Advertisers survived the holiday whiplash of CES. They ran through the digital noise of the NewFronts. Now there’s only one more major tentpole event between today and the chic, cerulean glitz of Cannes. We’re talkin’ upfronts, the ad industry’s annual dog-and-pony show where media buyers and TV networks plan out their advertising deals on upcoming programming.

And if advertisers agree to terms today—or up front—there could be a discount. (The rest of the inventory, of course, is left to the scatter market, where rates can change on a whim.)

Tuning in: During the week of presentations this week, Netflix and YouTube will hold court, while legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Fox, and NBCUniversal will continue to pitch their linear networks and streaming platforms alike.

• This year, Amazon will join the party for the first time, pitching Prime Video’s nascent ad tier. Expect champagne. We broke down some of the biggest trends to expect during the week below.
• This year, advertisers are projected to spend roughly $18.8 billion during the upfronts, or around one-third of total TV ad spending and about 17% of digital video spending, according to a 2023 eMarketer report.
• The upfronts have gone through the same technical transformation as the rest of the industry, and ad-supported streaming has continued to grow. Last year, about two-thirds of upfront spending was expected to be allocated to digital advertising, per eMarketer.

Upstream: Linear audiences continue to shrink, while streaming audiences continue to grow. More specifically, ad-supported streaming has exploded in popularity, with Amazon Prime Video and Netflix leading the way. The ad-supported expansion means there’s more streaming impressions for advertisers than ever, a welcome change from past years, where inventory scarcity meant higher prices, Dave Sederbaum, EVP and head of video investment at Dentsu, said.

“The amount of available impressions to buy has just grown leaps and bounds,” he told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—RB

Coming off of its well-received Super Bowl commercial for Doritos Dinamita, Frito-Lay is shifting its focus to the other football.

The Lay’s brand has had a longstanding relationship with one of the greatest soccer players of all time, Leo Messi, who’s currently serving as the face of a campaign that kicked off in mid-April and puts a branded twist on the well-known chant of “olé, olé, olé.”

“It’s this perfect match of Lay’s and soccer,” Tina Mahal, SVP of marketing at Frito-Lay, told Marketing Brew. “Really only Lay’s could do what we’re doing right now, with turning that iconic chant, that catchy chant, that one that drives passion in everyone, into a song about Lay’s.”

Of the Frito-Lay portfolio, Lay’s is the brand most involved with soccer, Mahal said, and in recent years, Frito-Lay has kicked off a broader push into the sport that’s designed to appeal to younger and more diverse consumers who are driving up interest in the US.

Getting Messi: The latest Lay’s campaign, which was developed by PepsiCo’s in-house agency D3, features an ad that changes the popular “olé” chant commonly used by soccer fans into cheers of “oh-Lay’s.” The 30-second spot starts with Messi saying “oh-Lay’s” while eating a bag of chips, eventually building to an entire stadium singing along.

The ad is set to continue appearing on linear, digital, and social channels through the summer, including during the Leagues Cup tournament between MLS and Liga MX clubs in July and August. There’s also an in-store component with packaging that features Messi, which is designed to “reinforce the program,” Mahal said.

Keep reading here.—AM

Just over a fortnight ago, Taylor Swift released her latest album The Tortured Poets Department, chronicling the heartbreak of love lost and the pitfalls of fame—and with the introduction of her #ForaFortnightChallenge, she also fulfilled an activewear brand’s wildest dreams.

To promote the album released on April 19, Swift posted a YouTube Short showing clips from her life as a “fortnight recap,” which included a shot of her on a pickleball court wearing a lavender athletic skort. The video has amassed over 91 million views, and while the singer is shown wearing it for only a second, the Instagram account @TaylorSwiftStyled quickly identified it as the brand PopFlex’s Pirouette Skort in “digital lavender.”

The $60 skort has since enchanted consumers, seeing a 700% sales lift, according to Shopify, which powers the DTC brand’s site, selling out in every color and size in a matter of minutes. It’s been a surreal experience for PopFlex founder and CEO Cassey Ho, the pilates maven behind Blogilates who debuted the brand in 2016. “The coolest thing about the entire experience has been the community support and just genuine excitement for me, because I’ve been a Swiftie for so long,” Ho told Retail Brew.

But, as Ho noted, “virality is something you can’t really plan for,” and PopFlex has been hustling to respond both to the spike in popularity and the reignited fight against dupes that Ho knows all too well.

A lot going on at the moment: When the skort went viral the day of the album release, the PopFlex team acted fast. They tacked on “(Cassey’s Version)” to the product name to pay homage to Swift’s label for the albums she’s re-recorded and also updated the brand’s landing page with a banner referencing Swift’s album, with a black-and-white image of the skort label “Tortured Pirouette Department.

“It wasn’t a strategy in the moment,” Ho said. “It was just us being excited doing Swiftie things.”

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—EC

Executive moves across the industry.

• Gap hired Fabiola Torres, a PepsiCo alum, to be its global CMO.
• LIV Golf tapped Adam Harter to be its CMO. Harter is a PepsiCo vet, too.
• Jack Dorsey left the board of Bluesky, the decentralized social platform he helped found.