On Jan. 22, Philadelphia 76ers superstar Joel Embiid made history—and brought Crypto.com with him.

The 7-foot center scored a franchise-record 70 points in the Sixers’ 133-123 victory over the San Antonio Spurs, good for the 13th highest single-game scoring total in NBA history.

The feat was a boon for Embiid and his team, and it was also for one of the team’s corporate partners: Crypto.com, which has been the Sixers’ jersey-patch sponsor since 2021. In photos and highlight clips shared of Embiid’s career night, Crypto.com’s logo was prominently displayed in the left corner of Embiid’s jersey.

Steven Kalifowitz, Crypto.com’s CMO, said the Sixers have been a natural fit for the cryptocurrency trading platform as it has looked to gain greater visibility. The city is known for its passionate sports fans, and Sixers fans are no exception. For the past seven seasons, the team has made the playoffs.

“There’s plenty of teams that no one talks about them, there’s nothing exciting going on,” Kalifowitz said. “The Knicks and the Lakers, they get a lot of tourists who come to watch, but there aren’t many tourists in Philly when the Sixers are playing. It is hard-core Philly fans. The energy in there is insane. Just to be connected to that was a major value.”

Continue reading here.—JN

We know marketers are driven by digits. So here are a few from Tubi we thought you’d find interesting:

• Tubi has over 75m active users.
• As of March 2024, it sits at 1.6% on The Gauge™ from Nielson.
• It reaches one in four US TV households, per VideoAmp.

Those numbers are dripping with potential. Since Tubi is one of the few free streaming sites, it’s no wonder it has such a broad reach.

And JSYK, Tubi’s fans go hard. They love the platform’s library of content and accessibility, both of which support its mission to give everyone access to the world’s stories.

Find out what Tubi can do for your brand.

Upfronts are typically star-studded events, but Disney’s was more like a two-hour red carpet.

The House of Mouse’s annual presentation on Tuesday afternoon at the Javits Center featured A-listers from the big screen, small screen, and sports screen, with hardly any executives.

After an Abbott Elementary-themed video kicked off the presentation, Emma Stone took to the stage to introduce Disney CEO Bob Iger, who made his first onstage upfront appearance since he was head of ABC Entertainment in 1994. Iger emphasized Disney’s storytelling capabilities, talent roster, and content library before passing the mic to an animated version of Rita Ferro, Disney’s president of global ad sales, an animated form of whom appeared in a clip of Family Guy ahead of her in-person remarks.

While Iger acknowledged some of the other execs who might normally speak at an upfront, and Ferro hit on Disney’s ad-tech highlights, after about 15 minutes, the remainder of the presentation was all about celebrity. The goal, Ferro told Marketing Brew ahead of the event, was to amp up the star power, content, and announcements in order to put Disney’s storytelling front and center.

“When you have all of this video supply in the marketplace, what makes Disney different is the quality of the storytelling and the connection we have with our fans that ultimately, for brands on the platform, pays off in ways that are different than just ‘an impression is an impression,’” she told us.

Read more here.—AM

If you’re addicted to retail therapy, maybe stay off of Amazon. Prime Video will soon start showing shoppable ads when viewers press pause on the shows they are watching, Amazon announced ahead of its upfront event this week.

The new ad formats, called interactive pause ads, will look similar to the pause ads that have become ubiquitous across the streaming landscape for the past five years. When viewers press pause on their remotes when watching Prime Video programming, ad creative will appear, and in Amazon’s case, there will also be “Add to Cart” and “Learn More” options if customers want to start purchases or get more information about the products for sale.

The shoppable format “is something that Amazon is uniquely in a position to do,” Mickey Goldstein, DDB North American comms strategy head, told Marketing Brew. “Hulu and Netflix don’t directly own marketplaces.”

Amazon’s new ad option for advertisers is the latest twist on the format that’s become increasingly commonplace across the streaming landscape since Hulu began testing it in late 2018. Pause ads, which also involve showing contextually relevant messaging—like “Enjoy the go!” from Charmin’ toilet paper, in Hulu’s case—have swiftly been embraced by other streamers like Peacock, which incorporated pause ads when it debuted in 2020, and Max (previously known as HBO Max), which introduced pause ads in 2022. Netflix is one of the last major streamers to hop on the bandwagon: it’s expected to debut pause ads sometime this year.

New ad formats like pause ads will likely continue to trend as streamers look to attract viewers with their less expensive ad-supported tiers, Goldstein said.

Keep reading here.—JS

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Cut profiled the internet’s favorite couple: Campbell (aka Pookie) and Jett Puckett.
• Digiday looked at why some influencer agencies are now offering consulting services.
• Wired wrote about generative AI and “the end of Google Search as we know it.”