SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc.

In early October, Shayla Wolfe, a high school senior, had an idea for how to pay for college. She was explaining Times Square billboards to an exchange student her family was hosting when inspiration struck: What if she turned her walls into her own personal Times Square and sold ad spots online?

So she posted a TikTok explaining the offering, showing her wall with tape separating the space into various sized rectangles with correlating prices, and inviting any brand to buy a spot.

“When I posted it, it got literally no attention at first, and I was gonna delete it,” Wolfe told us. “My brother was like, ‘Just keep it up for the night.’ And I woke up, and it blew up.”

Brands big and small found Wolfe’s video, and companies began snagging wall ads, which originally cost between $25 and $500; several small businesses, including Big Wool Balls, a laundry-gadget company, and the independent baking business Chloe’s Giant Cookies, made buys.

In the couple of weeks since her original video, brand interest has grown so fast that she’s added five walls in her family’s home, with specialty spots going up to $2,000. Brands like Lyft, GoFundMe, and the New York Mets are in on the trend, too, and Wolfe is trying to choose brands to work with that create a more focused narrative, she said.

Wolfe isn’t the first person to sell ad space on personal, physical belongings. In August, founder and creator Vincent Seube made an offer on X for ad space on his laptop in the form of stickers; before that, Dawson Gunn, the creator behind @TooCuteLabs on TikTok, sold ad space on the backs of his two dogs, and Dagobert Renouf, an entrepreneur, sold ad space on his wedding tuxedo.

In other words, some of the most in-demand OOH ad spots of late might actually be inside.

For more on the phenomenon and how brands are getting in on the trend to “hijack” consumer attention for less, continue reading here.—JN

      

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SPORTS MARKETING

Nike

Nike’s been known to make a splash around major marathons, even when it’s not an official sponsor.

Following this year’s New York City Marathon, that splash is in ink.

For the first time this year, the New York Times published the full list of marathon finishers in print, an effort that Nike is supporting. The brand sponsored the special sections of the Times on Monday and Tuesday, and it has also been appearing alongside the paper’s digital and newsletter assets, according to Amy Oelkers, SVP of ad sales at New York Times Advertising.

The campaign falls in line with Nike’s general approach to running sponsorship, which has focused on “moments that mean something to runners,” Seema Simmons, VP and general manager of Nike Running for North America, told us last year.

It’s also indicative of two cultural touchstones that have been of high interest to advertisers, Oelkers said: sports and nostalgia.

For more from our exclusive conversation with Oelkers about how the campaign came together, read more here.—AM

      

SUPER BOWL

Svedka

If at first you don’t succeed, AI, AI again.

That’s the motto that Svedka is applying to its Super Bowl advertising.

The Sazerac-owned vodka brand made its Super Bowl debut in 2026 with an ad starring its robot mascot, Fembot, which had previously spent about a decade in retirement. The commercial was produced and animated using AI—and was, as many topics in the AI sphere are, divisive.

Of the 54 ads ranked in the 2026 USA Today Ad Meter, the Svedka spot came in at No. 53, with the largest share of voters (39%) giving it one out of five stars. But “it actually sold a lot of vodka for us,” Sazerac CMO Sara Saunders said: Svedka sales increased by about 23% during the first half of the year, and are now up about 22% from March, according to Nielsen data shared by the brand.

So Sazerac is bringing Svedka back to the Super Bowl in 2027, along with an ad for another to-be-announced brand from its portfolio. This time, however, Saunders and her team are taking feedback to heart and offering others a chance to make their own ad—with or without AI.

“We read every single comment on every single platform,” she told Marketing Brew. “I got a lot of personal emails, because my email was out there. It was clear that a lot of people thought that they could do better than us. So this year, we’re actually saying, ‘All right, show us what you got.’”

For more on how Svedka is planning to show up during the Big Game (and what its marketing team learned from this year’s ad), continue reading here.—AM

      

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

Broad strokes: Inside Pinterest’s new programmatic buying partnership, which makes its ad inventory more widely available.

Different data: How customer intelligence could be a data differentiator in the age of AI.

Size up: A guide to image sizes for each social media platform.

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METRICS AND MEDIA

Stat: $1.9 billion. That’s how much Americans wagered on the midterms across Kalshi and Polymarket this year, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.

Quote: “I think that once people’s teeth fall out from consuming all this sugary AI, they’ll come looking for something human.”—Justin Rasch, co-founder of Stunt Puppet Pictures, speaking to the Wall Street Journal about why advertisers and consumers may appreciate handmade craftsmanship in campaigns

Read: “Good-bye, Disney adults; hello, Disney cool girls” (The Cut)