In north Brooklyn, the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Factory combines ingredients like peanut butter and brownies, cherries and chocolate chips, and…parsley and garlic powder.

Over the past few years, the ice cream brand has made headlines for its unusual collaborations, the latest with Hidden Valley Ranch.

• According to Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder and CEO of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, these collabs generate earned media for the brand, which doesn’t have a budget for paid advertising (money instead goes toward pricier ingredients from smaller producers, he told us.)
• The “first big one” was Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, which, he said, approached Van Leeuwen and became the impetus for this collab-based strategy after their 2021 partnership generated more media buzz than expected.
• Other partners have included Grey Poupon, Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and the Idaho Potato Commission.

Short-term flavor collaborations, according to Van Leeuwen, should be both iconic and shocking: “When I first heard about Hidden Valley, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s crazy. We’re not doing that,’” he said. “Then two minutes later, I was like, ‘Wait, my reaction is exactly why we should do this.’”

Van Leeuwen said collaborations are primarily done to increase brand awareness: “Our hope is that people try the Hidden Valley Ranch [flavor], but when they’re picking it up, they see Honeycomb next to that and they say, ‘Hmm, I want to try the Honeycomb, too.’”

Beyond boosting existing ice cream flavors, Van Leeuwen said he considers it a challenge to see if flavors like ranch or onion (as in Glass Onion) can actually taste good. Based on certain reviews, some people seem to actually enjoy them.

Continue reading here.—KH

Get out your library cards and pay those late fees: Google is playing librarian.

The world’s largest advertiser is launching an ads library, it announced Wednesday morning. The tool, dubbed Google’s Ads Transparency Center, will let users see which ads an advertiser is running, in what regions they’re running, and the dates those ads ran. The ads library is limited to a 30-day window of ads appearing.

For now, the ad library is limited to creative, Google’s VP of global ads, Dan Taylor, told a group of reporters. That means users won’t be able to see why an ad was shown, or who an advertiser is targeting, for example.

Meta also maintains an ad library, and both tech companies operate libraries for political ads.

The library builds on the creation of Google’s My Ad Center, a tool that promises to give users more control over the ads they’re shown across search, display, and YouTube. That tool provides users with the ability to limit ads shown around “sensitive categories,” including alcohol and weight-loss ads. However, users can only fine-tune their ad experience—things like whether they’d like to see more ads for restaurants or fewer ads for motor vehicles—on Google-owned properties, not the display ads it places on other sites.

+1: The ads library was announced alongside the company’s 2022 Ads Safety Report, in which the platform touted the removal of 5.2 billion ads and the suspension of 6.7 million advertising accounts last year. Google also claimed to have removed ads from 275 Russian state-funded media sites in a post published alongside the report by Google’s director of ads privacy and safety, Alejandro Borgia.

Unrelated, related: Google is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for operating what DOJ alleges is an ad-tech monopoly. DOJ is seeking to force Google to sell or divest its sell-side, publisher-facing advertising business. On Monday, Google filed a motion to dismiss the suit.—RB

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

AI ain’t gonna do it: Why advertisers should view AI tools as “exoskeletons, not cyborgs.”

M&M&M: The case for “marketing mix modeling” from Harvard Business Review.

Up to date: Meta announced some updates for advertisers this week, like the fact that brands can now turn organic content into Facebook Reels ads.

Perfect match: Looking to get your brand in the right influencer content, movies, TV shows, or music activations? Pair up with BENlabs. Their entertainment connections and deep learning AI help brands shine. Learn more.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

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Stat: $225,000–$250,000. That’s the typical salary range for creative director roles at agencies in NYC right now, an industry recruiter told Ad Age.

Quote: “The company has called the device’s signature application ‘copresence,’ a word designed to capture the experience of sharing a real or virtual space with someone in another place. It is akin to what Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, calls the ‘metaverse.’”—The New York Times profiled Apple’s AR headset, which is expected to be announced in June

Read: “Fast-food advertising is in its art-school phase” (Fast Company)

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

• Could audiobooks be the next frontier for advertising?
• YouTube to let advertisers target Gen Z based on trending music
• The IAB is putting together a working group to update industry contracts