Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Adweek

One of the most critical topics of 2024—how Google Chrome plans to rewrite digital advertising in the browser with Privacy Sandbox, and how companies will react—is finally ramping up. Google has activated a new Chrome feature called Tracking Protection, which cuts off access to third-party cookies. For now, the feature is only active for 1% of Chrome users globally. Adoption of alternative measurements has been very slow on the buy-side and is expected to remain so, with one agency buyer not expecting any impact until at least 30% of cookies are deprecated. Paul Bannister is CSO at publisher management platform Raptive, which has been running Sandbox’s Protected Audience API in ad auctions since September. He warned of a gulf between the desire to test and the resources available to invest…

Anheuser-Busch InBev has signed on as the first global beer sponsor of the Olympic and Paralympic Games through 2028. However, there’s a twist: Corona Cero 0.0% beer will be the breakout star. The alcohol-free brew will be the official beer of the Summer Olympics in Paris. The partnership will give AB InBev the chance to reach the 4 billion people expected to tune into 2024 Olympic broadcasts around the world, as well as the 15.3 million visitors coming to the French capital in July. “Through this partnership, we expect Corona Cero to accelerate no-alcohol beer growth and highlight moderation,” said AB InBev chief marketing officer Marcel Marcondes.…

Debuting in 1967, the inaugural Super Bowl halftime show was intended to fill idle time for fans stuck in line for a hot dog or the bathroom. Since that first performance by the University of Arizona Symphonic Marching Band, artists from Prince to Beyoncé and Paul McCartney to The Who have graced the stage. This year, Usher will be MVP of Super Bowl 58, performing to an estimated broadcast audience of 113 million in the biggest televised moment of his career. The segment is being billed as a celebration of the R&B hitmaker’s back catalogue, designed with millennials in mind. Expect hits like “Yeah!,” “You Make Me Wanna …” and spawner of internet memes, “Confessions Part II.” But Usher has a tough act to follow. In 2023, Rihanna’s Super Bowl…

With Super Bowl 58 commercials clocking in at $7 million for 30 seconds, advertisers are all trying to make a sure bet with their creative. According to a survey of Super Bowl watchers by United Talent Agency’s UTA IQ, Big Game commercials that reference—or, lately, revive—specific entertainment IP or characters are considered both unique (71%) and more likely to improve purchase consideration (72%). Recent hits were Jeep’s Groundhog Day revival with Bill Murray and PopCorners reuniting the Breaking Bad duo. Celebrities also won out over cute animals, with ad watchers rating them as more memorable (79% vs. 70%). But keep in mind that merely casting a celebrity is not enough. “The best ads are always the ones where talent is deeply involved with the creative process,” said Garrett Smith, endorsements…

The Super Bowl still has the biggest one-day audience of any televised event in the United States, but is its nearly $7 million price tag for a 30-second ad worth it for brands? Sometimes. According to TV advertising data firm EDO, Super Bowl ads have been 307% more likely to engage viewers than the average primetime broadcast program since 2019—compared to 126% for the second-place NBA All-Star Game. But not all Super Bowl ads hit quite so hard. “I tell my clients, if you don’t have a really good, creative idea, don’t do it,” said Kevin Krim, CEO and president of EDO. “Don’t do the ad.” For example, data and analytics firm System1 had only four Super Bowl ads register a Top 50 emotional response among viewers—Disney, M&M’s, T-Mobile and PopCorners. March…

A company interested in buying a minute in Super Bowl 58 will need to cough up around $14 million. Surprised? Probably not. It seems we have become inured to such figures. But that wasn’t the case on Dec. 5, 1983, when Adweek—which marks its 45th anniversary this year—devoted a full page to a landmark piece of news. For the first time, the cost for 60 seconds in the Super Bowl had hit seven figures. “The million-dollar minute: Is it worth it?” we asked. The answer was, of course, it depends. One of the takers was a fledgling company called Apple Computer. It would use its 60 seconds to announce the debut of the Macintosh personal computer with an ad titled “1984.” A few months later, we ran another full-page story—this…

Goodby Silverstein & Partners has four clients in Super Bowl 58—Kawasaki, Doritos, Mountain Dew and BMW. And it’s not even the first time the San Francisco-based agency has pulled such heavy duty. The buck stops with chief creative officer Margaret Johnson, a 28-year veteran of the agency who has worked on Big Game ads for Bubly, E*Trade, Budweiser and Cheetos, to name a few. “Making a Super Bowl ad is certainly a career highlight,” she said. Given how expensive and huge the production can be, it’s also an intimidating one. At GS&P, there’s a small core team for each ad, who check in daily with the client. “You want to keep the team pretty tight so that people feel responsible,” she explained. “If you’re part of a big team throwing…

In the second half of this year, Google will begin to fully deprecate third-party cookies across Chrome just as the presidential election begins in earnest. The intersection of these two seismic events will have a profound impact on political advertising. The full deprecation of third-party cookies will eliminate marketers’ ability to use the currency to target voters across the Google ecosystem, which will have two primary effects on the allocation of political budgets, according to interviews with executives in the publishing, advertising technology and political marketing industries. This year, digital political advertising spend in the U.S. is expected to top $3.5 billion, according to projections from Insider Intelligence. The shift will exacerbate the fragmentation challenges of the open web, as the pool of addressable voters will be reduced to those…

When you’re in the food business, a secret recipe can mean the difference between fortune and bankruptcy. At KFC headquarters in Louisville, Ky., for example, Colonel Sanders’ original recipe sits on a shelf inside the chain’s legal department. For its part, Coca-Cola tucked its formula into a vault in Atlanta’s World of Cola-Cola. (Fans can visit the vault, but they can’t look at the recipe.) And then there’s Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, the chicken chain about to take the wraps off its first Super Bowl ad this year. Popeyes has a secret recipe, too—a spice blend that packs the menu’s signature Cajun punch. But you won’t find it in a bank safe or lawyer’s office. It’s in the head of corporate chef Amy Alarcon. “I certainly don’t have access to that…