There’s a first time for everything, including Super Bowl ads.

This year, more than half a dozen brands that have never before advertised in the game, including Häagen-Dazs, Instacart, and Duracell, are preparing for their freshman appearances on advertising’s biggest (and priciest) stage. For many brands, the decision to shell out as much as $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime is rooted in a desire to level up big campaigns or break into the US market, in addition to driving sales and boosting awareness. The stakes are high: first-time advertisers have to help their brands stand out amid the noise, not the least of which is the clomping of the Budweiser Clydesdales’s hooves.

“There are brands that have created precedent and are consistently entertaining, and brands that consumers are looking for time and time again,” said Alison McCoy, VP of brand marketing at NerdWallet, which is running its first Super Bowl ad this year. “Ultimately, I do think that while you might have to work a little harder to stand out as a newcomer, people are excited to hear from the brands that they use in their day-to-day life.”

Remember the (brand) name: Every marketer strives to have people remember their brand, but that’s easier for some Super Bowl advertisers than it is for others. Super Bowl regulars like Budweiser and Doritos have already built up an association with the game, Pedr Howard, head of creative excellence at the market research firm Ipsos, said.

“The biggest by far challenge for these new brands is making people remember who they are, not just remember the ad,” he said.

Continue reading here.—AM

In 2025, streamers are focused on playing well with others.

As they seek to attract advertisers amid a fragmented streaming landscape, companies with streaming services and platforms, including Roku and Disney, are partnering up with ad-tech companies like The Trade Desk with the goal of improving their ability to leverage data from different companies to make it easier for advertisers to work with them. In other words, interoperability is increasingly the name of the game.

“We work with a number of different programmatic platforms, and part of our strategy is really around interoperability and making our inventory available where brands and agencies want to buy,” Miles Fisher, Roku’s senior director of strategic advertising partnerships, told Marketing Brew.

Cover your bases: In the last year, Disney and Roku have both struck up partnerships with The Trade Desk, one of the largest demand-side platforms in the industry. Disney also integrated its ad exchange with Google’s DV360 and The Trade Desk last March to create DRAX Direct, allowing buying on Disney+ and Hulu. Roku has a similar partnership with DV360 and other DSPs so programmatic buyers can access their inventory.

Making platforms compatible with DSPs like The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360 is a way for streamers to potentially increase the advertisers they can work with.

“If you’re the type of advertiser or holding company that buys programmatically, you’re not going to have multiple DSPs,” Peter Hamilton, Roku’s senior director of product management, told Marketing Brew. “You’re probably going to have a main DSP that you use, and you want to be able to buy everywhere through that DSP.”

Read more here.—JS

Whatever happens to TikTok, marketers are planning to keep spending big on social media.

That’s according to a report from omnichannel ad platform Mediaocean, which has since 2021 been surveying marketers about consumer and tech trends for a series of biannual reports on outlooks for the industry. The seventh and latest installment, which is based on surveys conducted in November, indicates some of “the most important trends set to impact marketers this year,” Brian Wieser, principal at Madison and Wall, wrote in the report.

Here are a few to keep in mind during the first half of the year.

Channel in: Social, digital display and video, and CTV ads are expected to stay hot in 2025, according to Mediaocean’s survey of almost 700 marketers across brands, agencies, media companies, measurement firms, and tech platforms.

• More than two-thirds of respondents said they plan to increase their spend on social (68%) and digital display and video (67%).
• More than half (55%) said they’ll up their spend on CTV.

Radio and audio, national and local TV, and print ads, on the other hand, might be out for some marketers this year: More respondents said their budgets for those channels are decreasing rather than increasing, but majorities in each category said they plan to maintain their spend from 2024 to 2025.

Read more here.—AM

Step into the future of marketing on Feb. 11 in NYC (or via livestream) with Marketing Brew. Hear from Mari Docter, SVP of Data Strategy and Innovation at NOVUS, and other experts as they unpack AI-driven tools, smarter attribution, and privacy strategies. Connect with peers and elevate your marketing game!

Executive moves across the industry.

• Smoothie King hired former Jamba Juice CMO Claudia Schaefer to serve as its newest chief marketer.
• McDonald’s is elevating Alyssa Buetikofer, the CMO of its Canadian business, to head up US marketing efforts, replacing outgoing CMO and chief experience officer Tariq Hassan.
• Victoria Beckham Beauty promoted its global CMO, Lauren Edelman, to the role of CEO.
• GSD&M hired Peggy McCann, formerly Horizon Media’s EVP of business solutions, as chief media officer.