If you really love a TV show, why wouldn’t you want to deck yourself out in branded clothes, eat limited-edition snacks, and buy collectibles based on your favorite characters?

Take Prime Video’s smash-hit TV show Fallout, which debuted earlier this year. Beyond marketing the series to get audiences tuned in, Amazon offered merchandise based off of the show, including a backpack modeled off the character Lucy’s gear, as well as branded Arizona Iced Tea beverages, which company executives say has been one of its most ambitious and successful undertakings yet.

“It’s definitely been our No. 1 best-performing product line,” Jamie Kampel, head of consumer products licensing at Amazon MGM Studios, said.

It’s not just Amazon. Other streamers have pushed into the consumer product licensing business, a tried-and-true way to help amplify shows and movies in cultural conversations and generate additional revenue. It can be a big business: globally, the brand licensing market is expected to grow from an estimated $274.9 billion in 2022 to $385.4 billion by 2027, according to the firm Global Markets Estimate.

At Amazon, it’s one of many ways the company’s Prime Video arm is looking to further monetize its programming, which has also included rolling out shoppable ads and other new ad formats as well as new live sports offerings.

Read more here.—JS

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Third-party cookies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Google is changing course from its years-long plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome and is proposing to no longer get rid of the tech, Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox, announced in a blog post on Monday. While the company said it would propose an approach that “elevates user choice,” many details of that path forward remained undefined in the post.

“Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time,” Chavez wrote in the post. “We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out.”

Reversing course: Cookies, small bits of code that allow advertisers to track users across the open web, represent a hefty chunk of the $180 billion programmatic ad-tech industry. Since Google first announced it was getting rid of cookies in 2020, advertisers have been in a will they, won’t they, with the tech giant repeatedly kicking its own deadline to phase out the tech down the road.

• In place of cookies, Google had pushed an initiative called Privacy Sandbox, which was intended to preserve the mechanisms of online advertising while protecting user privacy.
• Its rollout, though, has been bumpy: Early reports from ad-tech companies showed that without cookies, publishers could lose, in some cases, between 30% and 60% of their revenue.

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.

Christine Cook is global chief revenue officer of Bloomberg Media, where she leads global ad revenues across all media platforms. She previously served as SVP and head of brand partnerships at WarnerMedia, oversaw sales strategy as chief revenue officer of CNN Digital, and was global head of advertising partnerships at Flipboard.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? GE leveraged Bloomberg Media Live morning TV to live stream their conference into commercial breaks. We streamed the conference in the Bloomberg Terminal, conducted interviews on video which we ran across our platforms, and produced an infographic that ran in Businessweek magazine. I loved it for the creativity in leveraging live and all our platforms, but I also really loved it because of the content, which focused on lean management techniques that catalyzed GE to success. It was educational and inspiring executing the project and learning from their event.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Ads for the Calm app, which were images of nature with sounds of nature. Surprise, delight, and a real attention capture.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I love X-games and extreme sports.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I am most optimistic about the focus on consumer engagement and prioritizing attention over scale. I’m least optimistic about there being too many technologies in the digital ads supply chain.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting.

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Generative AI is still maturing, but marketers aren't waiting to integrate it into their workflows, from content creation to audience segmentation.

While personalization is the top use case for marketers, they believe copywriting holds the most potential. Explore EMARKETER’s five charts to see how marketers are using generative AI right now.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Reddit partnered with the NBA, NFL, MLB, Nascar, and the PGA Tour to bring sports programming like video highlights and behind-the-scenes content to the site.
• Leaf Trading Cards inked a multiyear NIL deal with Notre Dame-committed quarterback Deuce Knight.
• DraftKings is selling VSiN, a sports betting TV and radio network that it initially purchased for $70 million, back to its founders.