If you follow women’s sports, you’re probably familiar with Ally Financial.

In May 2022, the financial services company pledged to split its ad spend on men’s and women’s sports equally within five years. In the year since, Ally has started to make good on that promise with a variety of deals, including an increased investment with CBS, which landed the NWSL Championship in a prime-time slot for the first time, and a multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal with Disney and ESPN that includes official sponsorship of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Ally is particularly active in the world of women’s soccer—as the league’s first official banking sponsor, its logo appears on the sleeves of all NWSL kits, and its “Team Ally” roster of athletes and creators includes several current or former NWSL players. So it would be pretty surprising if the brand didn’t have a presence at this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup.

“We’ve been looking at media packages, honestly, since the beginning of the year,” CMO Andrea Brimmer told Marketing Brew. “We held placeholder money for it because we would be conspicuously absent if we weren’t there.”

Still, Brimmer said there was a time she was worried World Cup broadcast ads might not have been in the cards for Ally. But a deal with Fox Sports came to fruition, she said, and the brand is also planning a range of other campaigns elsewhere to support that buy.

Read the full story here.—AM

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As major media networks remain largely mum on the state of upfronts negotiations, credit reporting agency and research firm S&P Global has slashed its already grim forecast on national TV advertising throughout the end of 2023, citing the quiet upfront as a major factor.

• The ad market for network TV is now expected to shrink 7.9% in 2023 compared to a year ago, nearly three percentage points lower than S&P Global previously forecast. (The company does not forecast exact dollar figures.)
• National television’s ad outlook has also been revised to be one-and-a-half percentage points lower than previously forecast, and is expected to be down 5.9% YoY.
• Cable television’s ad outlook was also reduced by one percentage point due to “weak demand for general entertainment and other non-sports programming,” the report found.

The takeaway: “So far this year, few upfront deals have closed, and the current pacing is for less inventory to be sold and for pricing to be at roughly the same levels as last year’s upfront,” according to the report. That takeaway tracks with reporting from Variety that has suggested this year’s upfront, in contrast to last year’s, will be defined by declines in volume and lower ad rates than in past years.

A few factors affecting the media industry help explain the declines in the forecast and the weak upfront marketplace. Continue reading here.—KS

Barbieheimer is upon us, and if you feel like the Mattel marketing team has been working overtime, you’re not alone. Everywhere you look, it seems like there’s an “[insert brand name here] x Barbie” collection.

With Mattel reportedly planning as many as 45 more movies based on its toys, Barbie could just be the beginning of the brand’s collaboration strategy—and it’s extensive. Based on our research, if you wanted to make your life everything Barbie, all the time ahead of the film’s release, you probably could: Mattel inked more than 100 brand partnerships ahead of its premiere.

Click here to check out all the collabs we’ve seen to date.—KH

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Change it up: Wikipedia is unlike any other website, and that applies to its design process too. In 2022, Wikipedia got a makeover. Find out what changes were made and why.

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^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}