Almost a year ago to the day, one of Amazon Prime Video’s posts on Instagram went viral. That might be because it’s a little, well, raunchy.

On the day the movie Saltburn hit the streamer, Prime Video’s social account posted a still from the film from a scene where actor Barry Keoghan leans in to drink another character’s dirty bathwater, captioning it “Boy dinner.” The post has since clocked almost 130,000 likes.

The “boy dinner” post was the brainchild of Prime Video’s reactive AOR, Saylor, which supports Prime Video’s larger advertising strategy by reacting to pop culture and online trends in a timely manner, according to Will Trowbridge, Saylor’s founder and CEO.

Trowbridge said that a reactive social strategy can complement a brand’s overall marketing strategy through day-by-day brand-building.

“Especially for brands that have…an existing audience, you are missing out on opportunities if you’re not deploying a reactive strategy every single day,” he said.

Now trending: To build its reactive social posts for Prime Video, Saylor keeps tabs on what fans of Prime Video content are talking about as well as broader social media trends, Trowbridge told Marketing Brew.

“What is The Boys fandom talking about today?” he said. “What is the moment that everyone’s obsessing over? What is that story hook that everyone can’t get over and wants to talk about? Those are the very specific brand narratives that we track, as well as those more global internet trends and even micro internet trends.”

Read more here.—JS

Walmart is the biggest and (quite literally) bluest retailer in the US, minting hundreds of billions in retail sales and making billions in digital advertising revenue.

In the eyes of advertisers, though, it still doesn’t hold a candle to Amazon.

Even though Walmart has made strides growing its retail media platform, advertisers are still warming up to Walmart’s capabilities this holiday season, media buyers told Marketing Brew.

“Walmart has not been the place where brands are focusing their e-com dollars,” Ryan Dietrich, SVP of e-commerce, retail media, and technology at the agency Monks, told Marketing Brew. “Historically, we always told brands to treat Walmart as kind of like Amazon Canada, which means, as a rule of thumb, 10% of your Amazon US sales.”

Though media buyers say the company’s retail media network has considerably more upside in recent years, Dietrich said Walmart still has ways to go before it makes a dent in Amazon’s retail media market share.

How it’s stacking up: In many ways, comparing the two retailers’ retail media platforms is a bit like comparing apples to a diamond-studded orange.

• Amazon’s advertising business posted revenue of $14.3 billion last quarter. Meanwhile, Walmart’s retail media business brought in around $3.4 billion for the 2024 fiscal year.

Slowly but steadily, though, Walmart is expanding its retail media footprint. Its US ad business, Walmart Connect, grew by roughly 30% in Q2 and 26% in Q3, according to company earnings reports.

“We’re getting better at converting someone who may just be eyeballs looking at our website to actually completing a checkout and putting something in their basket and having that delivered to their house,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told investors in November. “We’re pleased with our progress, but it also indicates we still have a long way to go.”

Continue reading here.—RB

Pregaming isn’t just for twentysomethings trying to save money on drinks before heading out on a Friday night. It’s for advertisers, too.

NFL pregame ads are 12% more likely to drive viewer engagement than the average prime-time ad, according to data from TV measurement company EDO gathered through Week 6 of this season. In-game ads are more likely to lead to engagement than pregame ads, but only by a margin of 4%, EDO found.

Both time slots are promising for advertisers, Laura Grover, EDO’s SVP and head of client solutions, told Marketing Brew. But certain brands and categories are more likely to thrive in the football environment than others, EDO data indicates.

Outpizza the Hut: Both in-game and pregame NFL ads “are proving incredibly effective” for pizza brands, especially Little Caesars and Pizza Hut, according to EDO.

• For the category in general, pregame NFL ads were 141% more likely to drive engagement than the prime-time average.
• That share was 133% for in-game ads.
• Little Caesars saw the highest engagement for NFL ads in the pizza category, followed by Pizza Hut.

Read more here.—AM

Discover how over-the-top brand collaborations with blockbuster films like Wicked and Barbie are reshaping the marketing landscape. From unique products to massive audience engagement, see why brands are rushing to partner with entertainment giants for mutually beneficial, attention-grabbing campaigns that drive buzz and boost sales.