When it comes to pop culture, CAA sometimes finds itself at the center of it. Charli XCX, who was the face of this summer’s brat summer, Ashley Park, who stars in Netflix’s Emily in Paris, and comedian and SNL cast member Ego Nwodim are among the agency’s roster of talent.

But enough about the stars: the agency is looking to strike up even deeper relationships with brands.

Earlier this summer, CAA announced the formation of a new media and entertainment partnerships department, which formalizes the work the agency had already been doing in bringing brands into Hollywood productions. The new unit comes as more brands seek out ways to integrate with content to reach consumers, especially after the success of Barbie and its brand partnerships last summer, according to Libby Bush, global head of media and entertainment partnerships at CAA.

“We had been missing…really big blockbuster tentpole moments,” Bush, who leads the new department, told Marketing Brew. “I do think what [Barbie] did was it reminded brands that this is a space that can be really fun and creative and successful. We just hadn’t had it because of Covid and strikes and all those things.”

Continue reading here.—JS

Launching a new product? Buckle up…it could be a bumpy ride. Want a shortcut? You’re gonna need a game changer in your toolkit—something that’ll get the people talking.

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Take their new Scan & Go™ Display Ads tool as another powerful example. It grabs members right when they’re shopping in-club. Plus, with more than 1 in 3 members using Scan & Go™, it’s a quality innovation for your brand to take advantage of when launching new products and driving incremental sales.

Level up your launch.

This story is the third in a series about how marketers for sports teams and leagues around the world approach social media strategy.

The WNBA is in the midst of arguably its biggest season ever, having opened with its most-watched games in history and recently signing a new media rights deal that will reportedly bring the league $2.2 billion over 11 years.

• The league isn’t just gaining momentum on TV. Its views on social platforms are also on the rise—the first week of the season had 157 million video views—and some team social media managers are looking to capitalize.

At the New York Liberty, which made it all the way to the league finals last year before falling to back-to-back champs the Las Vegas Aces and already clinched a spot in this year’s playoffs, Social Media Coordinator Charlie DeSadier’s approach to creating content for a growing fanbase hinges on relatability and versatility—posting on multiple platforms every day with everything from off-court antics to game-day coverage.

“I’m very intentional about connecting with our audience, making sure that I know who I’m engaging with, what their interests are…and making sure that I’m able to execute and give them what they’re looking for,” DeSadier told Marketing Brew. “[I’m] following trends, being immersed within culture, and making sure that I’m staying sharp on what’s going on in the world so that I’m able to tailor our content to our audience and our players.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Google’s publisher ad tech was only as strong as the advertisers those publishers got access to—but those publishers knew they couldn’t get them anywhere else.

In internal Google documents released on Day 7 of the United States vs. Google trial Tuesday, company employees worried that if Google’s ad exchange for publishers, AdX, lost exclusivity to Google’s advertisers, “many publishers would terminate their AdX relationship in favor of their preferred vendors.”

The memo, which weighed the benefits of opening up ad inventory to third parties, was released in a tranche of documents introduced Tuesday and reinforced the DOJ’s argument that Google unfairly tied its two ad-tech businesses together to maintain a monopoly on the industry.

According to an internal document shown in court, Google’s own buy side said that its advertising tools were weaker precisely because they were exclusive to AdX.

At one point, Google employees suggested that the company’s buy side was “subsidizing” the sell side and “greatly weakens GDN’s position in the market,” an internal company conversation shared in court showed. (GDN stands for Google Display Network, Google’s display ads business.)

• In an internal simulation from 2014, Google’s revenue fell 70% when Google’s ad network didn’t bid on AdX inventory, documents revealed.
• In 2019, Google’s DSP DV360 allocated 75% of its spend to AdX, while competitor The Trade Desk spent roughly 30%–40% on AdX, according to an exhibit shown in court Tuesday. “That’s harder to explain to external clients,” Google engineer Ali Nasiri Amini wrote in an email.

Publishers tried to find ways around Google’s dominance, including turning to header bidding, an open-source technology that allows publishers to access multiple ad exchanges. In documents released by the DOJ earlier in the trial, Google executive Chris LaSala called header bidding an “existential threat” in an email from 2016.

Continue reading here.—RB

Let’s get personal. Engaging your customers means creating a top-notch, personalized messaging strategy. To help you out, we teamed up with Customer.io to spill all the deets on successful strategies. We covered why personalization is important, how it works, and what you can do to boost engagement. Check it out.