply, leaving platforms to act as de facto regulators
Ads in AI: brand safety and measurement grow murkier still when there's no fixed page to evaluate and a single chatbot thread can swing from harmless to sensitive in a few messages
Running underneath both is the human counterweight: as synthetic content floods feeds, ads, and now private conversations, the premium on visible human effort keeps climbing, which is a large part of why the week felt so creator-focused.
TAG Launches First-of-its-Kind Initiative to Cut Off Pirate Ad Revenue From Stolen Fifa World Cup Streams
"TAG, a non-profit created by the global advertising industry to fight ad-related criminal activity and address other supply chain challenges, today announced a groundbreaking cross-industry initiative to cut off advertising revenue to 1,376 digital piracy sites providing illegal streams or other content stolen from the 2026 FIFA World Cup."
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Thanks for being part of the BSI community, the advertising industry's community of practice for brand and people safety. We look forward to bringing you more insights, updates, and industry news next month.
