As agentic advertising floods Cannes, Amazon touts its Alexa advantage. Papa Johns and The Orchard are early partners on a new Alexa+ Agentic Ads format, which executives see as a way to deliver more personalized ads. Published June 25, 2026 CANNES, LIONS - Ask Cannes Lions attendees what's top of mind at the show, and the safe money is on "artificial intelligence" as the answer. Part of that is due to some of the festival's attention-grabbing new entrants, but platforms and publishers nearly across the board are eager to demonstrate that their bets on the space, including in agentic AI, are moving from the realm of hype into reality. Amazon this week unveiled a new ad format, Alexa+ Agentic Ads, that underlines the focus on leveraging AI to deliver more tangible outcomes for brands. Customers that are served an ad can strike up a voice chat, weigh different buying options and complete their transaction without having to leave the Alexa interface. In a demo shown by Amazon, a woman who is interested in getting concert tickets to see Jill Scott refines her results by noting the occasion is her mom's birthday and that she's open to paying more for premium seating options. She eventually finds front-row seats on Ticketmaster, all via voice commands. Papa Johns and The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, are early partners on Alexa+ Agentic Ads, which are currently running in beta on Amazon's Echo Show devices. Alexa+ became publicly available earlier this year following a beta period in 2025. Toward the end of last year, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that more than 1 million people had access to the generative AI assistant. According to information shared by Amazon, Alexa is used in tens of millions homes. Amazon plans to bring the format to Fire TV as well, where it will live in the carousel-like Feature Rotator experience on the home screen. While the testing period is early days, executives emphasized they don't view Alexa+ Agentic Ads as a limited experiment or theoretical use case. "We have ad products that are live today. This isn't something that we're talking about or [saying] 'we're working on it,'" said Charlotte Maines, Amazon vice president of devices content and advertising, in an interview Wednesday. Alexa+ Agentic Ads do not require rigid phrases to know when to complete an action, according to Maines, and can pick up on subtler cues. Amazon sees the conversational nature of the technology as a way to eventually realize more personalized, relevant ads, echoing where other AI platforms believe they can deliver value to brands. In Papa John's case, Alexa may remember a customer's favorite toppings from a prior conversation, and surface those as a recommendation for repeat orders. "This is literally the first thing of so much more opportunity for innovation, because Alexa+ - just as all of these agentic AI assistants - is new," said Maines. "My job is to make sure that, as customer engagement grows, advertisers can participate in those high-intent conversations." Leveraging Amazon's tech stack. Cannes Lions may make for a crowded AI playing field, but Amazon sees an advantage over upstarts thanks to the same assets that have powered its advertising division into a $70 billion engine. Those include an robust demand-side platform, established measurement capabilities and a rich trove of transaction-level data. "We've got this incredible Amazon advertising tech stack, infrastructure business, where we are very well positioned to pull things into the DSP, for example, [or] offer something self-service and programmatic very quickly," said Maines. Amazon is also aligning its new agentic products with a larger suite of automation tools, including creative agents that help advertisers develop, create and deploy campaigns on the platform. "[Advertisers] can be as involved or not involved as they want in terms of their creative teams on how they generate these assets, but we... offer a plug and play solution," said Maines. "We do have this foundation, so we're able to offer a lot of data on how creative performs historically." The often winding, more intimate nature of consumer conversations with AI chatbots raises potential privacy concerns as the channel intersects more with advertising. OpenAI, for example, has pledged to not share conversational information with advertisers as it tries to preserve user trust.

Grupo Frontera launch indie label, BorderTown Records. Grupo Frontera partners with The Orchard to launch BorderTown Records, a new label based in McAllen, Texas, dedicated to supporting emerging artists. May 29, 2026 The venture is a partnership with The Orchard American regional Mexican band Grupo Frontera have launched their own label, BorderTown Records, in partnership with The Orchard. The label is designed to support the next generation of talent in both Música Mexicana and other genres. Founded in 2022 by Juan Javier Cantú, Alberto "Beto" Acosta and Adelaido "Payo" Solís III, Grupo Frontera are coming off a sustained burst of success, with 16 Number 1s on the Billboard Regional Mexican Airplay chart, and a Top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 via their 2023 collaboration with Bad Bunny on "Un x100to." The label will be based in the band's hometown of McAllen, Texas. It will offer services across recording, marketing, public relations and distribution. Miguel Ramirez has been installed as General Manager. Grupo Frontera's Con Dolor EP is the label's first release. The group have also established a music complex and creative headquarters in McAllen called YUMA, which will serve as BorderTown Records' operational base. The company says the label will be open to artists across genres. Alberto "Beto" Acosta: "Everything we're building with BorderTown Records and YUMA comes from our own experiences and the journey we've had to navigate as a group. We want to create opportunities, support emerging artists and build spaces where they can develop their ideas and grow within this ecosystem." May 29, 2026 AI won't replace your music career, but it can help organize it. May 28, 2026 Downtown music publishing to represent biz markie catalog. May 29, 2026