Jonathan Nelson, chief executive officer, Omnicom Digital, chatted with Manifest during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity about the importance and growth of AI, why the group didn’t bet on Web 3.0, the evolution of digital, and more...

His career has an interesting path. Enroute to taking over as CEO of Omnicom Digital, Nelson, took on various roles including that of a DJ.

"I started as a sound engineer, then took on the role of a DJ, and was also a tour manager. I have done a whole lot of stuff, but that’s from the Mesozoic era. That was me fresh out of college, which was around 30 years ago," he said.

He then launched Organic, where he along with his team rolled out the first banner advertisement on a website.

"I failed a start-up or two before forming Organic. I eventually formed Organic in 1993 with a few partners. It was the first commercial dot-com company, certainly one of the first companies to do banner advertising on websites," informed Nelson.

Nelson also spoke about how digital has a medium has evolved since 1993 to now.

"Firstly, digital and traditional don’t stand separately now as they used to around 30 years ago. Now, digital is woven into everything we do. That was the hypothesis even in the 90s, that digital would be like oxygen. You don’t think about it, it’s just around. As I reflect on my career, the newness of digital has been assimilated. That means its usage is no longer cutting edge. Everyone has to use it. Digital has evolved from the web to commerce to cloud to mobile, and social. These waves keep coming through and digital keeps getting re-invented. Currently, we have the AI wave. Interestingly, AI feels more like the commercialisation of the internet in the early 90s than any of the subsequent evolutions I mentioned. I think we are in this renaissance as we add intelligence to everything we do," he said.

To read our entire chat with Nelson, get our July print issue which has extensive coverage from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Get your copy now!