This February, prepare for an emotionally exhausting chore you never saw coming: Explaining cryptocurrency to your uncle over buffalo chicken dip and light beer.

Why? Because the Super Bowl’s got an entirely new category of advertisers. What we know so far:

• FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that’s featured Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen in past campaigns (both have a stake in the company), is expected to run a spot.
• Crypto.com, which recently got the naming rights to the home arena of the Lakers and other professional sports teams, will also make an appearance, according to the Wall Street Journal. (A commercial that debuted last year starring Matt Damon giving a ham-fisted pitch for bravery hasn’t exactly gone over well.)

Both companies have been mum on details in terms of what their game-day campaigns will look like. “The Super Bowl is, in many ways, the biggest stage from a culture perspective—and as crypto moves into the mainstream, we wanted to be a part of that massive conversation,” Nathaniel Whittemore, FTX’s head of marketing, wrote to Marketing Brew over email. “Our Super Bowl strategy is actually just like our overall marketing strategy: To invite people in. To get to know us.”

So, no, the commercials probably won’t explain what an NFT is. You’ll have to do that yourself.

A spokesperson for Crypto.com told Marketing Brew that the brand is “not sharing any details on our Super Bowl ad aside from that we’re doing one.”

Dos and don’ts: NBCUniversal, which is airing the game this year, doesn’t have any explicit guidelines related to cryptocurrency advertising (although it does have rules that cover “financial advertising” and “get-rich-quick and pyramid schemes”). For its part, the NFL doesn’t appear to have any crypto-related ad guidelines either, although its teams aren’t allowed to “sell sponsorships to cryptocurrency trading firms,” per The Athletic.

We asked a few marketers what they expect crypto Super Bowl ads to look like—read what they had to say here.—RB

Sports Illustrated is once again trying to put a modern spin on its Swimsuit Issue. This time, advertisers are involved.

Yesterday, the magazine marked the 58th anniversary of the first print issue by announcing that it will “only allow brands who are helping drive gender equality forward” to run ads in the mag, starting with the next edition in May. According to Sports Illustrated, brands that can “prove they are creating change for women” will be able to buy ad space in the 2022 issue. And marketers can’t just run any old ad—ads must showcase “progress each brand is making” on the topic.

Up to snuff: Specific benchmarks or metrics were not included in the announcement.

• Courtney Mains, senior account supervisor at Edelman, which worked with Sports Illustrated on the initiative, told Marketing Brew that brands will be “vetted on a case-by-case basis by the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit team. The bottom line is that they need to show they are making change for women.”
• Hillary Drezner, general manager at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, told Ad Age this “might take the form of an internal commitment to pay equity for female employees or an external commitment to challenging the status quo of what it means to be a woman by representing a more diverse range of women in marketing and advertising initiatives.”

Zoom out: Despite attempts to become more inclusive in recent years—last year’s edition featured Leyna Bloom, its first trans cover model—the Swimsuit Issue continues to get its fair share of criticism.

+1: Sports Illustrated reduced its publishing frequency to roughly once per month in 2020. Last year, Front Office Sports said the magazine had 1.7 million subscribers.—MS

As of this week, IG is officially testing Instagram Subscriptions, a feature that lets a creator’s fans pay anywhere from 99 cents to $99.99 for access to exclusive, Close Friends–type content.

• That content will come in a few different forms, including subscriber-only Lives and Stories.
• Creators will also see a v regal looking Subscriber badge (it’s a ) next to comments and inbox messages from subscribed followers to differentiate subs from the rest of us plebeians.
• As of now, only 10 US creators are in the feature’s early test group, per TechCrunch.

Natalie Held, a social media manager at the Hermana Agency and an influencer who’s worked with brands like Bumble, told Marketing Brew that she thinks the feature has staying power far beyond this initial test—and hopes it rolls out more broadly soon. “I think it’s going to be game-changing,” she said, adding that for marketers who use influencers, Subscriptions could be a creative way to drum up FOMO for upcoming news, like a new product rollout.

Influencers, she said, could use the feature to monetize content that might typically only be sent to Close Friends. Some creators have been charging followers for Close Friends access long before this IG test.

Mom, Apple and Meta are fighting again: Instagram parent company Meta won’t take a cut of creator Subscriptions earnings “till at least 2023…but on iOS, that means any payments will be subject to Apple’s 30% fee, which Meta has repeatedly criticized,” per Social Media Today.

+1: TikTok is also “testing support for paid subscriptions,” per The Verge, because of course it is.—PB

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

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Clock’s tikking: How to use influencer marketing on TikTok to drive sales.

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Keep scrolling for the answer.