Ads are everywhere. They’re in the sky, on water bottles, in restrooms, and so on. They’ve been in cars for quite a while via the radio, but they’re finding new ways to reach drivers, in part thanks to voice assistants.

• Amazon’s Alexa is integrated with dozens of car brands, and the company also sells a hands-free car accessory called Echo Auto equipped with the voice assistant.
• Google’s Android Auto lets drivers use Google Assistant, just as Apple’s CarPlay lets them tap into Siri on the road.
• Some automakers, like Mercedes, have developed voice assistants of their own
  

Looking ahead: Of course, brands can reach drivers by running ads on the radio and platforms like Spotify. But marketers are starting to think outside the box—though still inside the car—in order to come up with new ways to reach and engage drivers through voice while their eyes stay on the road.

Wheels are turning

James Poulter, CEO and co-founder of European voice agency Vixen Labs, said his company started working on a voice app for McDonald’s in the UK in early 2021 as a response to Covid lockdowns.

• After its rollout, Amazon enabled a feature that made it so “we can tell whether or not someone was actually using an Echo Auto or Echo by picking up their location if they’re on the move,” Poulter said, so the skill was adjusted to provide “restaurant routing information and deals” specifically with drivers in mind as a use case.
• Despite that feature, “it’s hard to draw any concrete conclusions from it yet,” Poulter told us. However, he said he feels optimistic that in-car voice apps could one day become more popular as companies increasingly include “invocations in their outdoor marketing” and “the popularization of these actionable audio campaigns.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Podcasts are for the girls.

In the earlier days of the podcast industry, the stereotype of the average listener was thought of as “an older white man wearing a massive set of headphones, likely sitting at his computer,” Melissa Paris, VP of sales research and analytics at SXM Media, wrote in a post about a new report from the company.

Nowadays, not so much: Women made up about half (48%) of monthly podcast listeners in the US, according to The Women’s 2022 Podcast Report, a study conducted by Edison Research on behalf of SXM Media by surveying 1,500 US adults who identify as women. That’s up from 44% in 2017.

• Additionally, more than one in three (35%) US women over the age of 18 said they listened to a podcast in the past month, aka an estimated 47 million women.

Ad opportunity: Women podcast listeners were more likely to consider, recommend, purchase, and spend more on brands they hear advertised on podcasts with women hosts or producers compared to other podcasts, according to the report.

Keep reading here.—AM

Sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited published a report called “2022 Sports Sponsorship Year in Review.” Here are some highlights:

MLB: The MLB had the most sponsorship deals in professional sports, at 3,350 for the year.

• The NFL was close behind, clocking 3,000, which actually brought in more revenue than the MLB’s 3,350.
• The NFL generated $1.8 billion in sponsorship revenue, 50% more than the MLB’s $1.2 billion.

NIL: Football players earned the highest percent of total NIL compensation, followed by men’s basketball players and women’s basketball players.

• Hooters was the brand with the most NIL endorsement deals this year, while FTX was third…

GRLS: Brand-sponsorship deals in women’s sports across several major leagues increased 20% year over year.

• Finance companies are the most active in sponsoring women’s sports, followed by apparel/accessories and media.
• Alex Morgan and Serena Williams were the most endorsed women athletes of the year, with 27 deals each.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Search it: How (and why) to optimize your videos to rank higher in TikTok searches.

What’s next: What marketers will focus on in 2023, according to Gartner.

Exploration: The brands to keep an eye on in the metaverse.

Metaverse reverse: Last year it seemed like every company wanted a Web3 makeover. But now brands are hitting pause. Have we reached peak metaverse? Check out mntn’s new article to learn about Web3’s future.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

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• FTX has been sued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allegedly using “commingled funds, including FTX customer funds,” on marketing initiatives, including its Super Bowl ad.
• Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, wrote in a blog post that Twitter’s content-moderation structure “burdened the company with too much power” and “opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets).”
• Dozens of DTC telehealth companies leaked some “sensitive medical information they collect to the world’s largest advertising platforms,” according to an investigation conducted by STAT and The Markup.
• TikTok’s ad-revenue sharing program for creators has delivered payouts that “appear somewhat variable,” according to Insider.
• Seven influencers have been charged with securities fraud by the SEC for allegedly using social media, podcasts, and Discord to “manipulate exchange-traded stocks” as part of a $100 million fraud scheme.

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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Have we seen the peak of a branded Web3?
• New AI tool can help advertisers vet podcast hosts based on news they make outside of their shows
• Why companies like Netflix see store shelves as a place to connect with customers