At Cannes Lions 2026, Gila Wilensky of Monks explained why many brands fail to stay relevant despite collecting vast amounts of data. The culprit, she said, is a tech tax-not the cost of AI tools, but the fragmented processes, siloed teams, and constant handoffs that kill data insights before they reach a campaign.
Wilensky detailed how legacy organizational structures and over-reliance on platform-specific return on ad spend (ROAS) keep marketers from measuring true business impact. She argued that rebuilding workflows end-to-end, training people properly, and orchestrating creative and media as one system are what separate winners from losers in the AI era.
The hidden cost of data silos
Most marketing departments still hand creative briefs to media teams, who then pass performance data to analytics teams. Each transition introduces delays and interpretation gaps. Wilensky said that by the time an insight reaches the person who can act on it, the context is often lost. Integrating creative and media workflows through a system like Monks Flow can stop this bleed by keeping data connected from idea to measurement. For marketing teams that want to better integrate AI across planning and execution, dedicated training focused on AI for Marketing can help bridge these gaps.
ROAS is a vanity metric
Wilensky warned that optimizing for ROAS within a single ad platform misleads marketers because it ignores cross-channel effects. A rise in paid search ROAS might simply pull credit from organic social or direct traffic. Instead, brands should focus on incrementality-measuring the actual lift a campaign generated above a baseline. She argued that looking only at in-platform ROAS leads to decisions based on half the picture. Shifting to incrementality requires leadership to rethink how teams are structured and how investments are measured-a strategic challenge covered in depth by AI for Executives & Strategy.
Creative as the targeting engine
As media buying becomes more automated, Wilensky said creative is taking over the role of targeting. The message, format, and emotional resonance of an ad determine who it reaches and how they react. That means siloed creative teams that hand off finished assets to media buyers miss the chance to optimize in real time. Wilensky argued that brands must treat creative and media as a single, iterative process-one where AI can speed up testing and personalization, but only if the workflow is unified.
Why this matters for marketing professionals
Marketing leaders should move beyond chasing the latest AI point solution and instead invest in end-to-end workflow redesign. That means measuring incrementality across channels, building teams that combine creative and media skills, and training people to work within integrated data environments. The brands that win, Wilensky predicted, will be those that treat process and people as seriously as technology.
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