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Marketing Brew

Entertainment

Katie Hicks

marketingbrew.com

Earlier this year, Andrew Downing, director of social media at Cava, tasked his team with coming up with a show for social media after seeing other creators and brands 

 and sensing an opportunity in the unscripted reality space.

“We were seeing some of these [social series] that resemble old TV shows,” he said, noting that series like 

, which tours the dirty and often bizarrely decorated rooms of men in New York, resembles MTV’s 

where single contestants’ rooms were inspected by potential dates. “I told people to go research some old reality shows and see how we can spin that into a social show.”

About 15 ideas later, the Cava team landed on 

, a six-episode, weekly Instagram dating series hosted by creator and stand-up comedian Daniela Mora. In each episode, created with the Very Online Agency, two contestants build each other a Cava bowl while answering questions about each other and ultimately deciding whether or not they are, in fact, “bowlmates.”

Season 1 has now officially wrapped, and Downing says the brand’s bet on love has paid off enough to start planning Season 2.

“This is just an expansion of the Cavaverse and trying to figure out other touch points that we know people are interested in,” Downing said.

 lives on its own Instagram account separate from the official Cava brand account, which has more than 300,000 followers. While 

 1,000+ followers may pale in comparison, Downing said it was a conscious decision to game the Instagram algorithm as it pushes content to non-followers. A separate account also provides an easy way for viewers to watch all the episodes in succession without other, non-

Starting fresh on any new account can make it harder to get eyeballs, but Downing said that the first two videos received more than 300,000 views without any paid media, which“outperformed [his team’s] wildest dreams.” The number of inquiries the brand has received from viewers asking to be on the show as contestants, he said, has been another unexpected indicator of success.

“We can actually tally the amount of DMs we get now asking us to be on the show,” Downing said. “That was something we never even thought of.”

 to take note of the fact that many young people are looking for love off of the dating apps, but being part of people’s potential love stories can have other positive effects. Many of the contestants on the show have noted that they’ve never tried Cava before, which Downing said wasn’t intentional but has shown the brand the potential of reaching new customers through this method.

is designed to encourage word-of-mouth and organic discovery, and Downing said it was important to get the right host to help boost awareness. Mora, a Bronx-born comedian who has more than 320,000 followers on Instagram, was Cava’s first choice.

“We knew that we wanted a comedian to riff between two people, just in case, for whatever reason, the conversation stalled,” he said. “[Mora’s] online presence and the content she shares about dating and real-life, Gen Z stuff definitely factored in.”

The final episode of Season 1 premiered this week, with almost every episode ending in an agreed-upon bowlmance, and Season 2 is now putting out casting calls for New Yorkers.

According to Downing, Cava’s decision to continue with Season 2 was based on the level of engagement in the show’s comments and DMs. He said he’s excited about the potential of using the series to release holiday content or to promote things like new menu items in future seasons. A “Where are they now?” segment with couples from Season 1 is also not out of the question.

“Anything that is a trope in a reality show or in dating content, we’re very well aware of it and we’re always thinking, ‘Oh, could we do that? Could we do this?’” he said. “I think it would be a really fun addition.”

screenshots from Cava's Instagram series, "Bowlmates."

How Cava is building brand love (and real love) on Instagram

Andrew Downing, director of social media at Cava, shared the strategy behind the brand’s newest social series, “Bowlmates.”

Jennimai Nguyen

The US might only have 11 federally recognized holidays, but a Taylor Swift album release day just might qualify as No. 12—especially if brand celebrations are taken into account.

On October 3, Swift released her twelfth studio album, 

, and several brands used the opportunity to up their marketing ante. It’s not the first time that 

 at the opportunity to get involved in the pop star’s milestones. But while her album announcement and engagement news had a flurry of brands reacting via social media, 

’s official release inspired brands like Uber, Spotify, and Baked by Melissa to get involved beyond social media, rolling out tangible products and pop-up events to mark the occasion.

“Because the Taylor Swift universe is so broad…we can tap into it in different ways,” Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing for Uber in the US and Canada, said.

For brands going the extra mile, doing something IRL offers one way to stand out among Swiftie-centric brands that may all be trying to get in on the hype.

“When everyone’s doing something, it’s not special to do that thing,” Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO of brand studio Kingsland, told us during Swift’s album announcement phase. “You have to be additive to the culture.”

On album release day, Uber Eats partnered with Best Friends Animal Society to put on an event called Uber Showcats that featured adoptable cats along with charm jewelry-making stations and photo ops in New York, LA, and Nashville. In total, more than 1,000 people attended, and 28 cats were adopted, the brand said.

The event was aimed at spotlighting Swift’s love of cats along with nodding to Uber’s own history with furry friends, Jeffreys said. In Uber's early days, it ran a promotion that let users book 15-minute cuddle sessions with adoptable cats.

“A lot of brands get involved these days around the Taylor Swiftdom, and…we felt that we had a role to play,” she told Marketing Brew. “We could bring it to life in lots of different angles, both for our rides app, through our delivery app, and by connecting with Uber’s DNA and roots with Uber Kittens.”

Orange truck with cats on display with Uber Eats logo and "Meet the Showcats"

While having a brand connection to the Taylor universe helped inform Uber’s participation, its users didn’t need to be aware of the brand’s own kitten history for it to make sense, and Jeffreys said the company’s efforts were designed to help fans celebrate.

In contrast to Swift’s other recent cultural moments, which came with an element of surprise, this more unique activation was made possible with the gift of advance notice.

“When you have the opportunity, like what we did, where you have a little bit more lead time…it obviously opens the aperture of how you can activate and how you can bring ideas to life,” Jeffreys said.

Spotify also took advantage of a longer lead time to activate around 

, one that was even slightly longer than other brands’ due to the music streamer’s relationship with Swift’s team. On social media, Spotify posted images of billboards with Spotify codes and the album cover around the time that Swift announced 

. But for the album release itself, Spotify hosted a three-day immersive activation that included new lyric reveals and allowed fans to search for and engage with the pop star’s famous Easter eggs.

“We use the time to be quite intentional, and to think [through] every reveal that came through the activation,” Leroy Harris, global head of music marketing at Spotify, told Marketing Brew, later adding that “It’s really about us being the brand that’s able to add a layer of touchability to this exciting moment and really make it something beyond the music.”

Many brands have capitalized on the power of a major Taylor Swift moment throughout her career, but 

 inspired certain brands to get in for the first time or in new ways.

KitchenAid, which makes a cult-favorite stand mixer, used the album to release its first-ever fan-inspired product, giving fans a chance to win one of 12 sparkly orange mixers in the week leading up to the album’s release. This followed Swift’s album announcement in August, when the brand was one of many making social 

 featuring products in the now-Taylor-associated color—but KitchenAid opted to make the product real in time for the album release.

The cupcake brand Baked by Melissa, meanwhile, hadn’t posted about Swift’s new album ahead of last week’s release, but the brand released a limited-edition themed cupcake pack tied to the album for launch week. Founder and CEO Melissa Ben-Ishay said the move was “a no-brainer.”

“I knew that it was going to be successful because you could feel the love and the passion that went into it from my team,” Ben-Ishay told us. “It’s a cultural moment that also gave my team a chance to work on something that they felt a connection to.”

When the cupcake pack became available, the brand’s account took the opportunity to post about it. It marked a departure from her brand’s usual style of content, which is normally founder-led. But the opportunity to show off the Taylor-powered product was too good to pass up.

“Quite honestly, I posted it to social because I was just so excited,” Ben-Ishay said. “Organic social is very sacred to me. I really value the community and the relationships I’ve built, and that’s where I give recipes and just connect on a more human level. But when we saw the response from the public, it did feel like I was just adding value and giving people more of what they want.”

Collage of brand activations featuring Taylor Swift's album's iconography and teal-and-orange color scheme.

Why some brands went beyond social to celebrate Taylor Swift’s album release

Uber Eats, Spotify, KitchenAid, and Baked by Melissa took it offline to activate around “The Life of a Showgirl.”

Jasmine Sheena

Media buyers, here’s one more streaming ad unit to potentially factor into holiday budgets.

This week, Paramount rolled out Streaming Fixed Units, an offering that lets brands activate against the first seven days of new episodes of some of Paramount+’s most popular shows, including 

The standard units are 30 seconds long, with Paramount offering separate pricing options for shorter or longer lengths, Leo O’Connor, EVP of streaming at Paramount Advertising, told Marketing Brew. The units will play during standard ad breaks (the second ad break in a Paramount+ show, for example, has 90 seconds of time available, enough for three 30-second slots.)

Advertisers from the AI, travel, and quick-serve restaurant categories have already bought up Streaming Fixed Units, which are designed to provide premium inventory during some of Paramount+’s most coveted programming at the time when most people are tuning in, O’Connor said. Western-wear brands have also taken an interest in the ad format to show up against the Taylor Sheridan shows, he noted.

“We saw that this filled this need in the market to eventize these big drops of new episodes,” O’Connor said. “This is something that’s available today in sports. I think there’s a lot that’s being said about that in the industry, but we felt like there was some white space on the entertainment side to do a similar type of execution, where you could find a huge audience doing the same thing at once and have a brand own that moment.”

 Paramount, which is in the midst of navigating a massive merger with Skydance, has been adding to its ad offerings this year. In January, its broadcast of the AFC Championship game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs featured 

. The same month, it joined peers like Roku and NBCUniversal in partnering on Comcast’s 

 platform for small- and medium-sized businesses.

In March, the company unveiled a measurement 

 with iSpot that implements iSpot’s Outcomes at Scale offering, giving advertisers information about conversion rates.

The new ad format announced this week is designed to offer advertisers even more ways to get in on the company’s streaming inventory, O’Connor said.

“This is meant to complement the already existing programmatic and audience targeting capabilities that we have,” he said. “This is not meant to signal a departure from that type of selling…Breaking through with the Streaming Fixed Unit and then following up that buy with more precision-targeted programmatic across Paramount+ and Pluto TV, we think that’s the formula.”

Jeremy Renner portraying Mike McLusky in the Paramount+ series "Mayor of Kingstown"

Paramount unveils new ad format letting advertisers own episode drops

Streaming Fixed Units are designed to help “eventize” new episodes, an exec said.

Throughout the summer, fans convened over themed food and drink, elaborate decor, and shared giggles galore to watch new episodes of the teen drama 

as it was released weekly on Amazon Prime Video. Now, as the teenage love triangle drama has come to a close (for now), ABC’s long-running dance competition series 

No matter the show, the girlies are gathering for watch parties, and the brands are taking note.

A watch party can technically be for any kind of viewing event, but they are typically tied to live broadcasts and are especially common among sports fans (case in point: the Super Bowl). Lately though, content outside of the sports realm and attracting primarily women viewers has inspired the same kind of social gatherings, creating a marketing opportunity that particularly appeals to brands with audience demographics similar to the viewers themselves. Beverage brand Swoon, skin-care brand Hume Supernatural, and fragrance brand Candier are just some of the brands that have been part of the excitement.

Whether the watch parties are big or small, the brand marketers that we spoke to said these events offer unique alignment and a sense of camaraderie and cultural relevance that they are eager to get in on.

“It’s really about supporting people in the things that they’re passionate about, because those really intimate environments is where so much of that passion shines through,” Liza Tagliati, VP of marketing at Hume Supernatural, told Marketing Brew.

In September, TikTok creator Taylor Buck, who has just over 2,000 followers on the platform, hosted a small watch party for 

. As part of it, she put together and handed out goodie bags full of various lifestyle products to guests, which included gifted products from Hume Supernatural and Candier.

Tagliati told us that it’s not unusual for Hume Supernatural to have creators requesting PR and offering to collaborate, but Buck requested for the brand to get involved with the watch party after the creator had organically posted social media content about the brand on her own.

For Hume Supernatural, the appeal of working with Buck around the watch party wasn’t necessarily in the event itself, but rather the creator who was hosting it.

“We really evaluate the authenticity that those requests come in with,” Tagliati said. “If it’s someone who we can tell is passionate about the brand, then it’s the kind of thing that it’s so worth it for us to support, because we know that someone who’s passionate about our product and our brand [is] handing it to 20 of their closest friends and is going to be like, ‘You guys, 

Fragrance brand Candier was similarly interested in the creator connection when it worked with Buck on the watch party gift bags. Marketing Manager Paula Quinones-Roman said she had previously seen Buck’s content, particularly around the show, and she felt that any social content that Buck chose to make from gifted content would be worth the investment.

Plus, several Candier candle scents connect loosely to the show itself, including a hot-cocoa scent that may remind fans of a scene featuring the character Conrad, and as well as a cereal scent called I Can’t Adult Today, which could be seen as poking fun at the character Jeremiah.

“A lot of our community was following the show. I personally watched the show,” Quinones-Roman told Marketing Brew. “Our candles really align with this, and we need to be doing more of this, because our community loves it.”

Though Quinones-Roman said Candier’s gifting strategy doesn’t explicitly require creators to post social content in exchange for product, and Tagliati said Hume Supernatural’s gifting approach centers a “qualitative analysis” of the community impact a creator might bring over measured results, both brand marketers acknowledged that the group element of a watch party can extend the potential social content and brand exposure opportunity.

Some brands are taking advantage of big and small watch parties alike—especially when the party’s show of choice is a natural extension of an existing partnership.

Swoon, a zero-sugar beverage brand that was founded in 2020, has since June partnered with Rylee Arnold, a social media personality and dancer on 

, on a custom version of its pink lemonade. When the show returned for its 34th season this September, Ella Liu, marketing manager, said the brand saw the excitement around 

 watch parties as an opportunity to amplify the brand’s connection to and recognition among fans.

“The people watching the show have some sort of knowledge of who Rylee is. They’ve probably heard her story before and have already fallen in love with her. So really, it’s taking that as an opportunity to show them she’s made this drink,” Liu said.

For the show’s premiere, Swoon’s team put out a call on social media to anyone hosting a 

 watch party to fill out a form for a chance to receive the Rylee Arnold beverage as part of a 1,000-case giveaway. In addition, the brand caught wind of a bigger watch event for the season’s first episode hosted at Mr. Purple, a rooftop venue in New York City managed by Gerber Group.

Sophie Gerber, who oversees marketing at Gerber Group and worked on the event, told us Swoon’s team reached out to the venue looking to supply the watch party with their beverage to be used in bespoke cocktails. Though it was not an official partnership between the beverage and hospitality brand, Sui said showing up at the event gave the whole thing an amplified feeling.

“Let’s say a hundred people are going to Mr. Purple, and only five of them know that [Rylee] has a Swoon can, but they all know who she is,” Liu said. “It’s just a great opportunity to get that in front of them.”

Swoon’s partnership with Arnold ran through the end of September, and Liu said that this September’s monthly social impressions increased 900% compared to last year, which she credited to the combined effect of watch parties and Arnold’s special-edition drink.

It’s not just CPG brands seeing returns either—venues like Mr. Purple have seen the growing popularity of non-sports watch parties affect their business, too. Gerber said that these events are just another way to define Mr. Purple as more than just a rooftop bar, especially as people have directly reached out to organize other TV show watch parties.

 is on. Everyone’s working in New York City, everyone’s hustling,” Gerber said. “Restaurants and bars and clubs and all these places in New York City are not all just meant for staying up until 4am. There are pockets of time where you could have an intimate conversation and an intimate, nice experience.”

Composite image of guests at a watch party hosted on a rooftop bar. People are chatting with others and holding drinks. 

Gather the girls—and the brands—for the next watch party 

Shows like “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “Dancing With the Stars” have inspired viewers to throw more watch parties, and brands are getting in on it.

A Broadway show uses many of the typical avenues to get its name out there, from TV ads and social media campaigns to OOH components across New York City, and even the buzz of celebrity-cast involvement.

Then there is the merchandise itself, bespoke pieces often emblazoned with the show’s name or creative references to the source material, which can organically promote the show to a fan’s family, friends, coworkers, or even passers-by who are sharing the same subway car.

But what happens when fans think the merchandise is…well, uncool?

Earlier this year, popular theater TikTok creator and podcast host Jonathan Lewis, better known online as The Sweaty Oracle, posited in a 

 that “Broadway is actually allergic to producing any kind of attractive merchandise.” Lewis, who has more than 90,000 followers on the platform, critiqued several current shows’ efforts and suggested that merch is suffering from the trend of 

 and a general lack of creativity. The comment section reflected broad agreement, with several users lamenting that recent theater merchandise can feel more like a “walking ad” than a service to fans.

Michael Rego, founder of the agency The Araca Group, has created and strategized merch for long-running shows like 

as well as limited runs like last season’s 

, and he said that while merchandise is made for fans, it does also function as an ad.

“A very wise person in the advertising business once said to me that every dollar we sell in merchandise is two to three dollars we don’t have to spend in advertising,” he said.

With that said, some Broadway marketers, both established and independent, are looking to give merchandise a reboot to superserve savvy fans who want something a little different.

The Araca Group was born out of Rego and his co-founders’ desire to produce theater in New York, and the company operates a show production arm in addition to its marketing services, which Rego said informs its merchandise strategy.

“For us, merchandise really was an offshoot of our producing, content-creation mindset,” he said. “We started handling merch because we just weren’t really satisfied with a traditional form of merchandise.”

Rego traces the beginnings of Broadway merchandise back to the ’80s, when shows like 

 began selling attire and tchotchkes mainly featuring show logos. When The Araca Group came onto the scene, he said, such an approach was no longer enough.

“By the time we came into the business, we said, ‘Gosh, there’s so many other ways that intellectual property merchandises itself,’” he said. “For the sense of trying to be fashion-forward, of being on brand, having an integration with marketing, to creating a retail destination.”

Being fashion-forward seems to resonate particularly with modern fans, he said, and some fans online have shared a desire for more subtle merchandise, leaning into an “if you know, you know” aesthetic over bold show logos. Rego’s company aims to serve this audience, he told us.

“There’s a certain audience that wants to have the brag,” he said. “But then there’s a whole other audience that’s out there that wants to emulate the feeling that they have from seeing a show. It’s something more aspirational, and they don’t want to actually feel like they’re doing a hard sell when they wear a T-shirt.”

The Araca Group’s internal sales data shows that more subtle merch is in high demand, and Rego said talking to theatergoers on the ground also helps inform the types of merch and design ideas that eventually get made. But fans aren’t the only ones influencing the merch machine, with show producers, authors, and investors all being stakeholders in the merchandise business. And their opinions hold weight, especially as Broadway, like movie theaters, continues to look to make up for slow-to-return audiences.

Still though, Rego thinks that seeking to serve the audience first is what makes merch work for both the fan and business-minded.

“Ultimately, merchandise really should go back to help the marketing of the show,” Rego told us. “It should help sell tickets. It should help create word of mouth and give our audiences a feeling of being an ambassador for the show.”

For those unsatisfied with current Broadway merch, though, there is a booming sub-industry of independently designed products being made and sold on platforms like Etsy and Redbubble. While not officially sanctioned by productions, occasionally those designs catch the attention of the shows themselves.

Julia Lawrence’s T-shirt design featuring themes inspired by 

 is one of these. Lawrence, a graphic designer and self-described theater kid, originally made a design inspired by the hit show, which is about a group of high school students studying Arthur Miller’s 1953 play 

, using imagery from the original cover of the play, that quickly picked up steam among theater fans online. The show reached out to her to commission a new design, as it didn’t have the rights to the original cover art, which is how Lawrence landed on imagery depicting girls dancing and featuring the quote “I contain freaking multitudes,” a standout line from the show.

Lawrence has posted various other digital redesigns of theater merch on her TikTok page and 

, and she said her artistic approach to design is what she believes drew the 

“When I design a merch piece, [I think] ‘Would I want this hanging on my wall as a piece of art?’” Lawrence said. “I never want it to be a logo or words just slapped on a shirt. These productions are so beautiful and intricate in their works of art, and I believe the merchandise should be an extension of that.”

As theater fans connect online and shows shift their own approaches to 

, Lawrence said she believes merchandise is at a turning point, and said that tapping into the feedback loop available through social media could be a way forward.

“There are some productions that are…listening to what fans want, and so they’re building online communities, even among fans who haven’t had the chance to even see the show live,” Lawrence said. “That kind of reach, I think, creates a demand for merch that helps fans feel connected to the show, even from afar.”

A photo collage of merch from the Broadway play, John Proctor is the Villain

Why Broadway merch is going the subtler route 

Fans online have complained about feeling like a “walking ad” when wearing their favorite theater shows’ merchandise, and agencies and indie designers have taken note.

No, not the romantic kind: Several companies that operate streamers, e.g., NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, are separating their linear and streaming assets.

This year, streamers are navigating splits alongside tough macroeconomic conditions, and they continue to battle it out over live sports rights as they face the ongoing challenge ofgrowing saturation. After the summer earnings season, Marketing Brew took a mid-year look at the state of the major streamers and their parent companies.

 Netflix had a stellar Q2. Its revenue in the US and Canada grew 15% year over year, according to the streamer’s Q2 earnings call in July, and executives upped full-year revenue guidance to about $45 billion.

Its ad tier saw similar success: Netflix’s upfront is officially complete, the company announced earlier this month, and it more than doubled US ad commitments. As its ad-supported tier grows, the streamer is also building out its ad tech, including an integration 

 that was first announced at Cannes Lions in June.

Netflix viewers spent more than 95 billion hours streaming programming in the first half of 2025, according to the Q2 earnings release, and in an effort to make content more discoverable, the streamer 

Looking ahead, Netflix’s content strategy promises a focus on live content, particularly on sports. In July, Netflix livestreamed 

 and the Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano boxing match concurrently, and it’s also got two NFL Christmas games in the pipeline.

“If you look at our current capabilities around live, we are in just a completely different place today compared to when we first started,” Greg Peters, company co-CEO, told investors.

While Netflix stopped regularly reporting subscriber numbers this year, it last reported 302 million subscribers 

 it had 94 million monthly active users on its ad-supported tier.

 Peacock struggled to take flight in Q2, with subscriber count flat at 41 million from the prior quarter. It’s still losing money, but it decreased its losses to $101 million (compared to $348 million in the same period last year), according to its Q2 earnings call. Perhaps to help cut its losses, Peacock hiked prices on its Premium Monthly and Premium Plus Monthly tiers in July.

There were some bright spots. Peacock grew its revenue 18% in the quarter to $1.2 billion, and about a third of NBCU’s upfront commitments were tied to Peacock, the company said. That’s partly due to the wide roster of live sports content it has coming up, like NBA games, the FIFA World Cup, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, and the Super Bowl, the company said.

 Disney streamer Hulu will get folded into Disney+ next year, despite both streamers contributing to growth in Disney’s DTC division, which saw a 6% bump in revenue in the quarter. The merger announcement came as Disney forecast that both Disney+ and Hulu would add around 10 million subscribers in Q4, mostly due to Hulu. Disney will follow Netflix’s lead and stop reporting streaming subscriber data each quarter, but its last reported subscriber count was 128 million for core Disney+ subscribers, 55.5 million Hulu subscribers, and 24 million ESPN+ subscribers as of August.

Domestic average monthly revenue per paid Disney+ subscriber only grew from $8.06 to $8.09, while Hulu’s SVOD-only average revenue per subscriber grew from $12.36 to $12.40. At ESPN+, average revenue per user dropped from $6.58 to $6.40.

That doesn’t mean Disney’s streaming ambitions are limited. The company released a new streaming app called ESPN on August 21, just in time for football season, ahead of which it acquired NFL Network, the linear rights to NFL RedZone, and NFL Fantasy from the NFL. (For its part, the NFL acquired a 10% equity stake in ESPN.)

“I’ve talked about it being one of the most important steps ESPN has taken really since they went from half a season to a full season of the NFL back in 1987,” CEO Bob Iger told investors.

 more than 130 million US viewers watching on its ad tier, began airing Nascar races that same month as part of a seven-year agreement inked with Nascar, and has seen races 

 about 2 million viewers, according to executives, as well as the youngest audience Nascar broadcasts have drawn in over a decade. The streamer’s upcoming sports slate includes NBA games this fall and a Christmas Day NFL game.

Prime Video is also making some inroads on the ads side, bringing in an 

 $433 million in advertising revenue in 2024, according to research from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan cited by TV Tech. (That number is projected to grow to $806 million in 2025.) Amazon Ads also inked an ad-tech partnership with Roku that seeks to increase addressability across properties including Prime Video and The Roku Channel.

And so far, it’s been a pretty good summer for the streamer: The third season of its hit young-adult drama 

 25 million worldwide viewers in the week after its premiere, 40% higher than the first-week viewership of the show’s second season in 2023.

While writing this, we had to remind ourselves it’s no longer Max, but HBO Max. While the streamer has had a difficult time deciding on its 

, Warner Bros. Discovery has had an easier time 

 its streaming business, adding 3.4 million streaming subscribers in the quarter and growing revenue to $2.8 billion, up 8% (excluding foreign exchange). The company reported 125.7 million global streaming subscribers (57.8 million of which are in the US), and the company said it expects to clear 150 million streaming subscribers by the end of next year.

With that all said, domestic streaming average revenue per user decreased 8% to $11.16, and the streamer plans to 

 its password-sharing crackdown beginning in September as a way to potentially reverse that trend.

The company is gearing up for its upcoming split into two businesses, Warner Bros. and Discovery Global, the former of which will house HBO Max. In July, WBD set the leadership for Warner Bros., which will include David Zaslav as president and CEO and Casey Bloys as chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max.

 Although Paramount’s much-scrutinized merger with Skydance (which was recently approved by the Trump administration and may include $20 million in free ads for Trump, depending on who you believe) has dominated the headlines for the last few months, its streaming business has continued to chug along. Paramount+, which last reported 77.7 million subscribers at the end of June, saw total revenue grow 23% year over year, according to its July earnings call, and it 

 a seven-year deal with UFC for exclusive domestic streaming and broadcast rights domestically starting next year.

Global average revenue per user on Paramount+ grew 9% YoY, according to the company, but DTC ad revenue (which includes Paramount+) dropped 4%, which the company attributed to lower CPMs and increased CTV ad supply.

Looking ahead, it doesn’t look like the media giant will look to join the spinoffs party.

“We’re thinking about...the cable networks, not as declining linear assets that we need to spin off or deal with somehow,” Paramount Skydance President Jeff Shell 

 at a media event this month. “We’re thinking of those brands that we have to redefine.”

Logos of streaming services on stacked old tv boxes.

How the streamers stacked up, midyear edition

Everyone’s breaking up (their businesses).

Cookies and demogorgons and augmented reality, oh my!

Chips Ahoy recently partnered with Netflix’s 

 for a limited-edition cookie collab that will be seen far beyond the grocery store shelf. The special chocolate- and strawberry-flavored cookie, inspired by the show’s red-and-black Upside Down underworld aesthetic, became available for purchase in stores nationwide on August 11, and on the same day, Chips Ahoy promoted the collaboration via another one—an AR-based game powered by and promoted on Snapchat.

The whole move, according to Michele Nevitt, Snap’s head of CPG, sales and client partnerships, was tailor-made to target Gen Z, and it marked just the latest example of brands branching into games to cut through the noise and give audiences a way to immerse themselves in brand storytelling.

“It was all about building a gamified experience, something that’s new and unique, that can excite consumers,” Nevitt said, later adding that “This experience specifically is optimized for sharing, peer-to-peer engagement, tapping into the way Gen Z connects, competes, and discovers through storytelling.”

To access the game, which will be available through the end of the year, customers can scan a QR code on Chips Ahoy packaging leading to 

, where players are prompted to enter their emails before searching for the limited-edition cookies in an AR-powered set of scenes inspired by the show. After every level of the game, players are entered into a sweepstakes to win special Chips Ahoy x 

 merchandise, which includes everything from a branded lunchbox- and water-bottle set to an Eddie Munson-inspired electric guitar.

To take advantage of Snap’s software development kit that makes the AR motion detection possible, the game must be played on mobile. To encourage that mobile play, Snapchat is hosting an AR lens promoting the collaboration and directing users to play the game.

“For us, it’s a great way to be able to connect with consumers in a different way,” Nevitt said. “Our consumers want something more than traditional advertising, something that they can immerse themselves within the unit.”

Snap reaches over 75% of Gen Z in more than 25 countries, according to Nevitt, and Chips Ahoy was focused on engaging those younger customers with this campaign following other activations that sought to do the same, including a Big Chewy Cookie partnership with ComplexCon and Big Sean that involved a merch collaboration and an 18-foot cookie installation at the pop culture festival.

“Chips Ahoy over-indexes among Gen Z, and our ambition is to be 

 go-to chocolate chip sweet treat for Gen Z households,” Sabrina Sierant, senior director at US Chips Ahoy, told us in an email. “Snapchat is incredibly popular with Gen Z and one of their most-used social media apps, so it was a no-brainer to leverage the platform to bring this idea to life.”

This was the first time Chips Ahoy has delved into a gamified ad experience, according to Siernat, but interactive, gameplay-focused campaigns are only growing in popularity. Netflix recently 

, joining brands like Duracell, Heineken, and M&M’s, which have all gone gamer mode in recent years. Campaigns that take advantage of gamification can see a 48% increase in engagement levels and up to 22% more customer retention, according to 

“It continues to be a trend that Gen Z and millennials are continuing to use, so it’s been something that has been part of our creative toolkit,” Nevitt said. “It will certainly continue to be something that we’re going to partner with clients to build.”

On the IP side of things, Chips Ahoy partnered with 

 to “be at the forefront of culture and drive brand relevance and excitement with our Gen Z target,” Sierant said.

The final installment of Netflix’s beloved franchise, which last released a season in 2022, will be released in three parts, the first of which is scheduled to be released in November, and Sierat said the cookie collab is one way she’s hoping fans can engage with the show early while waiting to see how the Hawkins gang’s story will conclude.

Chips Ahoy isn’t the only brand getting in on the 

 hype early, either. The WNBA’s Indiana Fever, Dungeons & Dragons, Lego, and Palermo’s Pizza have all 

 connections to the show’s lore since late July, and there are plenty of months to go for more brands to take a trip to the Upside Down.

A photo composite of Chips Ahoy and Stranger Things campaign images, a dark chocolate chip cookie filled with red frosting.