If there’s one thing that many people have been able to agree on over the centuries, it’s that it’s fun to watch two people punch each other.

Boxing is one of the oldest sports in the world, and among the first to draw mass crowds, according to Morgan Dewan, the chief brand officer of boxing production and promotion company Top Rank Boxing, which produces fights, facilitates brand deals, and represents about 60 fighters, including World Boxing Council heavyweight champ Tyson Fury and Olympic gold medalist Vasiliy Lomachenko. But in the modern era, boxing seems to have gone the way of the flip phone, skinny jeans, and side parts. It’s just not as popular as it used to be.

For some viewers, that may be because the sport is complicated to follow.

• There’s no dedicated league, but there are up to 17 different weight classes in men’s professional boxing alone that athletes might compete in.
• Beyond that, there are four different governing bodies that hand out championship belts.

“If we’re trying to get casual sports fans to come in and try our product, we have to simplify some of this or provide context or education,” Dewan told Marketing Brew.

In an effort to bring in more viewers and court more advertisers, Top Rank is embarking on a mission to rebrand the sport of boxing.

One-two punch: Boxing is somewhat of a cottage industry, Dewan said, with most people who work in the industry having grown up around the sport or worked in it for decades. Dewan comes from a more traditional sports background, having worked for Bleacher Report, Turner Sports, and Spurs Sports & Entertainment, the company that owns the San Antonio Spurs.

Part of her mandate at Top Rank, where she started in February, has been to bring a “beginner’s eye to the sport,” she said. To that end, she spends much of her time thinking about how storytelling around fighters could help boxing connect with a wider audience.

“There’s the action that’s in the ring, but the connection to boxing and the connection to the fighters becomes so much more powerful when you understand their backstories,” Dewan said.

Continue reading here.—AM

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Some advertisers will soon get to see how well Google’s cookie alternatives work.

GroupM will collaborate with Google to help clients navigate the tech giant’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, the agency announced Wednesday. The aim of the partnership, which the companies dubbed a “post-cookie readiness program,” is to help clients test Google’s Privacy Sandbox APIs, which are designed to eventually replace the third-party cookies that Chrome, the world’s most popular browser, currently uses.

• Richard Mooney, global chief data and technology officer at GroupM’s Essence Mediacom agency, described the initiative as a “learning program” for a select number of agency clients. Mooney will oversee the partnership for the agency.
• Clients will be able to share the test results anonymously to help troubleshoot the tech, and Google representatives will give GroupM’s clients “direct feedback” and resources as the tests continue, Mooney said during a press call.

“This is looking to test all adtech, across a big swath of adtech providers,” Mooney said. “This is not specific to the Google environment. We’re looking to be able to test the deployment of the Privacy Sandbox APIs across a multitude of SSPs, DSPs, and publishers.”

For now, GroupM will be the “only holding company they will be providing this to for a period of time,” agency spokesperson Jared Baiman said in an emailed brief. It’s not an exclusive partnership, but a “first-to-market” one, he added.

Gentle refresher: Third-party tracking cookies, the code most advertisers use to target and measure digital ads, are supposed to get the axe by the end of next year, but some recent reports have suggested the cutoff could be pushed again, to 2025. (During a Q3 earnings call, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said Google was still on track to meet the 2024 deadline, fwiw).

Read more here.—RB

Wouldn’t it be nice if, after all those bills, you opened up an envelope from the electric utility or oil company and it was a…check?

That is, in essence, what’s happening with retail media these days. Advertising, which for generations had strictly been an expense for major retailers, is now a major source of revenue, as brands dig deep to advertise on retailers’ e-commerce sites and apps to get better exposure with shoppers searching and browsing.

Retail media is here to stay, and it’s growing:

• Retail media spending amounted to an estimated $101 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $160 million by 2027, according to a 2022 report by Group M.
• Retail media spend accounted for 18% of digital ad spending and 11% of all ad spending last year, Group M found.

A new report from Skai, an omnichannel marketing platform, suggests that retail media is still growing like gangbusters:

• Spending on retail media in Q3 grew 10% over Q2.
• Retail media impressions increased 6% QoQ and 9% YoY.
• Clicks on retail media ads grew 3% QoQ and 12% YoY.

The data is based on about $9 billion in advertising spend on the Skai platform over the last five quarters, encompassing brands with retail media programs like Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, and Kroger.

“So far 2023 has been remarkably consistent in that advertisers are continuing to grow spending in the key walled garden publishers from month to month and from quarter to quarter,” Chris Costello, senior director of marketing research at Skai, said in a statement.—AAN

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

Strategy: Here’s a look inside GroupM Global CEO Christian Juhl’s “multiyear plan” to transform and simplify the company.

Op-ed: How insurers may be able to use generative AI to improve SEO.

Breakdown: A look at the rise of specialized DSPs, which are gaining a foothold in fields like politics and healthcare in a world otherwise dominated by Amazon, Google, and The Trade Desk.

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