Tag: sports
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AI Roundup: Pelé’s Lost Goal, a Referee’s-Eye View, and a Cap That Hides You From Cameras
A goal from 1959 that no camera recorded, rebuilt with a stunt double and Gemini Omni. A World Cup engine that finds you a second team when yours goes out. A cap that spots a phone pointed at you and covers your face. Six campaigns, one dependency.
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ESPN’s Poker Coverage Adds an AI That Watches for Tells — After Players Are Out
The World Series of Poker returns to ESPN with an AI that reads posture and blink rate for bluffs. It runs on players only after they’ve been eliminated — and its builder doubts it would find anything on a pro who has spent a career erasing tells.
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This Month in AI Activations: Anime Strikers, Digital-Twin Dogs, and Ads That Take Your Order
Ad Age’s latest Top 5 AI activations roundup arrives in a month when Meta shipped Muse Image, the first model from its Superintelligence Labs, and Google pushed lightweight versions of its Omni video and Nano Banana image models to cut marketers’ inference costs — models that increasingly reach advertisers directly inside the ad platforms.
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Unilever’s World Cup Math: 50,000 Creators and a Super Bowl Every Two Days
Unilever, the official personal care brand of the FIFA World Cup 2026, says it has activated 50,000 creators and influencers worldwide at the tournament’s midpoint — from soccer star Trinity Rodman down to hyperlocal micro-creators — plus thousands more at House of Fresh pop-ups in New York City, Miami, and Mexico City across 10 days,…
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State Farm Uses AI to turn a Static Brand Placement into a Social Media Character
State Farm is using the NBA Finals to test faster social content with a new spokescharacter: Stan the State Farm Stanchion Pad. Yes, the padding behind the hoop. During Game 4 of Knicks vs. Spurs, Stan is set to post real-time commentary on X, attempting to turn a piece of long-standing courtside branding into an…
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Coca-Cola Gives José Mourinho an AI Twin for World Cup Content Duty
Ahead of the FIFA World Cup, Coca-Cola is launching a “José vs. Mourinho” social content series hosted not by José Mourinho himself, but by his AI “digital twin.” Mourinho is the incoming manager of Real Madrid, which apparently still leaves room for being rendered into scalable brand content. The twin was built by Coca-Cola, Footballco,…
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The Jets Say 91% of the Front Office Now Uses Copilot Daily
The New York Jets, under new Chief Data & Analytics Officer Iwao Fusillo, are treating AI less like a side experiment and more like office plumbing. Fusillo, who started in January, told Sports Business Journal his remit spans both business and football analytics. His two priorities: building internal analytics apps for coaching, scouting, and business…
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Behind the A.I. Boom, a Boring Business Is Soaring With Better Ads
DribbleUp, a sports equipment company, says it used to spend its own time and resources figuring out whom to target on Facebook. For the last two years, it has placed those ads “entirely through Facebook’s artificial intelligence tools,” according to The New York Times. Since then, the company says sales have outpaced marketing expenses. It…
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Dick’s Sporting Goods Is Turning Chatbot Small Talk Into CRM Fuel
Dick’s Sporting Goods is preparing to launch an AI-powered “digital coach” built with Adobe, positioning it less as the usual help-desk deflection bot and more as the “front door” to the retailer’s CRM. The idea: shoppers chat about what they’re buying, playing, training for, or trying to fix — a golf swing, for example —…
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Coca-Cola Uses Optical Illusion in OOH Campaign
Coca-Cola’s “You Must Love Coke” OOH push found a way to show up in football stadium ecosystems where wearing (or displaying) red can range from “not advised” to “choose-your-own-adventure.” The trick: billboards and placements that contain *zero* actual red, yet still prompt viewers to “see” Coke’s signature color anyway—because their brains do the work. It’s…
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How MLB is leveraging automation and data to enhance fan messaging
MLB is expanding its partnership with Adobe to help the league and all 30 clubs spin up targeted marketing campaigns faster—and at scale. The practical goal: use automation plus fan data to match messaging to how people actually follow baseball now (streaming, social, and yes, AI-powered everything). Rollout starts this season, with clubs tapping into…
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Spaghetti Monsters, De-Aging, and AI Twins: This Week’s Top 5 Brand Plays
ByteDance’s Seedance (now in its second generation) is the new video model fueling equal parts creative glee and IP panic. Creators have been stress-testing it with the internet’s favorite benchmark—Will Smith + spaghetti—except the latest flex is Smith fighting a spaghetti monster, posted by Magnific AI founder Javi Lopez. AI producer Billy Boman summed up…
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The AI Olympics Ad You Couldn’t Find (And That Was the Point)
Liquid Death ran a real, AI-generated Winter Olympics spot that looked so “is this even a real ad from the brand?” that viewers spiraled into Reddit and shaky TikTok replays trying to prove it existed. The ad features an AI figure skater pitching Liquid Death sparkling water as the less “artificial” choice—then promptly goes off…
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Uber Eats Turns Its Super Bowl Ad Into a DIY Conspiracy Buffet
Uber Eats is cooking up more than just celebrity cameos in its latest Super Bowl campaign. In the brand’s second installment of its “Football Is for Food” saga, Matthew McConaughey reprises his role as a food-truthing theorist, this time roping in Bradley Cooper and Parker Posey for some sideline banter about how football only exists…
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AI in Shoulder Pads: NBCUniversal Tests AI Ad Agents During NFL Playoff
NBCUniversal just turned what’s arguably the most old-school corner of ad buying—live linear NFL TV—into a sandbox for AI experimentation. Partnering with RPA, Newton Research, and FreeWheel, NBCU successfully tested AI agents on both the buy and sell side to handle key parts of the sales process for a playoff game. This wasn’t about full…
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Fembots, Football & Funny: What Viewers Want From Super Bowl Ads
Turns out Super Bowl viewers mostly want to laugh—with or without the help of an algorithm. A recent Harris Poll for Ad Age found that 71% of consumers are craving funny ads during this year’s Big Game, and humor is also what sticks, with 46% saying they’re most likely to remember a funny spot. Agencies…
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Mari-Knows It All: Topps Fakes the Best ’80s Ad Career That Never Was
Topps is revisiting a sports “what-if” with the help of AI and a heavy dose of nostalgia. In its latest Bowman Draft campaign, the trading card brand reimagines a young Dan Marino—who was actually drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1979—in a parallel ad-world where he’s more than a football great. In an alternate…
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Rob Riggle’s AI Clone Hosts the Strangest Super Bowl Party Yet—With Guac
Just in time for Super Bowl LX, Avocados From Mexico is launching a digital experience that fuses comedy, sports prediction, and your snack table. Enter the “Guac Guru,” an AI avatar of Rob Riggle decked out like a mystical football sage, dishing out both playoff predictions and guacamole recipes. Powered by SportsDataIO and built by…
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Svedka’s Super Bowl Strategy: Vodka, Robots, and a Dash of AI
For the first time in decades, vodka will return to Super Bowl ad breaks, as Svedka nabs a coveted 30-second slot just after halftime in February’s Big Game. This isn’t just Sazerac flexing its distribution muscle—CMO Sara Saunders says the vodka brand, which had been sliding, is back on the upswing since their 2024 acquisition.…
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Pepsi Launches Prebiotic Soda, Shoppable From Your Couch
Just in time for holiday gustatory adventures, PepsiCo is cracking open the can on its new prebiotic cola. Following its acquisition of Poppi earlier this year, Pepsi is bringing functional fizz to the masses with a limited release of Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in Original and Cherry Vanilla. Each can clocks in at five grams of…
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Mercedes Brings the Heat, Moët Pops Bottles, and Peloton Hits the Strip
As the engines cooled off after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, brands were still revving up their marketing. Mercedes-Benz lit up The Sphere with a 360-degree illusion featuring its AMG GT lineup, rendered across 580,000 square feet of LED real estate. Designed by Merkley + Partners and Nexus, the activation cleverly used opposing perspectives to…
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How AI Helped Corona Cero Find Its Olympic Chill
Corona Cero had just three weeks to craft a global Olympic campaign—and decided that traditional tear-jerkers about sacrifice and national pride weren’t going to cut it. As the first-ever worldwide beer sponsor of the Games, the nonalcoholic brand leaned into its laid-back DNA, using AI to uncover emotional insights that felt distinctly more beach than…
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How Shaquille O’Neal is Transforming Car Sales with AI
What started as Shaquille O’Neal eyeing a car vending machine in Nashville has become one of the strangest-yet-smartest uses of AI in retail. Years after that first sighting, Shaq teamed up with Carvana not just to endorse the brand, but to lend his voice, banter, and brainwaves to it. The result? Shaqbot—an AI assistant trained…
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AI Transforms Cowboys Mascot in Blockchain Ad
Blockchain.com is mixing digital currency with digital creativity in its latest ad campaign, currently playing on the ultra-high-definition stadium screen at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. The crypto finance firm tapped into generative AI to produce a unique one-minute spot that stars Rowdy, the team’s mascot, reimagined through an AI lens to pitch…
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Retailers Embrace AI Despite Trust Issues
Retailers are increasingly adopting AI despite concerns about accuracy, cost, and customer trust, with 60% of industry leaders expressing unease over its reliability. A recent survey indicates over half anticipate AI will dominate customer interactions within five years. Challenges include data privacy, inconsistent quality, and internal resistance. Notably, Under Armour employs AI for operational efficiencies…
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Shop While You Watch: TSN’s New QR Code Shopping
TSN has introduced a new e-commerce platform, TSN Shop, during the CFL’s Friday Night Football, allowing fans to shop in real-time by scanning a QR code on-screen. This initiative, powered by Shopsense AI, enhances Bell Media’s strategy to create transactional second-screen engagement. It enables brands to integrate directly into the viewing experience, turning fan interest…
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NFL’s AI-Generated Season Opener: A Surreal Spectacle
The NFL launched its 2025-26 season with a groundbreaking, surreal ad titled “You Better Believe,” created in collaboration with agency 72andSunny. This psychedelic, AI-generated music video showcases a virtual parade celebrating all 32 teams, featuring elements like talking babies and airborne livestock, all set to a remix of “C’Mon ‘N Ride The Train.” Utilizing AI…
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R/GA Makes AI-focused Acquisition
R/GA just closed its first buy since splitting from Interpublic Group, scooping up AI studio Addition—a tight team of about a dozen that’s already punched above its weight with work for Google, The New York Times, and others. Founded in 2021, Addition excels in AI strategy, personalization, and rapid prototyping, thanks mainly to its “AI-native”…
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Copilot, Who Scored the Fastest Goal Ever?
The Premier League just kicked off a five-year collaboration with Microsoft, aiming to give fans smarter, faster, and deeper ways to follow the beautiful game—without needing to memorize 30 years of match stats. At the heart of the deal is the Premier League Companion, an AI-powered sidekick built into the league’s app and website. Backed…
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Betr Launches CTV Ad with Digital Twin Produced in 48 Hours
To promote his sports betting and media brand, Betr, Jake Paul dropped a new national connected TV (CTV) spot created using Waymark Cinematic, an AI ad production tool. The kicker? It took just 48 hours to make. The ad, being seeded via Comcast’s Universal Ads platform across outlets like AMC, DIRECTV, and Fox, leans hard…
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Kalshi Hijacks NBA Finals with Veo 3 Ad
Kalshi, the online prediction market known for letting users wager on everything from elections to hurricanes, crashed the NBA Finals with what might be the strangest ad break of the year: a fully AI-generated commercial made using Google’s new Veo 3 video model. The cartoonish 30-second spot popped up on YouTube TV’s stream of Game…
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Benfica Kicks Off a Virtual Locker Room for Fans
Just in time for the FIFA Club World Cup, Benfica FC is trading turf for tech with the launch of the Benfica Immersive Store. Partnering with Infinite Reality, the Portuguese football club rolled out a 3D virtual retail experience complete with a life-like locker room tour, gamified merch browsing, and an AI concierge that speaks…
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Bad View? Have a Brew: Coors Light Turns AI into a Beer Delivery System
Coors Light is stepping up for baseball fans—literally the ones stuck behind poles or nosebleed seats—with a new campaign that uses AI to offer compensation in the form of cold beer. The brand launched “The Coors Light AI Beer Refund,” a program that uses computer vision to detect obstructed-view seats in user-submitted photos. Fans can…
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Scan, Watch, Buy: How Mondelez Turned CTV into a Snackable Checkout
Mondelez International gave its Nabisco brand a digital touchdown during the 2024 football season with a CTV campaign that went beyond eyeballs—it drove straight to carts. Running from mid-August to mid-October, the campaign used QR codes embedded in connected TV ads to send viewers directly to Walmart.com, where the featured snacks were instantly added to…
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Hutty Madness: Pizza Hut’s AI Sidekick Serves Hot Takes and Hotter Deals
Pizza Hut is doubling down on its March Madness sponsorship with a second-screen digital play called “Hutty,” accessible via Instagram and powered by Meta AI. The chatbot companion reacts in real-time to NCAA tournament games, dishes out snappy commentary, and serves up exclusive offers—like the chance to win free pizza for a year. This digital…
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Puma’s AI-Generated Ad: A New Playbook for Creativity?
Puma just ran a bold experiment with AI in advertising. Partnering with agency Monks, the sports brand used hundreds of AI agents to build an ad from scratch, handling everything from concept ideation to scriptwriting and video generation. Unlike traditional generative AI, which usually requires human prompting and oversight, these agents worked collaboratively, passing ideas…