Clear eyes, full wallets, can’t lose.

At least, that’s what the data on Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) implies. It’s been about eight months since the NCAA started allowing college athletes to make money on their NIL. And according to recent data from platform Opendorse, football has made up 47.1% of NIL compensation since, raising questions of whether NIL will create gender, racial, and other disparities when it comes to who’s getting paid.

• Sam Weber, senior director of brand marketing and communications at Opendorse, told Marketing Brew it’s not necessarily surprising to see that football is taking up so much of NIL revenue given this is America—and we love watching football.
• “The level of popularity lends itself to more exposure, to more of those national brand deals that will naturally go to the athletes with the most fame or the most influence. And just the nature of sports is that football is going to be a big part of that,” he said.
• Ohio State University, which leads the nation in NIL compensation, reported last month that football was its top-earning men’s sport, bringing in 173 deals worth nearly $2.7 million. Its top-earning women’s sport—gymnastics—brought in 35 deals worth around $32,000.

Carey Hoyt, Ohio State’s senior associate athletics director of sport administration and student-athlete development, told us that NIL is very much “market-driven” right now, causing brands to look for athletes with the most visibility and followings (aka football players). She said this also goes for NIL managers, who she’s seen work mostly with male athletes to find brand deals because they’re more recognizable.

This one’s for the girls

Alicia Jessop, associate professor of sport administration at Pepperdine University, told us it’s more of a chicken-or-the-egg situation when it comes to exposure. “We need to peel back the curtain a little bit more and realize that for the last [50] years, athletics departments have been given an opportunity to market women’s sport at the same rate as [men’s], but the fact of the matter is, they haven’t,” Jessop said.

She’s referring to Title IX, a law that was passed in 1972 requiring equal treatment in terms of participation, scholarships, and basic operational expenses like equipment, housing, and dining. However, Jessop explained that athletic departments have traditionally justified marketing men’s athletics more than women’s because they brought in more revenue (which some have called a “self-fulfilling prophecy”). As a result, she said, women athletes have largely had to market themselves.

Follow me: One of the ways they do that is by building social media followings, which is paying off for some star athletes who can now cash in on their followings, thanks to NIL. Since the NCAA’s decision, it’s been speculated that LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne and Fresno State basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder could be on their way to becoming “NIL-ionnaires” because of brand deals.

UConn basketball player Paige Bueckers has also made headlines for inking large-scale deals with StockX, Gatorade, and CashApp. According to Jessop, these agreements “[signal] the potential for the publicity gap to be eroded or diminished” between men’s and women’s sports.

Read the full story here.—KH

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Business Insider reported that Google was serving ads on publishers of Kremlin propaganda, like Sputnik News and TASS.

• While on those sites, BI observed Google-served ads from Best Buy, Progressive, and Allbirds, and a handful of other brands.
• Marketing Brew also saw ads for brands on these two sites, but a banner ad atop several stories was blocked by Integral Ad Science, a brand-safety firm.
• None of the brands that BI spotted ads for responded to requests for comment from the publication. Sputnik News and TASS did not, either.

Earlier this year, the State Department called Sputnik a critical element “in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.”

“We regularly review sites within our network to ensure they comply with our policies, and if we find pages or sites with violating content we block ads from serving,” a Google spokesperson told Business Insider, noting that the company does “not allow ads to run against content that incites violence in any way.”

ICYMI: Yesterday, you might’ve seen tweets about CNN airing an Applebee's commercial of a “twerking cowboy” on a split screen next to footage of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, under attack.

After the ad went viral, an Applebee’s spokesperson told Forbes it had paused its advertising on the network. “It never should have aired and we are disappointed in the actions of the network,” they said. Adweek then reported that CNN had removed the “squeezeback” ad format that Applebee’s spot had run on—which lets commercials air next to news broadcasts and messaging—from its coverage of Ukraine.

What do these stories have in common? Funding journalism. Advertisers often don’t want to fund inflammatory, hateful, or controversial content. While brand-safety tech might help marketers avoid having their ads showing up on propaganda sites, it can also direct their ads away from legitimate coverage of political or other sensitive topics, inadvertently hurting newsrooms as a result.—RB

Last month, we wrote about Wellow, a deodorant brand that comes in a tube made from 95% recycled paper.

Wellow is far from the only brand trying to shake up product packaging. Retail Brew’s Jeena Sharma recently spoke with several beauty companies that are ditching plastic in favor of reusable and recyclable packaging.

Aluminum is having a moment. Brands including Lesse, Uni, and Aveda are all using it for packaging.

“We always use glass or aluminum—that’s always been our focus,” Neada Deters, who started Lesse in 2018, told Retail Brew. “There’s a lot of information out there about the weight of products and what that really means, but when you really dive into the numbers of it, and the impact that it has, single-use plastic is far worse for the environment. Not only the way that it’s made, but how little it’s recycled.”

What’s next? Disappearing packaging. No, really. “A growing number of beauty brands are experimenting with dissolvable packaging in a bid to lessen their environmental impact and reduce packaging waste,” Clare Varga, WGSN’s director of beauty, shared with Retail Brew. “Water-soluble solutions allow consumers to wash empty packs down the drain—a tangible solution that encourages consumer participation in the fight against the climate crisis.”

Keep reading Jeena’s full story here and sign up for Retail Brew here.

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

Paint-n-sip Swipe-n-buy: How TikTok is changing the way we shop, according to the app.

This isn’t Pinterest: Reddit unveiled a tailored Discovery tab to help users find new content.

Let’s bounce: Or not. How to make sure people stay on your site.

Media is a-changin’. Roundel by Target wants to make sure it changes for good. Built on the idea of using people-based (aka first-party) data and maintaining brand-safe environments, Roundel provides comprehensive marketing tools and programs that drive actual results. Learn more here.* 

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

• Audio giants report ad revenue gains for 2021
• How one agency founder is breaking down industry barriers
• TikTok is full of alleged scam artists pretending to be real advertisers

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is fake?

1. Heinz apologizes as it launches range of pasta sauces
   
2. Taco Bell unveils glitter-infused tacos ahead of Euphoria season finale
   
3. Archer Roose promises live snakes as perks for customer loyalty
   
4. Pepsi unveils Nitro Pepsi, nitrogen-infused cola

Keep scrolling for the answer.