Marketing will be back at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity June 16 – 22, covering awards and seminars, and bringing readers insights from the industry’s biggest names. The May 20 issue of Marketing – which features an in-depth interview with creative legend Sir John Hegarty – will also be available for free on newsstands at the festival. Look for us in the Palais and select hotels.
YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar has been named Media Person of the Year at the 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Kamangar got involved with the online video service through Google, which acquired YouTube in 2006. As Google’s ninth employee, he helped fashion its first business plan and helped found its products team. He was on the team that designed Google AdWords.
Moving to YouTube in 2009, Kamangar has overseen the site’s refocusing on channels and content creators – changes that have driven YouTube’s user base into 10-digit figures.
Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas said YouTube has become a “global phenomenon” on Kamangar’s watch. “The statistics say it all: more than one billion unique users a month watch more than six billion hours of video. In 2011, YouTube had more than one trillion views – a simply staggering statistic.”
This ubiquity has allowed the company to become a communication tool for both personal and business life, Thomas said.
“YouTube is enabling the next generation of great channels, similar to how cable systems enabled the emergence of modern TV programming and advertising,” he said. “In the coming years, YouTube will surely become ever-more important to content-creators and advertisers the world over.”
Kamangar will accept his award June 19 during the annual advertising and creativity festival in Cannes, France. Past winners include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Viacom’s Sumner Redstone.
