That’s a Wrap! Check Out the Event Highlights & Images From Interact 2024 in Milan

On 21-22 May we hosted our annual flagship conference Interact 2024 in Milan where we brought over 240 industry leaders, innovators, and experts together to answer the big questions needed to shape the future of the digital advertising and marketing industry. 

Thanks to the support of our sponsors, media partners, the team at IAB Italy, and our event host Joanna Burton, we enjoyed two days of content, which focused on our theme ‘The Big Questions. The Smart Answers’. 

Watch the event highlights reel here.

View the event images here.

Going beyond standard keynote presentations and panel discussions, we brought the ‘interactive’ back to Interact this year, with each session framed around a key question that our elite, expert speakers endeavored to answer. No beating around the bush. It was all about delivering smart answers to the industry's most important questions. Plus we addressed additional questions live on stage through our engaging polls and audience Q&As. 

We unpacked a huge variety of topics as we looked to address some of the industry’s biggest challenges and innovations head-on. From the latest ad spend figures, the demise of third-party cookies, and Retail Media to sustainability, policy, measurement, publisher advertising models and more, our esteemed speakers provided smart, sharp answers to our industry's biggest questions of today.  

The big questions included:

• Are sustainability strategies delivering across the value chain?
• Is the industry ready for the end of third-party cookies?
• Where is the business value of AI for digital advertising?
• Is TV programmatic buying finally going mainstream?
• After the hype, is it time for a reckoning for retail media?
• In "polycrisis" times, what outcomes should digital advertising be delivering?
• How can publishers reinvent their digital advertising business?
• What do buyers really want from digital advertising?
• Where is future digital advertising growth coming from?
• What comes next for digital advertising regulation?

If you didn’t have the opportunity to join us or you did and want to relieve all of the great content again, in this post you will find links to all of the highlights, including session overviews for you to read in your own time. 

Event Highlights 

• AdEx Benchmark 2023 Report - As always, our Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp kicked off Interact by sharing the top-level results from IAB Europe’s widely-anticipated 2023 AdEx Benchmark Report to show whether the digital advertising industry experienced growth for 2023 and if so, what markets and channels contributed to this growth. Mark your diaries for 12th June when the full report will be released. 

• Day one highlights included a fireside chat with Diageo and TIM Group on what brands really want from digital advertising, presentations by IAS, RTL Group, and Brand Metrics on leveraging digital to achieve superior results, the evolution of TV,  and measurement, and big questions on Retail Media, post third-party cookies, the future of measurement and more. For the session overviews you can check out our day one round-up here.

• Day two started with an update from IAB Ukraine’s CEO, Anastasiya Baydachenko who shared how we can continue to support Ukraine. The day also explored sustainability and how to reduce the carbon emissions of advertising without leaving a negative impact on effectiveness with a keynote from Scope3 and Sanofi Consumer Healthcare. Key speakers from National Federations also shared the approach of industry bodies to sustainability in key European markets. We delved into the publisher perspective with a keynote for Mail Metro Media and an in-depth panel discussion on how publishers can reinvent their digital advertising. On the policy and legal side the upcoming EU elections and how this will influence the future of policy, the latest iterations of the TCF, and the Digital Services Act (DSA) were also explored. Check out our day two round-up here. 

If you’d like to know more about IAB Europe and the membership opportunities available to dive into these key topics and more, reach out to the team at communication@iabeurope.eu.