Interested in traveling back to Westeros? HBO Max sure hopes so.

More than three years after the finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones, HBO and HBO Max are finally ready to take off the wraps of its ambitious prequel, House of the Dragon.

• The bloody fantasy drama, premiering Sunday, Aug. 21, follows a succession crisis in House Targaryen 200 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones, one of the most critically and commercially successful television series in the last 10 years.
• As war brews in Westeros, HBO Max hopes the marketing for House of the Dragon can help generate the same kind of buzz as the original series did.
• “As we’re planning House of the Dragon, we’re still making sure that we are cultivating the Game of Thrones fandom alongside, especially since it is a fandom that knows no bounds,” said Pia Barlow, HBO and HBO Max’s EVP of originals marketing, and who described the series as similar to Netflix’s The Crown and HBO’s Succession.

Hatching a plan

Barlow, who began her career at HBO and rejoined HBO Max from Netflix in 2020, has been working toward this moment for a long time. She and her team began planning marketing for the new series in spring 2020, when she spoke with showrunners Ryan J. Condal, Miguel Sapochnik, and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin before the series went into production.

• Casey Bloys, chief content officer at HBO, recently told the New York Times the network aimed “to make a show that feels related and honors the original, but also feels like its own.” In the same vein, the marketing strategy for House of the Dragon has looked to enlist old fans while charting its own course.

“Making sure that we are balancing the familiar and the distinct is probably the biggest challenge,” Barlow told us. Read more about the show’s marketing blitz here.—KS

Next time you click on someone’s “link in bio,” you might be unsuspectingly granting more access to your data than previously understood.

Explain: Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have the ability to track interactions like searches, clicks, screenshots, and “form inputs” (like passwords and credit card numbers) within what’s called an in-app browser, according to tech researcher Felix Krause.

In research published last week on his blog, Krause was able to show that Meta appears to have access to all sorts of data when users open Instagram’s in-app browser—without allowing users a way to opt out.

• That’s notable because Apple’s currently engaged in a full-court press against tracking that’s made it harder for marketers to measure conversions on apps like Instagram and Facebook. (Krause works part-time for Google as a consultant.)

He followed up that research this week, finding that TikTok’s in-app browser appears to have the ability to monitor “all keyboard inputs” including “every tap on any button, link, image, or other component rendered”  on the in-app browser. TikTok confirmed to Forbes that “those features exist in the code,” but said that it is not using them.

Read more about what the researcher found here.—RB

Future Social is a weekly newsletter on social media, content, and creators from Jack Appleby, a Morning Brew creator who’s worked in social media for 10 years at companies like Beats by Dre, Microsoft, and Twitch. Check out an excerpt from one of his pieces below, and sign up for Future Social here.

Curious to see which social strategies work for the biggest brands in the world? Wanna see how your direct competitors tweet without spending a cent on analytics tools?

Lucky for you, there’s a very, very easy way to see any Twitter account’s most-engaged content built right into the platform. Twitter Advanced Search is a wildly powerful tool with all sorts of interesting uses. A couple keyboard clicks gets you:

• Any brand’s most-retweeted tweets
• Any account’s most-liked reply tweets
• Any person’s most-engaged within a date range

You can learn so much about what does and doesn’t work as great social content just by looking up your favorite brands. I took a look at Nike while writing the piece and even came to some new theories in the process.

Read how to use Twitter Advanced Search to find all sorts of info. —JA

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

Get connected: YouTube has new targeting capabilities and buying tools for CTV.

Now you see me: How data visualization can play a role in your SEO strategy.

Buy, buy, buy: TikTok is testing three different formats for shopping ads.

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::drumroll:: Introducing The Brief: A Summit Presented by Marketing Brew

Marketing Brew has partnered with some of the world’s most recognized brands and influential marketers to bring you a premiere one-day marketing event in the heart of New York City.

You’ll hear from a powerhouse panel of speakers that will spotlight innovations, highlight strategies, and provide solutions to the modern marketer’s biggest challenges. Sounds good, right? Dust off your work pants and join us.

Early-bird pricing ends soon, so don’t wait. Save yourself a seat (and some green) now!

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is fake?

1. Billboard put up a single piece of string cheese for trade
2. Cheez-Its will start selling giant crackers in stores following hype from Taco Bell partnership
3. Rick Astley rolls like an ’80s boss to hype AAA Insurance
4. Miller High Life serves up dive bar-inspired ice cream

Keep scrolling for the answer.

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

• How one ad campaign is honoring Ukrainian healthcare workers
• Podcast networks, brands, streamers, and actors are all capitalizing on the growing rewatch-podcast genre
• Streaming services courting the youngest viewers must handle privacy carefully