Sports were most definitely for the girls in 2023.

Even though the US Women’s National Team didn’t bring home the World Cup trophy this year, women’s soccer still scored some notable wins. Women’s basketball caught fire thanks to the March Madness drama between Louisiana State University and the University of Iowa, and it spread from the NCAA to the WNBA later in the year.

“Women in sports was one of, if not the most, dominant story this year around sports marketing,” Joe Caporoso, president of sports and entertainment media company Team Whistle, told Marketing Brew. “It was really driven a lot by the Women’s World Cup over the summer, but it was bigger than that.”

It can be hard to keep up with all the developments in the space, so we asked 10 sports media and marketing execs which moments stood out to them most.

World Cup watch party: This summer’s Women’s World Cup had some high highs and low lows. Viewership and attendance records were “smashed across the world,” including in China and host countries Australia and New Zealand, Jacie deHoop, co-founder of sports media brand The Gist, said. And some brands—like Ally and Visa—activated around the competition in major ways.

“Seeing [Australia’s national team] the Matildas live in Sydney to a sold-out stadium…just blew my mind about how much on-the-ground energy you can have, and how, in some cases, little media attention you can have at the same time, which signals such a big opportunity going forward,” The Athletic’s CCO Seb Tomich said.

Keep reading here.—AM

Amazon is really good at selling stuff online. Now, as its programmatic ad tools continue to grow, it’s eyeing the rest of the internet.

Marketing Brew spoke with Neal Richter, director of advertising science at Amazon DSP, the company’s ad-tech tool that merges its marketplace data with the rest of the internet. We chatted about which advertisers make sense for the DSP, industry automation, and what the heck AI has to do with programmatic advertising.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Help me understand how Amazon’s DSP fits into the marketplace. How much differentiation is there? Don’t all the pipes go to the same place?

When it comes to connectivity of supply-side systems, in general, what you’ve said is true. Most publishers have connections with more than one supply-side platform or ad server, so you can access your inventory through those systems. As a buyer, you can access inventory through a bunch of different mechanisms. In that sense, access to inventory isn’t that much of a differentiator for a buyer, for a bidder, anymore, a DSP.

What is a differentiator is kind of the models they use, and what those models predict. What do the models predict, and how do they perform for customers given the intention of the campaigns?

Amazon’s marketplace is sitting on a lot of data. Does that data inform your models?

Yeah. The signals that can be derived from shopping activity [have] pretty high utility in predicting purchase propensity and the types and combinations of products that shoppers are interested in.

Does Amazon’s DSP make sense for an advertiser that isn’t using Amazon’s marketplace?

We believe so, because when you’re leveraging Amazon’s DSP, you’re using models that are informed by the kinds of shopping activity of a very broad selection of people—humans—that buy things and get boxes delivered to their doorstep.

We believe that our models are very predictive in that sense and uncover a lot of basic purchase intent of consumers.

Continue reading here.—RB

This week, we’re sharing with you some of our favorite stories we’ve published in the past year. This feature on the history of the McDonald’s jingle was originally published on October 23.

Everyone knows the McDonald’s jingle. Even people who think they don’t.

On a 90-degree day at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park in early September, parkgoer Kash Livingston told us he wasn’t familiar with the jingle. But as soon as he heard “ba da ba ba ba,” he said, “I’m Lovin’ It.”

In 2003, the fast-food giant reportedly paid Justin Timberlake $6 million to sing it. In the two decades since, other celebrities, from Destiny’s Child to Brian Cox, have put their spins on the tune. Its origins and credits have been the subject of much debate, but one thing is clear: It’s one of the most recognizable jingles in the world.

“It’s embedded in my brain at this point,” Nina Benitich, another park visitor walking two dogs, said that same day.

How did McDonald’s achieve every brand’s dream of living rent-free in the heads of basically every person? It started, as most things in advertising do, with an RFP.

American idol: In February 2003, McDonald’s asked 14 agencies across several countries to pitch ideas for a global campaign centered around music, Franco Tortora, co-founder and CEO of German music production company Mona Davis, told Marketing Brew.

• McDonald’s asked for the song to be hip-hop, since it was at the time losing ground with young consumers and wanted to change that, Tortora said.
• German agency Heye & Partner had already created the slogan “I’m Lovin’ It” as part of the pitch process, according to Tortora, and then brought Mona Davis in to write music to go along with it.

It was about 3am in a recording studio after a long session, everyone losing steam, when Tortora said he asked the vocalist he was working with to sing something like “ba-ba-ba-whatever” before calling it a night.

“I wasn’t really convinced that night that any of it was good, but then the next morning, I started to listen to the last one and said, ‘Not so bad,’” Tortora told us. “It wasn’t intentionally composed; it was accidentally composed, because we had no other ideas.”

Keep reading here.—AM

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

Whenever, wherever: How to upload Instagram Reels from whichever device you please.

What’s up, YouTube: Creator economy predictions for 2024 that just might shape social strategies.

Small but mighty: Content marketing tips for small businesses.

Customer care: Generative AI can help you up your customer service game by taking advantage of large language models and deep learning techniques. And that’s just the beginning. Learn more about IBM Consulting.*

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