During this year’s upfront season, streaming services that are readying ad-supported tiers became everyone’s favorite punchline.

What was said : “After those smug bastards choked the life out of us for years, it feels really good to see them stoop to selling advertising,” ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked about Netflix at Disney’s upfront presentation.

• Network execs got in on the action, too. “They can’t afford to build their paywall without your money,” Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier said of rivals Netflix and Disney+, while NBCUniversal chairman of global advertising and partnerships Linda Yaccarino suggested that other companies’ approaches to advertising “might actually seem like an afterthought—or even worse, just a new idea to turn on a new revenue stream.”

But joke’s on them: With Disney+’s ad-supported tier arriving in the second half of 2022, and Netflix racing to get its own ad-supported tier by the end of the year, buyers are setting aside some of their clients’ 2022 advertising dollars toward those platforms—or at least keeping their buys flexible enough that they have the option to move upfront dollars around.

Ad agencies are telling advertisers that they “have to have [the] budget available to be where we need to be,” Meredith Zander, group media director at the ad agency Fallon, told Marketing Brew. “A lot of that can go into an upfront buy, but not all of it can go in an upfront buy.”

Off-limits

Even though Disney+’s ad-supported tier won’t arrive until the tail-end of the year, agencies are already allocating some of their clients’ advertising budgets toward the platform in upfront conversations.

The late-year arrival of the tier, though, is “throwing a monkey wrench” into planning, said one media buyer, who asked to speak on background. “They’re bringing [Disney+] online this broadcast year,” the buyer told Marketing Brew. “So I have to reserve money to spend on Disney+.”

Rewind: Ahead of upfronts, Disney has shared details about its advertising plans for the service, including its four-minute-per-hour ad load and its inclusion of standard 15- and 30-second ads. Those details make it more feasible to cordon off some spend early, even though it’s anyone’s guess as to the initial audience and scale of the ad-supported tier, said Maureen Bosetti, chief investment officer at the media planning and buying agency Initiative.

Click here to keep reading.—KS

Reduce, reuse, re-pledge? When it comes to addressing climate change, company statements and promises may not be cutting it, especially if they are not aligning with business practices.

The data: In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put out a report showing that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, greenhouse-gas emissions will have to peak by 2025. Since then, people have called for corporate action before Earth becomes “unlivable.”

The pledges: Companies like Visa, Apple, and BP have all pledged to go net-zero in the next 10–30 years, but critics have pointed out that there are no set standards for net-zero and carbon-neutral emissions. And carbon offsets can be seen as a cop-out on actually reducing emissions.

Big picture: Climate activists and experts say corporate efforts frequently don’t drive meaningful, immediate change or impact—and we’re running out of time.

What’s behind door campaign no. 1?

Coca-Cola has pledged to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 25% between 2015 and 2030, but Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a project fighting against plastic pollution, told Marketing Brew that the problem is that pledges like these are often set internally with no external accountability.

• Enck noted that Coca-Cola was ranked the world’s top plastic polluter in 2021 for the fourth year in a row by the NGO Break Free from Plastic. On its website, Coca-Cola states that 61% of the bottles and cans it introduced “in 2021 were collected and refilled or collected for recycling.”
• In April, Coca-Cola released an ad featuring an animatronic Bill Nye about “creating a world without waste” using recycled plastic. Beyond Plastics made its own video “in response,” accusing Coca-Cola of “greenwashing,” calling out the fact that most plastic ends up in landfills.
• While Coke’s ad is “effective in explaining the recycling process,” Enck said she believes it’s “deceptive” in the way it frames the company’s role in addressing the climate crisis.

Keep reading for more on the pitfalls of pledges, including Coca-Cola’s response here.—KH

Welcome to this month’s Editor’s Picks. I’ve got a treat for you! A couple months ago, Jack Appleby came aboard to write a weekly newsletter specifically for social media marketers. You may know him from his obvservant Twitter musings or his insightful LinkedIn mantras, but he’s also a former social marketer and director of creative strategy, leading campaigns for Microsoft, Beats by Dre, and Spotify, among others.

(We’ll raise the curtain on his new Morning Brew Newsletter, Future Social, June 15—sign up here!)

So I figured, who better to ask about a few must-follow marketing creators? Who are the folks helping marketers navigate uncharted territories with some ~style~. Jack’s recommendations are below. If you have favorite marketing creator-types, reply to let us know!

And don’t forget to sign up for Jack’s newsletter about the creator economy + marketing. It’s gonna be a hoot.

–Josh Sternberg, executive editor, Morning Brew

Paddy Galloway, YouTube consultant

Virality isn’t art—it’s science. The biggest YouTubers don’t stay on top by accident. Galloway built his own YouTube channel about those colossal YouTubers, sharing all the tactics, storytelling styles, and monetization methods creators use to stay on top.

Darien Payton, social and brand manager at Career Karma

B2B social strategy is a particular beast. Darien’s a 24-year-old social brain who shares his experiences in the space, while loudly questioning best practices, encouraging great conversations on what actually works, and where social pros should do their homework.

Jon-Stephen Stansel, director of social media at Chaotic Good

We often laud social minds from CPG over everything (yes, we know, you love Wendy’s Twitter), but most social professionals work in industries you’ve probably never heard of. Stansel got his start in higher-education social, working as a team of one; he’s a great resource for new social media managers and small teams looking to do their best in the space.

Matt Navarra, social media consultant and industry analyst

No one’s faster at delivering social media news than Matt. That new TikTok feature, or Instagram ad policy, or Twitter trend? He probably tweeted an article on it before you even knew it existed.

Jane Manchun Wong, security researcher

If you wanna know features wayyyyy before they release to the public, Jane’s your point person. She dives into each social app to find hidden features and early code to tell you what’s coming. This is a great MIT Technology Review profile on her!

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

LinkedInfluencer: If every startup CEO can post on Linkedin, so can you. Here are seven ways to get started.

Pitches: Get the brainstorming ball rolling with these eight ideas.

Use it or lose it: Tips for reducing data loss stemming from iOS changes.

Slam dunk: How’d the Atlanta Hawks drive 7X ROI on their Connected TV ad spend? They tapped MNTN Performance TV for the assist. For AI-driven optimization that reaches your most valuable viewers across the top 150 streaming channels, click here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Find your next great marketer by sharing your openings with our 250K+ industry leading marketers on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• SEO Strategist at Direct Online Marketing
• Humbly Confident PR Specialist at You Need A Budget
• Senior Social Media Advertising Manager at JobCloud

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Stat: NBA crypto sponsors spent $1.6 billion with the league during the 2021–2022 season, up 13% from the previous one, according to estimates from sports-partnerships consultancy IEG.

Quote: “At this moment, we decided we could continue to be this online Instagram account that just posts photos, or we could create a brand that would use this as a platform for whatever products and services we wanted to sell.”—Truff co-founder Nick Guillen talking about the hot-sauce brand’s social roots with Ad Age

Read: “Are millennial food influencers okay?” (Eater)

Marketing departments are taking on more and more responsibilities. We hope this isn’t breaking news for you, Marketing Brew readers. We imagine it isn’t, but we also believe you’d like to talk this through with your peers, connect over your fears, and discuss ways to stay ahead. If only there were an event dedicated to connections and conversations on the evolving role of the marketer…

OH WAIT, there is. Hosted by yours truly on June 8. We’ll be probing OkCupid’s long-standing Global CMO and Kraken Digital Asset Exchange’s new CMO to share their secrets. Doors open at 5:45pm ET, and spots are on a first-come, first-served basis. Register here.*

*Note this event has limited capacity.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• The upfronts nearly forgot about TV’s biggest, oldest audience
• Agencies are investing in VR headsets and other tech to simulate in-person work experiences
• Half Magic brings Euphoria’s makeup looks to life