Anheuser-Busch InBev’s 33-year run as the Super Bowl’s exclusive alcohol advertiser ended in 2022, but the company still has a dominant presence on advertising’s biggest stage.

How dominant? Well, this year, the brewer bought up two and a half minutes of Super Bowl ad time, making it the biggest beer and alcohol advertiser in this year’s game, according to a statement from the company. The time will be split among the brands Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, and Budweiser, which will return with its ever-iconic Clydesdales.

Execs from Bud Light and Michelob Ultra told us that Super Bowl strategy hasn’t changed much since the end of their parent company’s exclusivity, though there’s no denying that the field is a little more crowded: 2024 Super Bowl viewers will see at least one ad from competitor Molson Coors this year. But a little competition is nothing new for Bud Light and Michelob Ultra, and the veteran Super Bowl brands have learned a thing or two about standing out among the crowd over the years.

“We are consistently bringing the very best plans, the very best creative that these brands deserve, that Michelob Ultra deserves,” Ricardo Marques, VP of marketing for Michelob Ultra, told Marketing Brew. “The competition, for us, really is every single brand out there across different industries, because there’s a lot of conversation. There’s a lot of noise around the Super Bowl.”

Continue reading here.—AM

From helping us get work done to entertaining us, there’s an app for everything—1.8m worldwide in the App Store, to be exact. Help your app stand out from the crowd by learning how to promote it with Apple Search Ads Certification.

More than 650m people visit the App Store every week. With Apple Search Ads, not only can you promote your app from the moment users open the App Store, but you can also appear when people search for key terms and research apps.

With Apple Search Ads Certification, learning proven ways to get more app downloads is easy. Apple’s free, on-demand online training helps you learn how to set up your app campaigns for success.

Learn more.

Google Pair, the technology pitched as matchmaking tech for advertisers and publishers, is live—and apparently, working. On Thursday, Google released a joint case study with data company LiveRamp, Omni Hotels, and the agencies MiQ and PMG to show how they’re using the technology.

Wait, back up: Pair is just one of a myriad of post-cookie solutions Google and the rest of the adtech industry are pitching as browsers continue to phase out cookies, and advertisers and publishers look for ways to replace them. While some privacy sandbox proposals focus on targeting, Pair is aimed at reaching and retargeting audiences that advertisers already know about.

Pair is only available within Google’s own demand-side platform, and it works as an “encryption protocol that is run inside the cleanroom,” Stephen Yap, head of Google Marketing Platform in the Americas, told Marketing Brew.

Translation: If a publisher and an advertiser have matching emails, they can toss them in a clean room, and Pair will find and target those audiences.

The use case: In the case study, Omni Hotels had first-party data on customers who’d shared their emails with the company, and publishers had data about their readers, probably acquired through subscriptions or newsletters. Using LiveRamp’s clean room technology, Omni was able to match its customer data with “a few dozen publishers,” Travis Clinger, LiveRamp’s chief connectivity and ecosystem officer, said. (Neither LiveRamp nor Google shared the exact number of publishers used in the case study, or the exact size of the audience.)

The case study found that campaigns using Pair “showed a 4x increase in conversion rate” of targeted audiences clicking through the ad.

Keep reading here.—RB

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Joe Baratelli is the chief creative officer of RPA, an independent agency where he’s been working for nearly four decades.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? There are so many favorites. Going way back, a big highlight was working on the VH1 series with musical legends that was spoofed on SNL. I also fondly remember the Honda “It Must Be Love” work. You know how people look like their dogs? People also look like their Hondas. We created an engagement piece where Honda owners submitted their photos and created a UGC version. And because of my big love of hockey, I will always remember, “Where there’s hockey, there’s Honda.” It gave me the chance to direct Hockey Hall of Famers Mike Richter, Pat LaFontaine, and Neal Broten with a bunch of kids on an outdoor ice rink in the middle of Minneapolis for the Honda sponsorship of the NHL.

Of course, the biggest advertising event of the year will always bring favorite memories. I’ve led the development of more than 10 Super Bowl campaigns for five different brands. It’s exhilarating, nerve-wracking, and rewarding.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I was in a movie, Dr. Caligari, a 1989 midnight-screening, low-budget, quasi-sequel of the 1920 German Expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I also designed the title treatment.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Martini Shot by Rob Long. He’s a longtime TV writer and showrunner, but his stories about the business—trials, tribulations, and musings—are so relatable and insightful to any professional creative process, especially the ad game.

Read more here.

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

Too trendy: More than 50 influencer marketing trend stories boiled down into 13 key takeaways.

In the dark: What “dark social” means and what marketers and content creators may want to know about its effects on web traffic.

Leading us on: LinkedIn’s VP of marketing shared how B2B marketers can use the platform to generate leads.

Downloading now: Give your app campaigns a boost with Apple Search Ads. Learn about ad placements, setting up campaigns to promote your app across the App Store, and driving more downloads with Apple Search Ads Certification.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Real Madrid and HP are partnering on a multiyear deal that makes HP the first brand to appear on the sleeve of the Spanish soccer club’s uniform.
• UFC added Rizz Pharma as an official sponsor; the DTC prescription company’s branding will appear alongside major UFC fight nights.
• E.l.f. Cosmetics released a beauty shopping app for the Apple Vision Pro.