Semrush brings brand visibility conversations to Cannes Lions 2026

Semrush is turning Cannes into a boardroom conversation about whether brands are visible inside AI answers, not just in search results. The company said its Semrush Villa will open June 22 to 25, 2026, in Cannes, France, as an invite-only space for senior marketing leaders during Cannes Lions 2026, which runs June 22 to 26.

The setup is deliberately premium and private, with the Villa placed just moments from the Croisette. Semrush said the guest list will include CMOs, enterprise marketing leaders, media voices, and industry experts, and the program will center on live AI Search and brand visibility assessments, executive roundtables, curated lunches, and evening networking. That mix signals how quickly the topic has moved from specialist search teams into executive planning.

Semrush’s message is that discovery no longer lives in one channel. The company says it is fragmented across AI platforms, social channels, search engines, and communities, which changes the basic question marketers need to answer. It is no longer enough to know whether traffic is flowing; the harder test is whether the brand is being recommended, compared, or skipped when AI systems shape the first answer a buyer sees.

That same shift showed up in Adobe’s move on June 17, 2026, when it introduced Adobe Brand Visibility, a new offering that combines Semrush’s AI visibility intelligence with Adobe’s agentic content optimization capabilities. Adobe said the product is part of Adobe CX Enterprise and is designed to help brands stay visible, trusted, and chosen across AI surfaces. The company said marketers can access nearly 300 million real-world AI search prompts through the system, across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity AI.

The numbers behind the pitch help explain why Cannes is becoming a showcase for the category. Semrush’s AI Visibility Index says it analyzed more than 126 million real US AI search prompts across 22 industries and four AI platforms. It also says people who search with LLMs are 4.4 times more likely to convert than those using search engines, and that AI-generated results are projected to overtake organic search traffic by 2028. Adobe added that AI traffic to U.S. retail sites surged 1,324% between October 2024 and May 2026, while travel rose 2,215% over the same period.

Taken together, the Semrush Villa and Adobe’s new product line make the same point from different angles: AI visibility is no longer a niche experiment. It is becoming a standard part of how large brands measure presence, demand, and competitive position.