Some of the biggest names in college basketball this year are women. Shaq knows it—he said he’s “only been paying attention to the girls” this season—and advertisers seem to know it, too.

After last year’s women’s tournament broke records from the Elite Eight through the championship, several major brands are putting women’s hoops front and center in their March Madness campaigns, including their athlete partnerships and their media buys.

“In years past, if we asked about the women’s tournament the day before, we would likely have been able to buy every round, even championship game units,” Elliot Rifkin, associate director on the media buying team at TV ad agency Tatari, told Marketing Brew. “This year, when we requested costs or inventory updates, most of it was sold out.”

“A very easy discussion”

Women’s college basketball isn’t typically the hottest commodity among Tatari clients, but leading up to this year’s March Madness, the company was “getting way more questions about women’s college basketball than men’s college basketball,” Rifkin said.

Brands aren’t just asking questions about the women’s game—some are spending more on women’s March Madness than men’s. That’s the case for Adidas, which is running an ad starring LSU guard Hailey Van Lith in both tournaments, according to SVP of Brand Marketing Chris Murphy.

Continue reading here.—AM

Ever watch a pro sink a free throw? It’s precise, measured—a thing of beauty. Well, advertising is kinda like that—you just can’t afford to miss.

Make sure your ads land right. Choose the digital partner with an Application Programming Interface (API) that can help you achieve more: StackAdapt.

Their API is flexible and modular, which means you can easily integrate it with your current tech and business model. The StackAdapt platform offers targeting capabilities you won’t find anywhere else, with a wide range of channels and access to premium inventory to put that targeting to work.

The biggest thing that sets the StackAdapt API apart? StackAdapt offers an à la carte menu that lets you pick the perfect features for your biz. They’re *not* one size fits all, and they don’t want to be.

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2024 appears to be shaping up as a bright year for the ad industry.

Magna, the research arm of IPG Mediabrands, expects the US ad market for the year to grow 9.2% to about $369 billion, up from its previous forecast from December, which had predicted 8.4% growth. Ad-free streamers who?

A heavy chunk of that—about $9 billion—will come courtesy of the 2024 US election cycle, up 13% from the 2020 cycle, Magna forecasts. FWIW, eMarketer expects total political ad spend to hit about $12.3 billion, about triple the spend from 2016.

Flashback: The forecast would give anyone with a time machine a bit of whiplash. The ad industry's growth skyrocketed 23% in 2021 after an uneven 2020, but it has since slowed, growing 7% in 2022, and 5.7% last year.

“In the first few months of 2023, everybody was wondering how bad it was going to be,” Vincent Létang, EVP of global market intelligence at Magna, told Marketing Brew. Instead, it closed the year with growth at 5.7%.

Recent economic growth forecasts and more stabilized inflation should “give confidence to marketers,” he said. “The worst is behind us.”

Continue reading here.—RB

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

Alix McAlpine is VP of revenue, ads, at Giphy. Prior to Giphy, she was director of international creative at BuzzFeed, where she oversaw the development of branded distributed content offerings.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? One of the most interesting projects of my career so far is what I’m working on right now—bringing the Giphy ad platform back to market. It has been a lot of fun to work on our new messaging, hire the right people, and help brands reach their audiences through GIFs again. Each campaign is like a puzzle to be solved, and I really enjoy helping the team find the link between the way our users communicate with GIFs and what campaigns help brands communicate.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I am a fan of everything the creative agency Loop has been putting out. They create really clever work that is the perfect mix of familiar and unexpected and uses elements of internet culture in interesting ways that never feel too forced. I loved their work for the Ninja Turtles movie, which included a classic meme about turtles, and the show they produced for Duolingo last year, which was a creative take on the classic sitcom format.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I ran a blog about dating horror stories in the early aughts that was almost made into a book. I still can’t decide if I’m sad or relieved it didn’t pan out.

Continue reading here.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• McDonald’s will sell Krispy Kreme donuts nationally by 2026.
• Leo Messi is partnering with Mark Anthony Brands, the maker of alcoholic beverages like White Claw and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, on a new “hydration beverage.”
• Triton Digital, an audio ad-tech company owned by iHeartMedia, acquired audio brand-safety company Sounder.
• Sally Hansen signed Duke Blue Devils guard Jared McCain to an NIL deal, McCain announced on TikTok.