Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue, home to iconic institutions like Radio City Music Hall and NBC Studios, skyscrapers like the Bank of America Tower and the CBS Building, and the corporate headquarters of News Corp, has more recently become the American stage to an English football rivalry.

Melvyn Carter, a lifelong fan of the professional football club Arsenal visiting New York from London, felt compelled to drop his bags and chant his own club’s name when he came across a newly opened Manchester City retail pop-up at Rockefeller Center. He was “amazed” to find an English club with a store stateside.

Would he buy anything, though? “Absolutely not,” he told Marketing Brew before retrieving his bags and leaving.

NFL fans may not expect to find the Green Bay Packers setting up shop in Milan or Berlin anytime soon, but Manchester City is looking to make its New York presence permanent after the success of the pop-up, which originally opened in June to coincide with the club’s preseason tour of the US, including a match at Yankee Stadium in July, Serena Gosling, director of retail and licensing, City Football Group, told Marketing Brew.

The team is not the only professional European club to establish a beachhead in the Big Apple. Since 2021, the French Ligue 1 team Paris Saint-Germain has opened stores in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. The two clubs—backed by the deep pockets of the Abu Dhabi United Group and Qatar Sports Investments, respectively—are aiming to capitalize on the growth of soccer stateside.

“We sell a lot of merchandise online to the US, We’ve got a growing fan base there,” Gosling said. “It made sense to look for our next physical location in the States.”

Continue reading here.—RB

There are no bad ideas in a brainstorm. But there are good and bad ways to brainstorm.

A great way is with Canva Whiteboards. Why?

1. They’re online. Which means introverts feel comfortable contributing. Bye-bye to the big voices dominating the session. Plus, brainstorming in sweatpants? Yes, please.

2. They’re fun. Pop on some thinking music from the Whiteboard for your team to jam to. Freehand draw; add stickers, emojis, GIFs, images, and videos; and much more.

3. They’re smart. Sort stickies by contributor, color, or theme in just a click—powered by AI.

You’ll love brainstorming in Canva Whiteboards. And your co-workers will too.

Love your work with Canva Whiteboards.

At an antitrust trial, it’s probably not great when there’s evidence shown in court of company executives talking about crushing the competition.

On the third day of the United States vs. Google, though, lawyers for the Department of Justice introduced remarks from David Rosenblatt, Google’s former president of global display advertising, where he said just that.

“If we execute…we’ll be able to crush other networks, and that’s our goal,” Rosenblatt said in a document from 2009, apparently describing the company’s strategy around that time in internal notes shared with Google employees.

Those notes also described Rosenblatt as saying, “We’re both Goldman and the NYSE,” comparing Google’s ad tools to both an investment bank and a stock exchange. “We’ll do to display what we did to search,” he continued.

Rosenblatt’s remarks seemed to help make the DOJ’s case for it, as it argues that Google acted to monopolize the digital advertising ecosystem in its blockbuster case against the tech giant.

Or maybe it was just a simple metaphor, as Brad Bender, a former Google executive who oversaw the company’s buy and sell side ad tech, suggested when he took the witness stand Wednesday. During the cross-examination of Bender, Google’s lawyers pointed out that Rosenblatt worked at the company for less than a year and that he left shortly after making those remarks. (Rosenblatt was CEO of DoubleClick when it was acquired by Google in 2008 and joined the tech giant briefly at that time.)

As the trial continues, what exactly constitutes an “open web display advertisement” continues to be a point of contention between the prosecution and the defense, and on Wednesday, Google’s lawyers asked Bender to explain how Google’s ad-buying tools, like DV360, were integrated with platforms like YouTube and mobile ads.

Continue reading here, and if you haven’t yet, catch up on our Day 1 and Day 2 trial coverage.—RB

Whoa, Nellie. The ad economy is doing so well that it’s expected to slow ever so slightly as the end of the year nears, according to industry analyst Brian Wieser.

This year, the advertising industry—excluding political ad spend—is expected to grow 7.2%, totaling about $381 billion, according to a recent projection from Wieser, author of the Madison and Wall newsletter and a former GroupM economic analyst. In June, Wieser predicted that the ad market would grow 6.3%.

“The second half of 2024 should exhibit deceleration given prior year underlying growth rates of 7.5% and 10.6% during last year’s third and fourth quarters, respectively,” he wrote, though he added that “recognizing that multiple factors are responsible for recent conditions, we can’t point to any specific sources of deceleration in the second half of the year beyond the harder comparable.”

If it were to decelerate, it could be because advertisers are viewing the open web, hamstrung by quality and brand-safety concerns, with increasing skepticism, he wrote. If the economy keeps churning, he expects to credit that to the rise of retail media as well as a wave of “cross-border spending originating with overseas marketers, especially those based in China such as Temu and Shein.”

Continue reading here.—RB

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Stories we’re jealous of.

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• The Wall Street Journal looked at Lululemon’s business slowdown and the pressures that the brand could face in coming quarters.
• Vox wrote about how r/AmITheAsshole became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring TikTok content, books, and merch.