AllCity Network, a nationwide digital sports network that makes podcasts and videos, has raised $9.4 million in Series A funding led by 2015 NBA Finals MVP Andre Iguodala’s Mosaic fund, AllCity co-founder and CEO Brandon Spano told Marketing Brew.

The cash injection will bring the company’s total raised to about $12.4 million, with the goal of doubling the size of the company. The funds will be used to set up free ad-supported streaming (FAST) video channels early next year, hire local sales directors, and help support the creation of another local network, Spano said. (He didn’t say where exactly the new local network would launch.)

“We want there to be a full-time, 24-hour city-specific TV channel for every sports fan,” Spano said.

Big money: The funding marks one of the first major investments from Iguodala’s VC fund. Iguodala announced his retirement from the NBA in late October, and announced Mosaic shortly afterward. It has also invested in Vessel, a prefab modular home builder, and the management firm Athletes First.

The play: With local sports networks in Denver, Chicago, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, and a recent push into national shows, AllCity deploys a streaming-first approach, releasing near-daily podcasts and video content about professional sports teams around the country. In Philadelphia, at least, it’s taken a page from The Athletic—which was VC-backed before it was acquired by the New York Times—by hiring already-established local reporters and personalities, and making them the faces of local operations.

Read more here.—RB

It’s that special time of year again. You probably know it all too well. Fierce competition. Countless hours spent fine-tuning messaging and poring over consumer data. ’Tis the season, so that means you need to have strategies in place.

Luckily for you, we teamed up with Intuit Mailchimp to give you an interactive toolkit with solutions to help curb those age-old holiday season marketing headaches. We’re talkin’ actionable strategies backed by stats and research.

Wanna know what we’re covering? You’ll learn how to:

• use segments to better reach your audience
• navigate Black Friday + Cyber Monday
• effectively implement owned channels into your strategies

Say goodbye to seasonal slog.*

Roughly three months after Mark Marshall took the helm at NBCU as chairman of global advertising and partnerships, its ads team has undergone an overhaul.

In: Alison Levin has joined the company as president of advertising and partnerships from Roku, where she spent nearly nine years and had recently been promoted to VP, global ad revenue and marketing solutions. Levin will join the company in December.

Internally, former EVP of client partnerships Karen Kovacs has been promoted to the network’s president of client partnerships. Both will report directly to Marshall.

Out: As part of the changes, EVP of measurement and impact Kelly Abcarian, an industry veteran who had been spearheading efforts to develop new TV currencies, is departing NBCU, Marketing Brew confirmed. Abcarian, a former senior executive at Nielsen, had been a vocal advocate for independent measurement at the network. John Lee, NBCU’s chief data officer, will take over Abcarian’s measurement and research oversight duties, according to a source close to the company.

New year, new me? The changes are the latest in a series of major changes to NBCU ads leadership this year after longtime ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino abruptly departed the company in May to lead X as CEO. Marshall swiftly assumed her place leading ad sales through this year’s upfronts. Krishan Bhatia, NBCU’s president and chief business officer, global advertising and partnerships, announced in September that he would leave the organization by the end of the year.

Keep reading here.—JS

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Jake Glaser is head of sales at WorkReduce, a company that provides marketing staff to agencies and brands.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Wieden+Kennedy’s Honda “Cog” commercial from 2003. They disassembled a Honda Accord and turned it into a Rube Goldberg machine, utilizing a chain of colliding parts. All before modern AI technology even existed. I still watch with amazement and have my boys asking to see it regularly. W+K even topped it off with “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? I spent a full month in the Soviet Union in a youth exchange program when I was very young. Seeing and experiencing multiple cultures from the inside (not as a tourist) is life-changing.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? Our ability to utilize customization (through AI or other tech) to accurately deliver targeted messaging to the right individuals. We have representation from six to seven different generations, and each one prefers different communication methods and styles. Why rely upon a single broad-stroke method?

Least optimistic: is it the year of mobile… again?

What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? I’m a big consumer of daily information newsletters. My favorite right now is Numlock News by Walter Hickey. Short and sweet paragraph-long updates on timely news topics of the day. I tend to hear it first through Numlock, then get full updates through traditional sources.

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

Test case: While you can add up to 30 hashtags to a Reels caption, this experiment explored how many is actually the magic number.

Shopping habit: Get up to speed on Meta’s move to allow some users to buy products promoted on Amazon’s Facebook and Instagram ads without leaving the apps.

Ta-ta: The clock is ticking on carousel posts and profile videos on LinkedIn, which will be removed en masse in December.

Checks and specs: We polled marketers about Connected TV—what it’s like right now and its future potential. Check out our findings in this interactive report we created with MNTN.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Arby’s and Paramount+ are rolling out a co-branded campaign to promote the straight-to-streaming film Good Burger 2.
• Krispy Kreme and McDonald’s are in talks to sell donuts in more of the fast-food chain’s locations after a Kentucky-based test.
• Disney is planning a beta test of a combined version of Disney+ and Hulu for subscribers who bundle both services.