AMC Theatres

Comic-Con Becomes Experiential Marketing's Biggest Stage

Comic-Con has evolved into a major real-world marketing platform as entertainment brands increasingly invest in large-format out-of-home installations and experiential activations across downtown San Diego. Kap Media, a women-owned OOH agency led by founder and CEO Lori Brabant, is producing 24 campaigns this year for brands including AMC, Prime Video, Paramount+, PlayStation, Funko and ABC. The article argues that as AI makes digital content production faster, marketers are placing greater emphasis on IRL experiences that fans can attend, photograph and share, amplifying reach via social media. Comic-Con’s citywide takeovers — from hotel wraps to stadium artwork — offer concentrated, passionate audiences (more than 150,000 attendees) and high social-media visibility that reshape how brands measure success.

Match Rate: The Overlooked Metric Costing Ad Spend

The article argues that 'match rate' — the share of an uploaded first‑party audience a platform can recognize and target — is a critical yet undertracked metric that sits upstream of every paid-media KPI. Privacy changes (third‑party cookie deprecation, Apple ATT), identifier fragmentation, and inconsistent formatting mean platforms often match only a subset of uploaded lists; platforms then report performance only against that matched subset. Low match rates reduce acquisition precision, weaken retargeting, undermine suppression lists, and skew lookalike models. The author cites CKE Restaurants using Rokt mParticle’s Match Boost to increase match rates (up to 117% on Google and 29% on Meta) and improve ROAS without changing spend or creative. Recommended actions: measure match rates on top paid destinations and suppression lists, and consider in‑flight identifier enrichment at the CDP-to-ad-platform connection while preserving governance.

Fandango Drops 'At Home' from Streaming Name

Fandango at Home has officially simplified its name to Fandango in a gradual rebranding across apps, websites, and marketing, while preserving user accounts and libraries. The service traces its roots to Vudu (founded 2004), which Walmart acquired in 2010; Fandango Media purchased Vudu from Walmart in 2020 and later merged FandangoNOW into Vudu. The platform — which offers transactional video‑on‑demand rentals and purchases plus ad‑supported viewing and high‑quality playback across devices — was rebranded as Fandango at Home in early 2024 and has now removed the “at Home” qualifier to create a single Fandango identity. The transition is described as non‑disruptive to content access or accounts and aims to unify the brand across theatrical discovery and at‑home viewing. (Published 2026‑07‑07.)