If there is a blank canvas, sure enough, there will always be someone looking to fill it with an advertisement. Cooler Screens has found a blank canvas in the refrigerated aisles of America’s convenience and grocery stores.

Granted, those clear doors that fog up aren’t exactly bare—and they serve a purpose—but Cooler Screens is putting them to work, building and maintaining Star Trek–like tech in retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, and Kroger.

What is it? The company’s screens brightly display which drinks, booze, and snacks are behind the door, so people can still see what’s available. But display ads and pop-ups can litter the screen, and if no one is within a few feet of a door, the entire screen fills with an ad.

Who’s onboard: Cooler Screens has installed some 10,000 screens across 750 retail locations, reaching an estimated 80 million monthly views, the company’s founder and CEO Arsen Avakian told Marketing Brew at Advertising Week New York, where Cooler Screens had a humble two screens set up.

• Advertisers who’ve bought the inventory include Pepsi, Coke, AB InBev, Unilever, White Claw, and Procter & Gamble.
• The company says, on average, brands see a sales lift between 5% and 10% on products that advertise on their screens.

Sensors that can tell how close shoppers are to the screen can also gauge if they’ve seen an ad, what they’re looking for, if they open and close a door, and if they’ve gone for a Diet Coke or a kombucha.

Though the sensors don’t use facial-recognition technology and can’t tell gender or other identifiable data, they can give advertisers a sense of how their ads are actually leading to in-store purchases.

“We can actually tell people if their ad is working or not. We know what you took,” Avakian told Marketing Brew. “We applied that same science of e-commerce in a physical store, except it’s not a mouse or a browser. It’s the sensors that are monitoring the shopper. You need to digitize the in-store experience and monetize that experience.”

Eventually, Avakian hopes to merge his data set with the personal data retailers collect, like mobile device IDs. So yes, the refrigerator might really be watching you—though, thankfully, it isn’t judging us. Yet.

“Ad network, aisle four”

Cooler Screens owns their advertising network, though brands can purchase its display ads through the retailers themselves. It gives its retail partners a cut of the ad spend depending on how much they invest in installing the hardware. It’s already integrated within Yahoo’s DSP and Walmart Connect.

• Depending on the category, a full-screen CPM can cost between $10 and $20.
• Smaller banner ads that run in-between the product lineup (or animations, like dancing White Claw cans or sparkling filter effect) can cost as little as $1 to $2.
• CPMs are based on actual people the sensor picks up.

Click here to read what the screens are like IRL—and what a few Walgreens shoppers thought of them.—RB

Last week, Instagram once again stole its little sister TikTok’s favorite shirt and said it looked better on IG anyways. The Facebook–owned app announced a new feature called “Collabs”—which is essentially Instagram’s way of making sure creators can maximize reach on IG as they would via TikTok’s duets.

It’s sort of a mix between tagging 2.0 and duets 2.0. Here’s what we mean by that:

• Dubbed “Collabs” (we see you attempting Gen Z slang, Insta), the feature lets users invite other accounts to “collaborate” on a feed post or Reel.
• If a user accepts the invite, the post appears on both of their profiles for all their separate followers to see…if the algorithm wishes, of course.
• Both accounts can then see organic post metrics, such as view counts.

“This is clearly their response to TikTok’s duet feature, but huge for IG–focused influencers,” FamePick VP Matt Zuvella told Marketing Brew.

Stats: 68% of those surveyed by Influencer Marketing Hub in 2021 said they consider Instagram “important” for their influencer marketing campaigns; 45% of respondents said the same about TikTok.

Zuvella told us that with TikTok’s duets, two accounts can not only combine their reach, but also help their followers discover one another, “essentially helping each other grow their audiences.” Instagram Collabs offers the same kind of opp.

He used a TikTok user named David Allen (@totouchanemu)’s viral dancing video as an example, saying Allen was able to make the video go even more viral when he repurposed it for duets with other famous TikTok creators.

Bottom line: “I expect we will see the same success with IG’s Collab feature given that creators (meme pages, especially) have been buying shoutouts from high follower count pages for years already,” Zuvella prophesied.—PB

Before Facebook’s Q3 earnings report today, 17 publications are releasing a tranche of articles that paint a troubling picture of Facebook’s ability to combat hate speech and other dangerous content, based on documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen.

The flurry of information released over the weekend and this morning is icing on the bad-news cake for the social giant. In Q3, Facebook saw congressional hearings and leaks from Haugen. It was also attempting to reshape itself through the metaverse and dealing with Apple’s iOS 14.5 privacy updates. Read other highlights from Facebook’s past quarter ahead of today’s earnings report.

“Advertisers’ reliance on Facebook has likely held steady despite the iOS changes. Brand and agency advertisers I’ve communicated with have not indicated reducing spend. Advertisers we spoke with have also tended to agree that ads’ performance declines are largely being triggered by reduced visibility into measurement and attribution,” Audrey Schomer, a senior analyst at eMarketer, told Marketing Brew. “Regardless of how they do, there are sharks in the water. And pretty soon, I guess we may not be calling them Facebook.”

+1: Facebook posted $29.1 billion in revenue in Q2, a year over year increase of 56%. At the time, CFO David Wehner said the company expected Q3 would bring “more significant impact” from Apple’s privacy updates.—ZS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Reels: Here’s what to do now that they’re on Facebook rather than just Instagram.

What’s in a name: Speaking of Facebook, a branding expert explains why its reported upcoming name change is important.

The M word: How the metaverse is “about to change everything,” including where consumers spend their time.

Funnel fix: Inbound leads slip through the cracks more often than they should. With Distro by Chili Piper, you can route leads instantly to the right rep and distribute them fairly and accurately. Fix your funnel with Chili Piper today.*

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ICYMI, we rolled out a guide earlier this month about all things third-party cookie. Marketing Brew talked to more than a dozen industry experts to get answers to questions like:

• What is a third-party cookie, exactly?
• How did it become so popular?
• Why it is going away?
• What will replace it?

…and much more. If you could use a cookie primer, click here.

Vintage Ad Browser

Behold, 1937’s version of cooler advertising, care of Coca-Cola.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• The secret life of board members in the marketing industry
• Kroger offers advertisers a marketplace for its first-party data
• Love ’em or hate ’em, Stories are everywhere—here’s how to make them work for your brand