The #1 burger has officially moved in with the #1 baseball team. Habit Burger x LA Dodgers: Hometown heroes in fresh heaven Habit Burger & Grill has set down roots in Dodger Stadium and transformed an existing Habit location on Sunset Blvd. into "Dodgers x Habit Home Base" — a dedicated fan destination open pre- and post-game. Supporting the whole effort is an iconic DOOH media campaign placed along actual fan game-day routes — meeting people where the energy already is, not interrupting it. The eye candy is a sweeping mural by celebrated LA artist Ali Gonzalez that makes the partnership feel less like a sponsorship and more like a love letter to the city itself. Two brands that have spent decades earning deep loyalty in LA are finally sharing the same stage, right as the Dodgers come off of back-to-back championship seasons. Like many brands in 2026, Habit recognizes that consumers are hungry for in-person, communal experiences, and nothing beats a baseball game for that. It’s part of Habit’s nationwide expansion that aims to be a good neighbor in each new local community they enter. Media planning, buying, and analysis is led by Exverus by Brainlabs, with creative by OptimismBH and OOH execution by Kevani. Leading the charge at Exverus is Media Director Georgia Schreiner, a 15-year advertising pro and Ad Age Media Planner/Buyer of the Year. About Habit Restaurants, Inc. Born in sunny Southern California in 1969, Habit Burger & Grill quickly gained a devoted following for its Charburgers, cooked to order over an open flame. Since then, the menu has grown far beyond burgers, offering a fresh take on Californian-inspired flavors. Guests can choose from a meaningful selection of handcrafted sandwiches, crisp salad bowls topped with hot, chargrilled chicken, and creamy handspun shakes, all made fresh and cooked to order. Habit has earned notable recognition over the years, including its Double Char being ranked #1 twice by USA Today 10Best*, its Tempura Green Beans named the #1 side twice by USA Today 10Best, and the brand itself recognized as the #1 Fast Casual Restaurant by USA Today 10Best. Connect with Habit: Instagram, TikTok, & LinkedIn About Exverus by Brainlabs Founded in 2014, Exverus is a global, independent media agency growing brands through full-funnel media planning & buying, traditional and programmatic advertising, retail media & e-commerce, paid search, paid social, and analytics. Our data-driven media plans combine brand and performance under one scientific brain to confidently allocate every ad dollar for the maximum return. Named for the Latin phrase "from the truth", Exverus (acquired by Brainlabs in 2025) is dedicated to transparency and long-term client trust. Learn more at exverus.com. Connect with Exverus: LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

Programmatic digital out-of-home media is now more precise and more measurable thanks to advances in AI-powered ad placements. Forget static billboards on a dusty highway. Out-of-home media (OOH) is impactful, innovative, and drives major business growth downstream. Now that digital OOH media can be bought programmatically, it's easier than ever to both target audiences and measure outcomes more precisely. EMARKETER projects that DOOH will account for 45.2% of total OOH ad spending by 2028, more than doubling since 2016. This growth is largely driven by AI-powered innovations that enhance targeting capabilities, measurement precision, and creative possibilities. Photo Credit: Marcus Herzberg Benefits of AI-powered digital OOH media buying The integration of AI into digital OOH advertising has created significant advantages for marketers seeking impact beyond crowded digital channels. Real-time responsive adjustments According to the OAAA's 2023 OOH Tech Showcase report, AI-powered solutions are helping advertisers deploy more relevant content by analyzing real-time data feeds and adjusting creative elements accordingly. AI algorithms can analyze environmental factors such as weather, traffic patterns, and time of day to dynamically switch out creative assets, transforming what was once a static medium into a hyperresponsive digital channel. Efficient audience targeting AI-powered bidding platforms use up-to-date information on consumer behavior, location, and environmental conditions to deliver hyper-relevant ads, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience without wasting ad spend. Improved measurement Advances in measurement have addressed one of OOH media's historical challenges. According to a 2022 study by the Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA), 64% of surveyed media planners and brands cite improved measurement capabilities as a key factor in increasing their DOOH investments. What gets measured gets managed, as they say. Omnichannel media plan integration With programmatic buying platforms, AI technology easily connects digital OOH media activations with other advertising channels, making it a key component of a unified media strategy. Programmatic DOOH campaign examples We used DOOH to take over Times Square in NYC with portraits of smash TV hit The Chosen, shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz! The client saw financial contributions spike instantly. We also knocked out a Times Square DOOH activation for Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), leading to expanded awareness and pay-per-view clicks. Photo Credit: NPRP Media And check out this award-winning example of a "living wall" we created in partnership with NPRP Media and Humanaut for SUJA organic juices: Current Limitations and Future Challenges Despite impressive advances, AI-powered digital OOH still faces certain limitations. Privacy considerations represent a significant challenge as more sophisticated audience measurement techniques emerge. A 2023 report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) highlights that while 72% of advertisers want more detailed audience data from DOOH networks, only 47% believe current privacy frameworks adequately address consumer protection concerns. AI-driven OOH will require careful navigation of data ethics and consumer trust. Technical infrastructure presents another hurdle. While programmatic DOOH spending is growing, implementation costs for advanced AI systems and the uneven distribution of digital inventory limit campaign reach in certain geographic areas. Measurement standardization continues to evolve but still lacks the universal acceptance found in online channels. Brands and their media teams will need to determine case by case which marketing metrics and KPIs truly drive the business outcomes they want to see. OOH is no longer just about broad scale; it’s about precision, personalization, and performance. AI is taking it there faster than ever. Break out of that small screen, and get ready to make a big impact your audience won't forget. For more advertising news and tips, join our free, weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter.

We took over Times Square with giantThe Chosen: Last Supper portraits by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz Courtesy of NPRP Media (LOS ANGELES) FEBRUARY 21, 2025 -- Ahead of its debut in theaters nationwide on March 28, creator/executive producer Dallas Jenkins and star Jonathan Roumie were in Times Square February 13 to reveal The Chosen: Last Supper (Season 5) key art with portraits by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. Shot in cinematic format, The Chosen: Last Supper features Holy Week, the most pivotal week in history, in this special theatrical release. Exverus by Brainlabs, 5&2 Studio’s media agency of record, worked with longtime collaborator NPRP Media to bring the takeover to life. “Times Square was the perfect place to showcase The Chosen’s beautiful photography in anticipation of the theatrical release to the public." - Exverus Media Director Anna Elema “We had 12 units surrounding Times Square for one hour with several units at eye level to be captured in The Chosen's livestreams and social posts. One of the digital wraparound units (TSX) is 18,000 square feet, so it’s fair to say we made a big impression!” - Brad Magers, CEO NPRP Media Annie Leibovitz, cast, and crew in Times Square for the reveal Then, the OOH campaign extended to Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Rome, Madrid, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo; translated to each local language. We selected these markets for the psychographic and movie-going habits of their locals. After the Times Square takeover, financial contributions to the show spiked significantly. Organic branded searches surged to 3.8MM in April alone! The DOOH media activation worked in harmony with the campaign's digital, video, and earned media strategies to lift brand awareness by 4.6x the Entertainment category norms! And most importantly, The Chosen: Last Supper sold 6.1MM tickets, grossing $50MM in theaters and setting a new record for the brand. ABOUT EXVERUS Founded in 2014, Exverus is a global, independent media agency growing brands through full-funnel media planning & buying, traditional and programmatic advertising, retail media & e-commerce, paid search, paid social, and analytics. Our data-driven media plans combine brand and performance under one scientific brain to confidently allocate every ad dollar for the maximum return. Named for the Latin phrase "from the truth", Exverus (acquired by Brainlabs in 2025) is dedicated to transparency and long-term client trust. Learn more at exverus.com. ABOUT 5&2 STUDIOS 5&2 Studios connects people around the world to stories from the Bible through uniquely human and authentic storytelling. Founded by Dallas Jenkins following the global success of The Chosen, 5&2 has expanded into producing both scripted and unscripted series, an animated series, and an expansive library of digital content. The independent studio also manages its own distribution, marketing, studio facilities, and consumer product line. For more information, visit 5and2Studios.com.

Buying digital out-of-home media programmatically offers stronger ROI, more precise targeting, and easier measurement than ever before. Photo by Marcus Herzberg Consumers are bombarded with digital ads daily, many of them skippable, ignorable, or forgettable. That's why out-of-home (OOH) media has grown as a popular alternative method for brands looking to reach a massive audience with high-impact visuals. OOH and digital out-of-home (DOOH) media reaches audiences in real-world environments, free from the distractions and ad-blocking capabilities of digital screens, making it a highly effective advertising channel. And, unlike the old traditional billboards of yesterday, DOOH media can now be purchased programmatically, applying the advantages of programmatic advertising to scale and memorability of OOH. What is programmatic DOOH media? Programmatic digital out-of-home media (prDOOH) is optimizing the process of planning and buying out-of-home media by facilitating trades through programmatic display-side platforms (DSPs). By leveraging data-driven technology, advertisers can now purchase OOH inventory in real-time, ensuring that their ads reach the right audience at the right time. This level of precision and efficiency is a far cry from the more traditional methods of OOH planning and execution. One of the key benefits of prDOOH is its ability to integrate seamlessly with other digital channels. By combining OOH with programmatic display, social media, and search advertising, brands can build omnichannel campaigns that create a halo effect for maximum impact. Studies have shown that campaigns that allocate spending across multiple media channels are significantly more effective than those that rely on a single channel. What is an example of out-of-home media? Some examples of OOH media include billboards, bus or car wraps, bus station screens, wallscapes, sidewalk prints, or posters. OOH media also includes experiential activations like branded pop-ups, stadium signage, and cinematic advertising. Check out this award-winning example of a "living wall" we created in partnership with NPRP Media and Humanaut for SUJA organic juices: Think beyond the screen and bring your brand to life. Measuring ROI in DOOH For years, OOH advertising has been criticized for its lack of measurability. However, the advent of prDOOH has changed that. By tracking audience impressions, dwell time, and foot traffic, advertisers can now quantify the return on investment (ROI) of their OOH campaigns. We can also measure the interactive effects of DOOH with lower-funnel conversions using marketing mix modeling (MMM), marketing cloud software (MCS), and AI-powered predictive analysis tools. The integrate data capabilities of programmatic buying platforms allow brands to make more informed decisions about their media spend and optimize their OOH strategies going forward. Learn how building giant brand awareness drove major ticket sales for The Chosen in 2025. Emerging trends in programmatic DOOH As programmatic DOOH continues to evolve, we are seeing a number of exciting new trends emerge. These include: Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO): DCO allows advertisers to personalize their OOH ads in real-time based on audience demographics, weather conditions, and other factors. This ensures that ads are always relevant and engaging. 3D Creative: 3D OOH ads offer a more immersive and attention-grabbing experience for consumers. Studies have shown that 3D ads can increase conversion rates by up to 40%. Sustainability: Consumers are increasingly concerned about environmental issues, and brands are responding by incorporating sustainability into their marketing strategies. prDOOH can be a sustainable advertising option, as it often involves less waste than traditional forms of OOH. In-Store Retail Media Networks: As more consumers shop in-store, retailers are leveraging their physical locations to deliver targeted advertising messages. In-store retail media networks provide brands with opportunities to reach shoppers at the point of purchase. For more media buying news and tips, subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter.

Media agency recognized by annual WARC Effectiveness Awards for ingenious e-commerce advertising campaign in 2024 (MAY 23, 2024) LOS ANGELES -- Exverus Media's 'Premier Nutrition: Winning Prime Day' campaign is the proud winner of a Silver WARC Effectiveness Award, presented in association with Cannes LIONS, for Best Path to Purchase North America 2024. The campaign demonstrated ingenious tactics for successfully bridging social media with e-commerce, making Premier Protein shakes one of the top-selling items on Amazon during its October 23 Prime Day event. What is a WARC Effectiveness Award? The North America WARC Effectiveness Award for Best Path to Purchase "recognises how brands have used omnichannel strategies to optimise the customer journey across the funnel. The judges reward activity that has driven businesses forward through a successful orchestration of e-commerce, social commerce, and physical channels." The campaign challenge: Amazon Prime Days are always sales-driving events, but outperforming the heavy competition there required thinking along the entire purchase path. Instead of just loading up on targeted ads on Amazon, we took a risk by meeting our target consumers where they are (largely, social media) - something extremely rare and perhaps never done before in this way. The winning strategy: On TikTok and Instagram, we served up the kind of influencer content our target enjoys to create awareness; nurtured consideration and urgency with TikTok’s timer features; and attached shoppable links from the social videos directly to the Amazon product pages with excellent deals to follow through with purchase. The future of omnichannel marketing success lies in seamlessly guiding a potential consumer from wherever they naturally gravitate toward a purchase with a single click. The results: Premier Protein Shakes were the #1 item sold on Amazon across ALL products and categories during Prime Day! This exceptional achievement garnered widespread attention in leading national press outlets like CNBC, Rolling Stone, Retail Dive, and The Messenger, among others, resulting in millions of press impressions. Total New-To-Brand Customer Revenue also soared, showing a remarkable +56% growth compared to past Prime Days - these were new customers. Additionally, Total Brand Engagements experienced a substantial +47% surge over prior Prime Days. We exceeded the results of every brand in North America by reimagining the social media and e-commerce playbook for a new age. About Exverus by Brainlabs Founded in 2014, Exverus is a global, independent media agency growing brands through full-funnel media planning & buying, traditional and programmatic advertising, retail media & e-commerce, paid search, paid social, and analytics. Our data-driven media plans combine brand and performance under one scientific brain to confidently allocate every ad dollar for the maximum return. Named for the Latin phrase "from the truth", Exverus (acquired by Brainlabs in 2025) is dedicated to transparency and long-term client trust. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

The 4-Step SAP framework developed by Exverus transforms reactive marketing to agile advantages A year ago, none of this was in your media plan: shoppable CTV, LLMs shaping purchase decisions before a search even happens, agentic commerce marketing. Now it's all part of your customer journey, ready or not. Your media performance can turn on a dime, and if your strategy can't move with it, it doesn't matter how elegant your annual plan looks in a deck. Where most teams fail on agility Agility in marketing is not about trend-hopping; in fact, quite the opposite. Most teams are failing at it in predictable ways: They plan for a funnel that no longer exists. If each impression can't simultaneously build the brand and drive action, you're too slow. They lock decisions too early, with annual plans and rigid allocations becoming a liability in a market that moves monthly. They confuse reaction with agility — cutting brand spend when budgets tighten feels decisive, but it's short-term thinking that hollows out future performance. And they can't execute when things change: creative expires, a platform underperforms, legal delays a launch. If your team goes dark for weeks when any of these happen, you don't have an agility problem; you have an operating model problem. There are better ways to visualize the complex, fractured customer journey today. Click to steal ours. The answer is situation adaptive media planning Situation adaptive media planning (SAP or SAMP) is a proactive framework for anticipating and responding to unexpected shifts like platform volatility, consumer behavior swings, sales fluctuations, or competitive spend spikes before they become crises. It runs on 4 steps: Media Playbook: Establish initial direction for how strategies and tactics flex when the unexpected hits. This is built on past learnings, industry best practices, and media mix modeling tools. Collaborative Monitoring: Keep a shared eye on signals across the ecosystem: sales trends, emerging platforms, distribution changes, competitive moves. Tailored Response: When a situation surfaces, adapt the playbook to the specific goal, KPI, and parameters at hand. No two situations are identical. Optimization & Learnings: Execute real-time budget reallocations, then capture what worked to sharpen future responses. The framework only works when the brand brings the intel — sales patterns, supply chain pressures, distribution changes, seasonality signals — and the media team brings the systems to act on it fast. Exverus by Brainlabs developed this 4-step framework for situation adaptive planning (SAP) in marketing and media strategy "The biggest challenge in SAP is effective collaboration between all involved parties: intel from the brand client, planning from the media perspective, and cooperation from creative agencies, PR departments, or other external teams." -- Melissa Andraos, SVP of Strategy, Exverus Examples of agility in practice Nike didn't get lucky during COVID. When the pandemic forced a shift from physical retail to digital channels, they leaned into their existing app ecosystem — the Nike Training Club app, Run Club, and their retail app — to connect directly with consumers. Digital sales grew 75% in Q4 2020, and the brand finished the fiscal year at $5.5 billion in digital revenue, up 47% from the prior year. That's SAP in action: Recognize the shift. Adapt the approach. Leverage what you have. Measure and move. Closer to home, our partners at Kargo applied the same logic mid-campaign: when they identified performance decline from creative fatigue, they pivoted to an A/B test rather than riding out a bad result. The creative refresh boosted performance. The outcome beat the original plan. In 2026 and beyond, audience segments will reshuffle; media channels will converge; paths to purchase will shorten; and AI will optimize everything. Build your exit ramps before you need them The best defense in media planning is a good offense: Know where the budget goes if a channel stops working — before it stops working. Manage your mix the way a portfolio manager manages assets: continuously, not annually. Let MMM, incrementality data, and retail signals drive in-flight decisions, not just post-mortems. The brands thriving right now aren't reacting faster. They're not reacting at all — because they already planned for this. That's the difference between a media plan and a media system. For more media buying tips, agency news, and case studies, subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter.

A brand marketer's guide to retail media buying strategies for sustained growth Key Facts: Retail media will grow about 15% to $198B in 2026. Amazon dominates with 75.2% market share — more than 10 times larger than second-place Walmart Connect. Retail media CTV ad spending grew about 45% in 2025, with Walmart controlling over 20% of the US TV market through Vizio. RMNs have evolved beyond last-touch conversion to offer full-funnel experiences including CTV, programmatic, and brand awareness campaigns. With retail media set to account for one in eight digital ad dollars, mature retailers are already growing sales by expanding how they reach consumers and the ad products they offer to brands. Historically, retail media networks have focused on lower-funnel tactics, but Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, and an ever growing list of other retail media networks are now offering a full-funnel experience to advertisers and media buyers. What is a retail media network (RMN)? According to RetailTouchpoints.com, "Retail media is the broader term used to describe the concept of retailers using their systems, infrastructure, data and access to their shoppers to help advertisers reach consumers. A retail media network is the actual platform that retailers put in place to do this." These ads can appear in various formats and locations, including search results pages, product pages, category pages, and even in-store displays. But what sets retail media networks apart is their access to valuable first-party data—the key to effective targeting and personalized advertising. What are the top retail media networks? Amazon is, by far, the top retail media network, projected by EMARKETER to command over $56.71 billion in 2026, more than 10 times that of No. 2 Walmart Connect. Other big RMNs include Target's Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing, Alibaba, Instacart Ads, and Costco Media Network. More are popping up every day! This blossoming of RMNs offers advertisers more opportunities to put their products in front of their target audience when they're already in a purchasing state of mind, but the downside is a lack of consistency or standardization across the platforms. The better question is: where are your shoppers, and where is your product actually sold? Sponsored search on Amazon is table stakes for most CPG brands, but that doesn't mean it should eat your whole RMN budget. Brands should always try to maximize exposure through sponsored search campaigns first before tapping into other tactics, since sponsored search typically has the highest return — but that's just the starting point, not the full strategy. How does retail media fit into an omnichannel marketing strategy? At the top of funnel, RMNs' off-site capabilities — including programmatic display, CTV, and DOOH placements powered by first-party retailer data — let you reach in-market audiences with a level of purchase-intent precision that is genuinely hard to replicate elsewhere. If you know someone bought your category at Kroger three times in the last 90 days, that's an audience worth paying for at the top of the funnel, not just at checkout. In the middle, sponsored search on Amazon or Walmart is not just a conversion tool — it's an awareness driver. Appearing at the top of a category search while a consumer is actively browsing tells them your brand belongs there. That's brand building, even if the click leads directly to a purchase. At the bottom, yes, retail media excels at conversion. Sponsored products, retailer-native display ads, and on-site placements close the loop between consideration and purchase with a directness that most channels can't match. What's an example of full-funnel retail media? As we illustrated to The Current by The Trade Desk, "We have one client who is running a CTV awareness campaign — very typical, but what's new is we're able to target Walmart shoppers and then actually drive them to Walmart, and that is an incredible aspect because now we have a CTV awareness campaign that I can actually share back that they're driving millions of dollars in sales, and to have that data and that closed loop attribution is really going to propel the future of what we can do while we're in the weeds." Hear more about this below: Is retail media a good investment? The truth is, retail media can be both a goldmine or a budget sinkhole, depending on how you use it. The goldmine: closed-loop attribution, high-intent audiences, and endemic relevance -- especially when paired with strong creative and smart sequencing. The black hole: fragmented networks, sky-high CPMs, and opaque reporting. Many RMNs prioritize margin over performance, which means your media dollars may be going to prop up retail partnerships rather than drive actual growth. The smart play? Treat retail media like part of your broader media plan, not a separate obligation. It should work with your other channels, not in isolation. That means aligning measurement, creative, and budget logic across the funnel. Click to learn about AI Shopping, or agentic commerce, for product-based brands. How do we negotiate our JBPs to get more media value? This question comes up a lot during media planning season, and it's a real skill. In the age of the RMN boom, retailers have been all too happy to strike deals with marketers, selling off ad space on their own platforms and audience data for ads on third-party platforms. But not every brand knows how to negotiate media value into those commitments. The brands who treat JBPs as purely a merchandising conversation are leaving significant media inventory on the table. Action items Audit your retail media investments quarterly. Audit more often than that, and you'll miss longer-term trends; any less often, and you'll miss opportunity. Map each placement to a funnel stage Identify overlap or redundancy, and Hold your retail partners accountable to the same standards as your other media by evaluating the same metrics like reach, frequency, and sales incrementality. Critically, the time is now for brands to leverage the two largest retailers, Amazon and Walmart, as complete advertising ecosystems. Further references: The Current. https://www.thecurrent.com/exverus-media-hillary-kupferberg-vp-marketing-retail-media-ctv-sales Digiday. https://digiday.com/media-buying/wpp-estimates-commerce-media-spending-to-overtake-tv-this-year/ Bain & Company. https://www.bain.com/how-we-help/are-you-ready-for-the-retail-media-revolution/ This piece originally appeared in our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. For more tips, research, and analysis; subscribe for free here.

The Exverus by Brainlabs Media Director earned the prestigious industry title of 2026 for her work on TV show "The Chosen". MARCH 26, 2026 (LOS ANGELES) -- CampaignUS magazine has awarded Anna Elema the prestigious title of Media Planner/Buyer of the Year 2026 for her work at Exverus leading media strategy for TV's "The Chosen." The trade publication's annual Agency of the Year Awards recognize excellence in marketing, advertising, and paid media strategies for brands large and small. See all the 2026 winners here. As one of Exverus' four original employees, Anna has been loyally smashing campaign goals for over 11 years, putting together full-funnel media plans for brands as varied as "The Chosen", Stella & Chewy's pet food, MasterClass, and Premier Boxing Champions. She has served as a mentor and role model for her direct reports along the way. Anna follows in the footsteps of Exverus VP Tasha Day, who earned the same title in 2023. CampaignUS writes: As lead media planner for The Chosen, Elema's team faced an unusual challenge: bringing a streaming-native series to movie theaters for its Season 5 finale. The multi-platform campaign spanned YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix, TikTok, Snapchat AR lenses and massive out-of-home placements including a Times Square takeover. The results exceeded every benchmark. Non-viewer awareness jumped 44% to reach 72%, aided awareness hit 4.6 times entertainment category norms and video completion rates reached 98.6%. The campaign sold 6.1 million tickets and grossed $50 million at the box office, earning coverage from Variety, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and The View. Elema then turned to the show's merchandise operation, tasked with hitting $50 million in sales on 37% less media spend than the prior year. By building a media mix across video, social commerce and search that pulled double duty on brand awareness and direct sales, her strategy delivered an $11.90 return on ad spend from Amazon in the first half alone. An Exverus founding team member who has watched the agency grow from four people to over 50, Elema's path from fashion modeling in Paris to media psychology studies in the Netherlands to over a decade in LA media planning gives her a perspective most planners simply can't replicate. Click to learn more about the 2025 full-funnel media campaign Anna led that broke records for an underdog brand! Anna leads her teams with the same core values that make Exverus by Brainlabs an outstanding independent agency: truth, passion, service, and creativity. She makes every new Exverian feel welcome and included; whether in the office in Los Angeles or while working remotely from the Netherlands for a month every year. She encourages her direct-reports to take the time they need, and she embraces new ad-tech offerings with a sharp eye for client opportunity. Throughout her decade at Exverus, Anna has mastered the cosmic shifts in media buying, from the rise of retail media to in-house programmatic trading, AI search, and many more. She is known for building out creative media campaigns with fresh ideas that go beyond the basics and leverage midsized budgets for outsized impact. There’s a reason Anna’s campaigns keep winning the top industry awards – they prove that originality and technical precision are the magic ingredients for media excellence, today and tomorrow. "Anna does an amazing job at listening to our vision and needs and turning it into a world-class campaign that drives results. The Exverus team is an active partner with us, not only planning and executing the campaign, but also making real-time optimizations based on what they are seeing. They do not ‘set it and forget it’ – they are a close partner truly obsessed with our success.” - Andrew Young, Head of Global Advertising & Insights for "The Chosen" More examples of Anna Elema's effective media campaigns 'The Chosen App: Download Your Calling' wins the 2024 MediaPost OMMA for Best Mobile Marketing Campaign 'Stella & Chewy's: America's Next Top Petfluencer' wins the 2024 Adweek Media Plan of the Year Award for Best Use of Mobile Media Adweek. This Interactive Ad Format Helped Stella & Chewy's Reach Pet Parents. Nov 2023. In 2023, Anna's team built a multichannel sweepstakes to get feet in the door of neighborhood pet shops and drive sales of Stella & Chewy's pet food. Areas of Anna Elema's expertise as a media planner & buyer Full-funnel media planning: FAQs & examples for brands Hyperlocal advertising How brand lift studies illuminate marketing performance Integrated marketing communications (IMC) Ready to build a full-funnel media strategy that delivers results? At Exverus by Brainlabs, we combine strategic planning, data-driven optimization, and cross-channel expertise to help brands navigate the complexity of modern media. Let's talk!

LinkedIn has expanded its B2B advertising offerings with Thought Leader Ads LinkedIn Influencer Marketing If you thought influencers were just for dancing on TikTok or looking pretty on Instagram, think again. No longer relegated to clothing or beauty brands, influencer marketing has become a lucrative business-to-business (B2B) advertising strategy, too. In fact, there are whole B2B digital marketing agencies who specialize in this area, but you don’t need to pay a big retainer fee for your business to benefit from the huge reach of influential people online. LinkedIn has launched the full version of its Thought Leader Ads platform, which lets brands and companies pay to boost posts by respectable leaders in their industry with the author’s permission. This expands the reach of the post far beyond the brand’s organic network, elicits engagement, and can result in brand awareness lift and lead generation. Here’s a quick primer to get you started promoting your business effectively: What is an example of a B2B ad? B2B ads can take many of the same forms as B2C (or DTC) ads, except that they target other businesses rather than consumers, like: Paid media placements, which include sponsored Google links, display ads in publications, social media ads, TV commercials, and billboards; or: Influencer marketing, in which a brand pays someone with a large following on a social media platform to tout their brand or product. A popular example of a successful B2B advertising campaign was Slack’s “So yeah, we tried Slack” campaign, an entertaining video series in the mockumentary style of “The Office” in which fictional characters described how they’d incorporated Slack into their workflows. The campaign was funny and irreverent, standing out from the often-boring crowd of B2B ads, while presenting solutions to the target audience’s pain points. Which platform is best for B2B advertising? The best social media platform for your B2B brand really depends on where your target audience is looking for solutions and where you can shine in format-specific content. Answers will vary, but we find LinkedIn to be the most commonly effective platform for reaching decision makers at businesses who are seeking business-related information. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (its advertising platform) lets you set a budget, select goals, target audiences by specific job title or industry, and analyze real-time data to optimize your campaigns with control. LinkedIn’s use of first-party data for precise targeting makes it an excellent choice for B2B advertising. In 2024, LinkedIn has taken over many of the functions that Twitter/X used to serve like information-sharing and people-connecting in a more professional environment than the more fun, personal platforms like Instagram or TikTok. However, LinkedIn far outperforms the other platforms in terms of advertisers’ confidence in brand safety and return on investment (ROI). What is a LinkedIn Thought Leader ad? Starting in July 2024, LinkedIn gave advertisers the power to amplify posts from independent creators, ushering in a new chapter of influencer marketing. LinkedIn’s new product, Thought Leader Ads, allows anyone to boost an organic post, provided they receive permission from the author. This opens up new opportunities for marketers to amplify their reach and execute more personalized and humanized campaigns. Facing a slowdown in growth, LinkedIn wants to challenge prominent players like TikTok and Instagram, capitalizing on the social media power trend of turning creators into brand ambassadors. Despite eMarketer's predictions that LinkedIn will capture only 4% of the market (equal to $4.5 billion in marketing revenue) the platform’s foray into influencer marketing demonstrates an ambitious vision for future growth. After launching on a limited scale last year, Thought Leader Ads is now positioned to fuel LinkedIn's expansion, using its 1 billion-member base to drive growth. LinkedIn’s venture into influencer marketing may present a refreshing alternative to traditional ads, often perceived as repetitive and generic. As this trend takes shape, brands should prepare to capitalize on the opportunity to connect with their target audiences more personally. And look out for LinkedIn’s new AI-powered advertising tool, Accelerate, to be released in the fall of 2024! We’re here for anything that makes the path to prominence a little bit smoother.

Properly placed video media assets can serve the full funnel, even for alcoholic beverage brands facing decline. "A lot of brands are still sleeping on using YouTube as more than Video. It’s Social, it’s CTV, it’s Audio, and even Commerce.” - Lexi Semanskee, senior programmatic trader, Exverus Although YouTube has risen to become the world's largest media company in 2026, estimated $40.4 billion from advertising alone  in 2025, many brands still have yet to use YouTube and other video marketing channels to their full growth-driving potential. In April 2026, Exverus by Brainlabs Senior Programmatic Advertising Trader Lexi Semanskee, M.S. , headed to New Orleans to present her team's successful 2025 video marketing strategy that grew an anonymous beer brand despite category decline. Lexi covered: Alcoholic beverage industry challenges Campaign parameters Media innovation within brand constraints Insights tracking by channel Learnings & recommendations You already know the importance of optimizing for brand equity. But if you need hard data to convince the CFO, click to download. Alcoholic beverage industry challenges Declining demand The U.S. beer category is in a genuine structural headwind. Over the past four years, the alcohol industry has seen an estimated $830 billion drop in revenue, and the trajectory continues. Beer volumes fell -3% in 2024 , consistent with the -3% CAGR decline recorded over the full 2019–2024 period, per IWSR. The reasons are well-documented: Gen Z entering the 21+ market with reduced consumption rates, and the simultaneous rise of cannabis and non-alcoholic alternatives. Only 58% of U.S. adults reported consuming alcohol at all in 2024  — a figure not seen since 1996. Beyond the macro decline, Lexi identified the internal obstacles her team navigates on every alcohol campaign: Creative barriers Even when creatives are fully compliant with TTB federal advertising regulations  — which govern alcohol advertising across all digital platforms including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok under Industry Circular 2024-1  — campaigns can be rejected or paused without warning. A client may want to be on a specific platform lineup, and it may simply not be available to alcohol advertisers. Scalability The audience funnel for an alcohol brand shrinks fast. You're already restricted to 21+ content, then you layer in age, demographic, geographic, and third-party audience targeting. By the time you've done it right, the addressable pool is a fraction of what a standard CPG marketer works with. Maintaining CPM efficiency at scale requires deliberate architecture from the start. Campaign parameters Before diving into tactics, a quick look at what the team was working with: Budget:  Under $10 million Channel preference:  A preferred mix of CTV partners Primary KPIs:  VCR, CPCV, CPM, CTR, VTC, Reach, Frequency, and a cross-channel brand lift study (BLS) Available creative:  Video, social display, creator content, and custom content Stretch goal:  Be first in uncharted territory — test new formats in alcohol before anyone else does With those parameters set, the team evaluated the most-talked-about trend in full-funnel video: rich media and enhanced CTV. The pitch is compelling — enhanced CTV is one of the first formats to enable genuine engagement measurement beyond view-through on connected TV. But for this client, the team said no. The reasoning is worth noting: the brand had exceptional creative built to own the full screen. Choosing an interactive or enhanced format would have compromised that creative impact — and the campaign was anchored in an awareness mandate. Good strategy sometimes means declining what's new in favor of what's right for the specific brief. Learn when and how to think about integrating Shoppable CTV ad units into your video marketing strategy. Media innovation within brand constraints Here's where the actual work gets interesting. Rather than defaulting to off-the-shelf audiences and standard placements, Lexi's team built a layered, custom-architected approach across three innovation areas. Strategic audience sourcing The team deliberately avoided pre-built Trade Desk audience segments, despite the range available. Every audience was custom-built, with a lean toward first-party-quality shopper data: Third-party purchase data  drawn from trusted shopper and receipt sources — purchase-verified audiences rather than broad interest proxies. Resonate , an AI-powered audience platform, generated audiences from real-time behavioral signals and activated them across CTV, Meta, and TikTok. Lexi described it as "a first-party, third-party audience source" — third-party data powered by first-party-grade AI modeling. Retargeting  built not from general site visitors but from video-exposed, social-exposed, and  search-exposed users — then activated on standard CTV to raise frequency in Q2 and Q3 as the campaign pivoted toward consideration. Retail media via Walmart Connect & Kroger Using both Walmart Connect and Kroger through the Trade Desk, the team unlocked something most programmatic beer campaigns don't get: direct ROAS measurement on upper-funnel tactics. The approach paired standard CTV inventory with accompanying display, targeting net-new audiences on the retail platforms. Walmart's ROAS benchmark range was $0.91–$10.33; Kroger's was $0.60–$17.00. Performance came in within those benchmarks. Audience-driven genre & content targeting → YouTube The most analytically interesting move started as a contextual CTV play and became something else entirely. The approach: take the target audience profile, run it through emerging AI tools to identify what content and genre trends they were engaging with, then use those findings to inform targeting. The contextual layer on CTV didn't work — niche CTV setups with multiple priority audience segments already stacked in don't have headroom for additional contextual filters without collapsing delivery. So, the team pivoted: they pushed the content trend insights into YouTube activations and cinema instead. A brand marketer's guide to retail media buying strategies for sustained business growth Insights & tracking by channel YouTube as a full-funnel video marketing strategy "I feel like there are a lot of brands that are still sleeping on the opportunity to utilize YouTube as more than just video," Lexi said. "It's social, it's CTV, it's audio, and it's even commerce." YouTube's practical advantages the team identified for alcohol brands specifically: Greater CPM efficiency and reach  versus standard CTV buys Multi-touchpoint exposure  across Shorts, YouTube Select, and YouTube TV — all on the largest screen in the house Lower barriers to entry for brand lift and search lift studies  — every brand lift study the team ran on YouTube showed positive lift Over 70% of all impressions served across the full campaign — awareness and consideration combined — were on CTV devices. On YouTube Select alone, that figure rose to 95%. The brand was reaching people on the biggest screen in the house, through a platform with digital targeting precision, at costs that outperformed standard TV. The brand lift study confirmed the approach: YouTube Video and CTV both drove higher favorability lift year-over-year. Overall CTV awareness lift increased with the addition of retargeting audiences in Q3. Cinema: The surprise showstopper Cinema was largely managed as a direct partnership rather than through programmatic, but the results earned their own section. Using the content trend insights from the AI analysis, the team identified select genres and releases whose audiences overlapped with the target consumer profile. A 30-second spot ran across those titles at seven test sites nationwide. An intercept study surveyed approximately 250 moviegoers: Ad recall: 75%  — on par with the NCM category norm of 76% Aided awareness: +200%  — ranked #1 in category (category average: -27.28%) Brand opinion: +46%  — ranked #1 in category (category average: -0.20%) Future consideration: +50%  — ranked #1 in category (category average: -2.32%) Cinema is a leaned-in environment with near-zero distraction. When the targeting is right — content that aligns with the brand's creative message, audiences who match the target profile — the impact is disproportionate to the spend. Stand out from cluttered digital media channels with big, creative ideas for building a brand. Learnings & recommendations for the brand Lexi's closing recommendations were honest about what worked, what was left on the table, and where the strategy grows from here. On CTV:  Lean harder into Resonate and retargeting audiences in 2026 to maximize first-party data signals and frequency. Continue prioritizing retail tactics paired with display — the combination of awareness reach and measurable ROAS is too valuable to treat as a one-year test. On YouTube:  Prioritize Select placements to maximize premium YouTube TV content and engagement metrics. Continue testing new formats — sequential messaging campaigns are a priority for the next cycle, and pause ads remain unexplored territory in the alcohol category. On Cinema:  Continue aligning with tentpole cultural moments where brand messaging fits organically. The lean-in environment remains one of the highest-impact channels per dollar when the content context is right. On the horizon:  Atmosphere (for digital out-of-home ) and GSTV (at gas station screens) are being added to the 2026 mix — extending the brand's video footprint into high-frequency, purchase-adjacent environments. The broader opportunity, in Lexi's framing: the future of video and TV is more social and engaging than ever. Go beyond awareness to give audiences the full picture. You can watch Lexi's full presentation here: For more media buying tips, agency news, and case studies, subscribe to our weekly   Paid Media Insights  newsletter.

We don't do this work for the trophies. But when an industry as demanding as media planning stops to say this campaign was something special , we're not going to pretend it doesn't mean something. So, we're proud to share that Exverus by Brainlabs has been named a winner of the 2026 MediaPost Planning & Buying Award in the Pharma/Health/Wellness category  for our "Wellness Women Can Trust" campaign on behalf of client Theralogix . The award was presented at the annual MediaPost Planning & Buying Awards ceremony  on April 15, 2026, at The University Club in New York City. The Brief: Do More With Less Theralogix has been developing rigorously tested, affordable nutritional supplements — focused on fertility, uterine health, and menstrual regularity — since 2002. The brand deserves to be found. The challenge in Q2 2025 was that women searching for health information online were drowning in conflicting, often misleading advice. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges , women's health remains severely underresearched, and declining public trust in institutions since the COVID pandemic has made it harder than ever for science-backed brands to cut through the noise. Our mandate was aggressive: improve Social ROAS by a minimum of 50% quarter-over-quarter, launch Google Performance Max at a $3 ROAS, and grow overall brand sales at least 10% year-over-year. The twist? We had 18% less media budget than Q1 to do it. Congratulations to Media Director Georgia Schreiner ( 2023 AdAge Media Planner of the Year ), Senior Media Planner Jillian Telman, and every specialist across search, social, programmatic, analytics, and ad ops who made "Wellness Women Can Trust" a campaign worthy of that name. The Strategy: Full-Funnel, High-Precision This is exactly the kind of brief that makes our team lean in. Rather than chasing reach with a scatter-shot approach, we built a precision media plan anchored in audience intelligence — reaching the right women with the right message at the right moment in their health journey. According to EMARKETER , search behavior is being fundamentally redefined by generational shifts. Social platforms today aren't just discovery channels; they're search engines and points-of-sale simultaneously. We built a media plan that treated them that way, diversifying across social commerce, search, programmatic, and emerging channels to maintain a balance between brand building and performance without sacrificing either. Learn more about how to reach digital-savvy consumers everywhere they search and shorten the path to purchase. The Results: Unprecedented Performance In three months, the numbers didn't just hit targets. They redefined them: Meta ROAS more than doubled  quarter-over-quarter ($4.66 → $9.77) TikTok Search ROAS surged 293% Google PMAX generated $107K from 1,217 new customers  at a 4.3 ROAS, clearing the $3 objective Web traffic grew 20%  while cost-per-view dropped 3.55%, despite the smaller budget Overall purchases rose 18%, ROAS lifted 21%, and annual sales grew 19.5% YoY — nearly double the goal The bottom line:  In one quarter, with less money, Exverus delivered 19.5% year-over-year sales growth for Theralogix — nearly double the target — by building a diversified, full-funnel media plan that met women where they actually search, discover, and buy. What this means for our clients This win (our latest in a long line that includes 8 Adweek Media Plan of the Year awards, 3 Ad Age Small Agency of the Year honors, and 3 Cannes Lions finalist recognitions) reflects the talent of the entire team who brought this campaign to life. For our clients, it's a signal of something more important than hardware: it means the thinking, tools, and team we bring to every engagement are being measured against the best in the industry — and coming out on top. Most importantly, we helped real women find a supplement brand that actually delivers on its promises. That's the work that matters. Exverus Senior Manager of PR & Communications Michelle Andrade accepted the award onsite on behalf of the media planning & buying teams. Frequently Asked Questions What is media planning? Media planning  is the strategic process of determining where, when, how, and to whom a brand's advertising should appear across paid channels — from paid social and programmatic display to search, native, streaming, and beyond. Done well, it's not a logistics exercise. It's a creative act: one that requires deep audience insight, disciplined data analysis, and the ability to connect the right message to the right person at the right moment in their decision journey. Learn how growth-stage brands can outsmart the sleeping giants with smaller budgets but bigger ideas. What is the MediaPost Planning & Buying Award? The MediaPost Planning & Buying Awards  are an annual competition recognizing excellence in media strategy, planning, and buying across categories including social media, performance media, native marketing, and health/wellness. The awards are based on the belief that the process of planning and buying media is as creative and impactful as traditional advertising creative development. Exverus by Brainlabs won the Pharma/Health/Wellness  category at the 2026 Awards for the "Wellness Women Can Trust" campaign, created for nutritional supplement brand Theralogix. What results did the Theralogix campaign achieve? In Q2 2025, the campaign delivered: Meta ROAS that more than doubled quarter-over-quarter, a 293% surge in TikTok Search ROAS, 18% growth in purchases, a 21% ROAS lift, and 19.5% year-over-year sales growth — on 18% less media budget than the prior quarter. What is Exverus by Brainlabs? Exverus by Brainlabs is a Los Angeles-based, full-funnel media planning and buying agency. Founded in 2014, Exverus was acquired by global digital agency Brainlabs in 2025. The agency manages over $100M in annual media spend and has earned recognition as a three-time Ad Age Small Agency of the Year (Media), an eight-time Adweek Media Plan of the Year winner, and a three-time Cannes Lions finalist. Ready to talk about what precision media planning can do for your brand? Let's connect.