Lounging on the beach this summer? Look up—so are advertisers.

At the Rockaways or Coney Island, you can spot ads for ABC’s The Bachelorette or for the beachwear brand Fair Harbor trailing behind planes. Dunkin’ and Wawa, meanwhile, make sure their ads hover over the Jersey Shore.

Bird’s-eye view: It’s no metaverse activation or TikTok trend, but plane-pulled ads, known in the industry as “aerial advertisements,” deliver something brands may find elusive in other formats. Ads in the air are unskippable, un-mutable, and almost impossible for beachgoers to ignore.

“I defy you to sit at a beach or be at a music festival or sit at a concert and have a plane fly overhead and not look up,” said Jeremy Levine, VP of sales for the aerial division of the out-of-home advertising company Van Wagner.

Ready for take off 

Van Wagner is one of the largest national aerial advertising networks in the US, with operations in New York, California, Florida, beaches up and down the East Coast, and other major markets.

• Alcohol brands, streaming platforms, film studios, delivery apps, startups, sports teams, and local retailers all choose aerial advertising for various purposes, and Levine said advertisers are drawn to the fact that aerial ads have a wide range of applications.
• Among their selling points: they don’t have to fight for attention when backdropped against the sky.
• “You’re not competing with a bunch of other things,” Levine said. “It’s a clutter-free environment.”

Media buyers agree: “It’s such an underrated out-of-home format,” Brian Rappaport, founder and CEO of out-of-home agency Quan Media Group, told Marketing Brew. Aerial advertisements, he said, are extremely cost-effective for brands, both because banners can be reused and because aerial ads around an event like the Super Bowl can be far cheaper (think: less than $20,000) than buying a television ad or billboard around the same event.

That doesn’t make aerial advertising easy, though. Keep reading here.—KS

Sure, social media accounts are getting hacked more and more often these days. But does that mean influencers need insurance in case their accounts—which are sometimes their main source of income—get hacked?

One company argues yes: Notch, an insurance startup that claims to protect creators in this exact situation, rolled out in June.

• While it covers up to $100,000, or three months’ worth of income for any influencer with a hacked account, it doesn’t cover account suspensions or social media platforms going down.
• Notch also claims to offer crisis management for those who are insured.

The startup has released data saying that 85% of influencer marketers it surveyed would pay more for an influencer with social media insurance. But some marketers are skeptical, arguing that hacking schemes interfering with influencer campaigns are rare.

Once in a blue moon

Rafael Broshi, Notch’s co-founder and CEO, told Marketing Brew that if a large company with “a lot of brand integrity” is working on a campaign with an influencer who gets hacked, that “could cause very, very big damage to the brand itself in terms of reputation.”

“Like any other deal in the business world, you don’t back a company, or you don’t do business with a company, without making sure they have their certificates of insurance,” he continued.

Few and far between: But in Matt Zuvella’s six years of experience managing creators, he’s only had about two or three hacking incidents. Each time, the VP of marketing at influencer talent agency Famepick said, it was either because the influencer gave their password to someone else, or because the person bought followers.

Brendan Gahan, Mekanism’s partner and chief social officer, said he hasn’t had an influencer’s account get hacked during a campaign in his entire career.

Continue reading here.—PB

Kellogg’s has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to food brands making health-related claims, and is even believed to be the first food company to have done so on packaging when, in 1984, it began linking high-fiber foods with a lower incidence of several cancers on boxes of All-Bran cereal.

But recently in the UK, some Kellogg’s cereals have been targeted for just the opposite, namely having high sugar content that could raise the risk of obesity for consumers who pour them into their bowls.

Embattled Creek: Kellogg’s UK, a subsidiary of the Battle Creek, Michigan-based Kellogg Company, had challenged proposed regulations that would ban products with high levels of sugar, fat, or salt from some supermarket discounts, including buy-one-get-one-free offers.

A judge ruled against the cereal maker, and the discounting restrictions are expected to take effect in October.

• Kellogg’s had argued that the proposed rule was unfair because it didn’t take into consideration that the cereals in question often are paired with milk.
• “We still believe that it is important that cereals are measured in a way which reflects how most people eat them—with milk,” Chris Silcock, the managing director of Kellogg’s UK, told the Guardian.

Marion Nestle, the author of books including Food Politics and a retired professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, laughed about the milk-pairing argument.

​​“I love that!” Nestle told Retail Brew. “It’s really funny—people eat cookies with milk, too.”

Read the full story on Retail Brew.—AAN

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

Copy that: Avoid potential copyright issues with help from this guide that details how to legally reshare images.

Fa la la la la: We know, we know, it’s only July. But for those of you planning ahead, Reddit has some tips for how to advertise on its platform during the holiday season.

Real talk: Experimenting with Instagram Reels? Find out more about them—including best practices and features—here.

Ahoy marketers: Get early bird pricing until August 5 for Activate Summit, hosted by Iterable. Get hyped for three jam-packed, IRL days featuring speakers from DoorDash, Coach, and Cinemark, all while networking with like-minded marketers. Register today.* 

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Consumer behaviors are rapidly changing. Join us for a can’t-miss discussion about how you should be navigating these major shifts in the digital landscape.

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If you’ve traveled recently, there’s a good chance it didn’t exactly go smoothly. Between canceled flights, delays, and lost baggage, air travel is pretty much a mess right now.

Unsurprisingly, it’s impacting trust in airlines. But not as much as you might think. According to a recent Morning Consult survey of more than 2,000 US adults, only 20% of “frequent leisure travelers” said they trust airlines “a lot.” That’s slightly down from the 24% who said the same when the survey was first conducted in January.

• “Net trust in the primary US carriers—American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines—among users of each brand is lower now than it was in the wake of the winter holidays, having hit a clear inflection point in early summer when the delays and cancellations began to pile up,” wrote Morning Consult Travel and Hospitality Analyst Lindsey Roeschke.

What to do: For flyers, there are ways to try and avoid travel headaches, like booking weekday flights and opting for direct ones when possible. For brands dealing with frustrated travelers? “Clear communication about scheduling delays and disruptions, or the lack thereof, will help to control the narrative and differentiate when an airline is performing especially well,” Roeschke wrote.

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

• How much should graphic designers worry about DALL-E 2?
• Snapchat debuts desktop version without ads
• Reddit’s advertising policy seems to differ from subreddit to subreddit