Award-winning production company Sanctuary Content has signed Kayla Abuda Galang, a filmmaker, and second-generation Filipino-American with a skill for capturing her bicultural experience with richly-developed characters and an artful yet relatable approach. This marks her first U.S. commercial signing.

“When it comes to commercial work, I get excited about being present and attuned to the needs, dreams, and funny bones of people. And even more so with people who share this mentality,” said Galang. “Everyone at Sanctuary is disarmingly kind and wonderful. I immediately felt we were a good fit and the right fit for where I want to go as a filmmaker.”

Born in Olongapo City, Philippines, Kayla Abuda Galang migrated to the U.S. at just six months old. This history, and her own experiences growing up in San Diego and Houston as an immigrant, are the springboard for her colorful, funny, and poignant work, which is often anchored by rich, deeply-developed characters who share the underrepresented perspective of living life at the intersection of two cultures.

After graduating from film school at the University of Texas in 2014, Galang began her formal journey in the industry by working on her friends’ films and in video production to make a living. It wasn’t until the pandemic that Galang returned to making her own films. “I was going through an existential crisis and wondering what to do with myself. So, I made Learning Tagalog With Kayla and re-experienced how pure and plain fun the expression of filmmaking was,” she said.

That short film and the latest one following have been met with acclaim by juries and festival spectators alike. Learning Tagalog With Kayla, which premiered at SXSW in 2021 and received an Audience Award, then went onto screen at festivals such as Palm Springs, Indie Memphis, Encounters, and Reel Asian. Likewise, her recent film, When You Left Me on That Boulevard brought home the SXSW 2023 Special Jury Award in the Texas Shorts category and the Grand Jury Prize for the Short Film Program at this year’s 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

“I first saw Kayla’s film when it premiered at Sundance,” reminisces Preston Lee, Sanctuary’s Managing Director. “It was incredibly heartwarming and perfectly quirky. Literally everything in the film was on another level – the natural performances, the framing, editing and sound choices. I reached out straightaway. We connected after she won, and in the first conversation, I could tell that she was not only special but had an unmistakable voice as a filmmaker. Her blend of naturalism and humor combined with emotional connection will separate her not only in the long-format world but in the ad world as well. Excited to be working together!”

As a burgeoning voice in the world of commercial filmmaking, Galang brings empathy, fresh perspective, and a discerning understanding of what makes for impactful, groundbreaking short-form storytelling.

“What I love most about the short form is that you often find bolder and more experimental voices in the space. I love what a stretch of skills it takes to make something so concise, effective, and engaging, and I’m just excited to stretch and expand my directorial voice,” Galang shared. “I’m ready to start flexing my directing muscles without a ceiling, and Sanctuary is the key to helping me do that.”

Hockey viewership is also climbing, according to the report. ABC and ESPN showed 50 NHL games this season, 22 more than last year, averaging 629,000 viewers—up 6% from last year. (The report excluded “limited windows where the NHL competed with NFL broadcasts.”) ABC averaged around 1 million viewers for this season’s games, up 19% versus the 2021-2022 season. The first round of the NHL playoffs set viewership records—up 18% compared with last season through the first 14 games, the report stated.

Though not without some controversy, the introduction this season of what the league calls its “digitally enhanced dasherboards (DEDs)” has led to a new source of revenue for the league. The technology utilizes artificial intelligence to place virtual ads onto the dasherboards during game broadcasts, allowing sponsors to target fans based on where they’re watching the games. More than 700 brands were represented in DED ads this year, led by the automotive industry, SponsorUnited stated; the NHL previously told Ad Age that brands had to have pre-existing relationships with the NHL and its teams to be featured on the digital signage. 

Some teams are “generating as much as 25% more revenue in dashboard signage alone,” said SponsorUnited CEO Bob Lynch in a statement. Several fans, though, have complained that the new ads were distracting, and there have been reports of tech glitches causing issues for those with epilepsy.

Good times, unpredictable weather, hayfever, redheads slapping on the sunscreen, applying make-up in the swimming pool changing rooms, even getting the right shot for Instagram, all of British summertime – and most of Boots’ products – somehow make it into this 30-second spot from WPP.

Late last year Walgreen Boots Alliance organised what looks like a very complicated set up, but it’s paid off in this case. The team behind the ad is comprised of an in-house agency built by Oliver to work with WPP’s The Pharm, itself a bespoke agency assembled from VMLY&R, Ogilvy, Hogarth and Mediacom, plus Boots’ internal studio B-Hive.

Boots has sponsored Love Island for three consecutive years, and this new campaign is timed to coincide with the launch of the 2023 series.

Pete Markey, Boots’ chief marketing officer, said that it’s all about the “simpler, smaller pleasures and authentic moments which make British summer.”

It’s an ad that bears rewatching – probably a good thing for Love Island viewers settled in for the next two months of drama.

MAA creative scale: 8

We recently introduced our Tiny but Mighty Updates livestream  — the first in a series where we’ll cover small UX improvements that make a huge impact on how you build in Webflow every single day. 

In case you missed it, here’s what we covered:

In the livestream, Webflow’s Senior Vice President of Product, JZ, outlined our product team’s three focus areas: incorporating community feedback to prioritize product investments, making tradeoffs to focus on our core strengths, and advancing what’s next with Webflow AI.

First, we’re making major adjustments to our process to capture more community feedback so we can build alongside the community and not only ship more often, but also ship features the community is excited about.To ensure we’re shipping the right things at the right level of fidelity, we’re revising our beta programs to have earlier partnerships with our community for beta testing with the goal of faster and more frequent releases. 

To balance speed and meet the greater needs of our customers, we intend to make tradeoffs to focus on our strengths. This means doubling down on expanding the core experience of the Webflow Designer — including multi-language and upcoming powerful upgrades to layouts, user permissions, editing workflow, and dynamic controls. Prioritizing what will have the biggest impact for our users has meant saying no to putting resources in other projects and features. 

A shift in how we invest our resources makes room for our third focus area: Webflow AI. Over the course of the next few months, you’ll see AI integrated right into the Webflow Designer in two big ways: helping you learn by immediately offering personalized recommendations while you build and making it easier for you to build quickly with an AI assistant. 

Tiny but Mighty updates

Now, let’s dive into 23 of the recent updates we’ve shipped to improve how you work in Webflow: 

1. Remove yourself from Workspace: Good news for those of you who work with multiple clients: You can now remove yourself from a Workspace when a project wraps up (even if you’re a guest).
2. Swatch search/preview: You can quickly search and select a swatch directly from the color input in the style panel. This makes it easier to find and select colors by displaying a dropdown list of swatches along with their corresponding color and name. You’ll also see a preview of color changes in real-time on the canvas when you hover over the swatches.
3. Text stroke styling: With text stroke styling, you can easily add an outline or border to your text, allowing for more creative freedom and flexibility in your designs. This update also helps to streamline the design process by reducing the need for custom code or third-party plugins, making it easier for you to create and manage your designs within the Webflow platform.

4. ‍CSS dynamic viewport units: New CSS viewport width-and-height units (small, large, and dynamic) provide you additional flexibility when designing websites for site visitors using mobile browsers and interacting with dynamic toolbars. These new CSS units will give you the ability to ensure that fixed elements are not cut off by a toolbar on mobile devices. ‍
5. dotLottie support: New dotLottle file support allows you to add After Effects animations right into Webflow with smaller file sizes and faster load times. And with Webflow Interactions, you can tie these animations to powerful triggers like page load, page scroll, and even mouse move.‍
6. CMS data in custom HTML blocks: You can now bind CMS data fields or component properties to custom attributes or element IDs.
7. Sections are now sections: The Webflow section element is now an HTML section element making your sites more SEO friendly and accessible.‍
8. Wrapping elements in div blocks: We’re introducing new keyboard shortcuts and canvas context menu options for wrapping an element in a div or link block, streamlining a common workflow among designers.

9. ‍Improvements to variable fonts: We introduced a number of new variable fonts updates focused on expanding functionality and user experience. Updates include full control of variations in Interactions, ability to quickly ID variable vs. static fonts, easier access to variation controls, quicker configuration of variation, and easier access to custom fonts.‍
10. Components in Collection Lists: Now that you can add components to Collection Lists and connect data to your component properties, you can reuse common design patterns that you’ve turned into components, while keeping those layouts in sync with all the other instances of the component across the website. 

11. Google Analytics integration update: We’ve updated this integration to help prepare Webflow users for the Google Analytics 4 change. The integration is now found in Site settings and you’ll be promoted to replace your existing measurement ID with a Google Analytics 4 ID.
12. Line wrapping in custom code on page settings: Custom code added to any page is now more readable with line wrapping turned on by default.‍
13. Editor performance improvements: Building on foundational improvements to our CMS infrastructure last year, the same performance improvements that came to the Designer have now been implemented in the Editor.‍
14. Designer performance improvements: Recent updates and optimizations make working in the Designer faster, speeding up tasks like opening the Designer, loading your project, switching between pages, working with grid layouts, and working in the Pages panel. ‍
15. Figma plugin enhancements: This release provides options for sharing styles between Figma layers and Webflow classes without duplicated classes. 

16. ‍Choose your Workspace profile URL: Profile URLs have a more streamlined format, webflow.com/@{handle} and you now have direct control over your Workspace profile URL.‍
17. Private staging (Enterprise): Private staging lets you restrict access only to logged in users that are part of your Workspace so your team can review site changes privately and securely before launching them publicly.‍
18. SSO Improvements (Enterprise): SSO support now extends to teams with multiple Workspaces and multiple email domains as well as Workspace-level authentication.‍
19. Site activity log filters: Not only can you track changes made to the site (what change was made, who made it, when it was made), new filters allow you to filter by activity type or author. ‍
20. Set default Workspace: Another update to improve the experience for those of you working on multiple projects: You can now specify the default Workspace you want to see when you open the dashboard. We’ve also made it easier to switch between Workspaces, placing your default Workspace at the top of the dropdown and sorting others alphabetically. 

21. ‍Support for custom animations on page branching (Enterprise): We now support the ability to use existing custom animations and create new custom animations on a branch‍
22. Enhancements to page branching (Enterprise): Enterprise customers can take advantage of enhancements to page branching including the ability to modify classes and page settings on branches, review and resolve class conflicts between a branch and the main site, track branch activity in the Site Activity Log, and create interactions with pre-built animations‍
23. Add collections to folders/disable publishing for collections: Enhancements to the CMS support SEO by giving you more URL control by nesting Collection pages within folders. You can now also disable publishing at a per-Collection level and quickly create Collections by duplicating the fields of an existing one. 

Where we’re headed

And we’re just getting started. Here’s a preview of some exciting enhancements on our roadmap over the next few months.

First, AI Search will be going to private beta this week. With AI Search, you will be able to search and find Webflow University education content directly in the Webflow Designer while you build.

As you design and build in Webflow, AI Assistant will help you bring your ideas to life faster. By leveraging the power of AI directly in the Webflow Designer, you will be able to do things like auto-generate image alt tags to improve accessibility and generate code in the Custom Code editor based on a prompt. AI Assistant will be in private beta in the coming weeks.

Devlink is now in public beta. With Devlink, you can streamline the design to dev process by building and syncing Webflow components with any React project — including web apps, digital products, and more.

We’re also doubling down on our investments in collaboration and providing a way to centralize feedback in the Designer. We recognize that whether you’re a small agency or a large enterprise organization, receiving and acting on feedback is a crucial aspect of building a website. So, we’re making this easier with commenting in Webflow. Later this month, commenting will be available and you can start sharing, reviewing, and resolving feedback directly in the Designer. 

Our team has also made significant progress on localization capabilities with Webflow. In fact, we plan to share a more detailed update about what we’re building and when to expect the first release in the coming weeks.

And finally, our upcoming Spline integration will make it even easier to build 3D designs and experiment with interactive components in Webflow.

With all these tiny but mighty updates, we’re committed to bringing the best experience in Webflow to all our users. Big thanks to you, our community, for sharing feedback and championing Webflow with your teams, clients, and companies. There’s so much more ahead. So be sure to stay tuned as we roll out more updates this summer. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss a thing and see all of our updates here.

LIV Golf lured several prominent golfers from the PGA Tour, including Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith, with hefty sponsorship payments, touching off an acrimonious legal battle. Still, LIV has struggled to find broadcast partners for its tournaments and potentially gain revenue and more eyeballs.

LIV sued the PGA Tour last year for allegedly engaging in monopolistic behavior by using restrictive rules intended to deprive golfers from playing in rival leagues. The PGA sought subpoenas to gather additional material to support its claims in its countersuit that LIV illegally pushed players to break contracts with the legacy US-based tour by offering them exorbitant sums of money.

PIF governor Yasir Al Rumayyan, himself a keen golfer, will be chairman of the new entity.

The surprise deal drew instant reaction on social media. Below, a sample. 

The Guardian is a big beneficiary of Wonderhood’s new work for Belazu, which is centred on an eight-month deal with the newspaper’s food supplements, set up by Bountiful Cow.

Belazu’s aim is to help customers improve their culinary skills with a campaign that is firmly rooted in the real-life professional kitchen, including the kinds of ingredient experimentation and hand-written notes that chefs use all the time.

As well as print work, there’s a film that finishes with the line, “Foods toughest critics are our biggest fans.” Chefs on board include Angela Hartnett, Tom Straker, Josh Katz, Sabrina Gidda, Ben Tish and Helen Graham.

Taryn Malakou, brand strategy lead at Belazu, said: “This campaign is exceptionally different from traditional ‘foodie’ advertising and deliberately doesn’t rely on category conventions. It’s hyper-relevant to who we are as a brand and very distinctive. It sets us apart, with a clear creative idea, and a unique truth that builds on the foundations of our recent re-brand.”

Jack Croft, creative director at Wonderhood, said: “Taking huge inspiration from Belazu’s own chefs, we wanted to create a campaign where every element felt like it came from the world of top restaurants – from the handwritten notes and photography to the insights in the headlines. It’s been great fun creating this campaign together with the team at Belazu.”

Belazu’s audience is pretty middle class and easily definable so this campaign will clearly reach them – and may bring in some new customers too.

MAA creative scale: 7

“I think that younger generations who didn’t grow up with these characters might be curious about them,” said Adam Chandler, journalist and author of “Drive-Thru Dreams.” “They might feel like they are being welcomed into a confederation of generations. If the people around you grew up with them, but they have no resonance for you, there might be excitement to be gained by interacting with these characters. It sounds silly, but if you listen to people talk about core memories and cultural artifacts, having access to them probably means something.”

Older McDonald’s fans might remember that the original Grimace, introduced in 1971, had four arms, one for each milkshake that the fast food chain offered, according to Reinhard. “He was created because he had a big belly and he shook a lot, so he was about shakes,” he said. Grimace originally went by Evil Grimace because he was hellbent on stealing milkshakes.

Grimace’s backstory was further filled in during a 1999 episode of the animated series “The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald,” where viewers learned that Grimace was from Grimace Island and has a large family, including his Grandma Winky, aunts Millie and Tillie, his brother King Gonga and his Irish Uncle O’Grimacey, a green version of a Grimace who is associated with McDonald’s green Shamrock Shake.

Advertiser Identity Verification (AIV) was announced in June 2022 in an effort to make Microsoft Advertising safer for our advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Since then, we have been hard at work to ensure all advertisers can complete this process while also expanding this program to all supported markets. We’re excited to announce that all ads served through Microsoft Advertising will come from verified advertisers starting August 1, 2023.

We want our customers to have choice and control through transparency, so in addition to making our network safer, one of the primary goals of AIV is to increase visibility to those who interact with our ads. To support this goal, all ads will display the name and location of the advertiser, the business, or the individual who is funding the ad, and information about why they’re seeing an ad (such as targeting parameters).

In addition, Microsoft Advertising is launching a new Ad Library where all users will be able to view ads shown on Bing which have any impressions in the European Union. Users can search for ads in the Ad Library via the advertiser’s name or words in the ad creative. The advertiser’s details will be displayed in the Ad Library.

To further drive platform safety, all new advertisers after July 1, 2023, will be required to be verified prior to serving ads. Established advertisers will continue to be opted in over the coming months and will be required to complete their verification prior to August 1, 2023, to avoid interruption to their ads.

Advertisers will be notified via email when it’s time to complete their verification. For some advertisers, we already have all the information needed to complete verification. We’ll update the verification status for those accounts automatically. Advertisers who don’t receive a verification-related email communication—and whose accounts are not automatically verified prior to July 15 —are recommended to contact support.

Learn more about the advertiser identity verification program.

Help us improve Microsoft Advertising

Your comments and feedback are integral to shape and improve our product. You can use the Microsoft Advertising Feedback portal, in-product feedback, Twitter, or Instagram, and as always, contact Support.

Stay informed

Sign up for the Microsoft Advertising Insider newsletter to keep up with the latest insights, product news, tips and tricks, thought leadership, customer success stories, and resources.

The Guardian is a big beneficiary of Wonderhood’s new work for Belazu, which is centred on an eight-month deal with the newspaper’s food supplements, set up by Bountiful Cow.

Belazu’s aim is to help customers improve their culinary skills with a campaign that is firmly rooted in the real-life professional kitchen, including the kinds of ingredient experimentation and hand-written notes that chefs use all the time.

As well as print work, there’s a film that finishes with the line, “Foods toughest critics are our biggest fans.” Chefs on board include Angela Hartnett, Tom Straker, Josh Katz, Sabrina Gidda, Ben Tish and Helen Graham.

Taryn Malakou, brand strategy lead at Belazu, said: “This campaign is exceptionally different from traditional ‘foodie’ advertising and deliberately doesn’t rely on category conventions. It’s hyper-relevant to who we are as a brand and very distinctive. It sets us apart, with a clear creative idea, and a unique truth that builds on the foundations of our recent re-brand.”

Jack Croft, creative director at Wonderhood, said: “Taking huge inspiration from Belazu’s own chefs, we wanted to create a campaign where every element felt like it came from the world of top restaurants – from the handwritten notes and photography to the insights in the headlines. It’s been great fun creating this campaign together with the team at Belazu.”

Belazu’s audience is pretty middle class and easily definable so this campaign will clearly reach them – and may bring in some new customers too.

MAA creative scale: 7

Spotify, which announced layoffs in its podcast division this week, is still hosting its nightly concerts on the beach headlined by some of the biggest recording artists. Spotify also will host a lineup of daily talks on its beach, covering topics such as the future of it podcast business. Pinterest will be back in its usual beach location across from the newly refurbished Carlton hotel; and Snapchat is setting up at a mansion on the Croisette, the strip of hotels that face the Cannes beach. TikTok is setting up in a private “garden” at the Carlton and Amazon is running the port, a mega-installation near the marina and the yachts, which it occupied for the first time last year. Reddit plans to rebuild a clubhouse along the beach this year, similar to one it had last year. In April, Reddit said this would be its “biggest one yet.”

Twitter, meanwhile, gave up its prime beach location this year, which is being taken over by influencer agency Influential, signaling the biggest change to the Cannes landscape. Elon Musk has battled with marketers since he bought Twitter in October and the company has had a reduced presence at all the big conferences, including SXSW and CES.

Read more: How influencer marketing will show up in Cannes

‘It’s very much a sales event’

“Last year, it felt like everyone had to be at the party, but it’s just a little more toned down now, just in light of the economic situation,” another agency executive said, reflecting the mood of a number of ad industry insiders who spoke to Ad Age.

The temperature of tech companies is an important indicator of the health of Cannes because they’re not just big media properties that sell ads—they also buy the ads. When the brands pull back, that could trickle down to the agencies, which send their teams that service clients. Major holding companies and their agencies, including WPP, Omnicom, Dentsu and Publicis Groupe, all have people heading to Cannes. 

WPP, the world’s largest agency holding company, has a reserved beach area across from Hotel Martinez. WPP’s GroupM will be stationed on the Martinez’s rooftop.

Publicis Groupe typically does not have a major activation at Cannes, such as its own beach club, but it will be at the event per clients’ needs, a spokesperson said in an email.

“With the platforms, there were significant layoffs and uncertainty with layoffs,” said another ad agency insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That led some partners to send smaller contingencies than usual.”

For the ad agencies, that means they have to justify every person they send to Cannes. “It’s very much a sales event,” this insider said, which means “don’t do meetings you can do at home.”

Cannes is coming at a choppy time for the digital ad world. Advertising dollars are still flowing, but the industry is growing at a slower pace than anticipated. IPG Mediabrands’ Magna and Dentsu reduced their 2023 forecasts for ad spending growth to 3.4% and 3.3%, respectively. 

The muted expectations come from a multitude of factors including an uneasy economic outlook, war on Europe’s edges and inflation. Tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snapchat and Spotify, have been cutting workers. Meta recently announced its third round of layoffs, while Musk’s Twitter has cut about two-thirds of its employees since the billionaire took over.

Read more about industry layoffs

“It just makes everyone a bit nervous,” said another agency executive, referring to the tech layoffs and how they could impact deal-making at Cannes.

Also, Musk’s activities have had far-reaching impact on the ad world. Linda Yaccarino is Twitter’s new CEO, tasked, among other things, to try to bring back advertisers. Yaccarino, who was previously NBCUniversal’s chairman of advertising sales and partnerships, would have led the media giant’s programming at Cannes, but it now appears Yaccarino won’t make an appearance at Cannes, and NBCU had to switch up its strategy, according to the people familiar with the network’s plans.

All of the U.S. tech companies are in a moment of change. There is more competition, including from TikTok, which will have an official presence at Cannes for the second year. Apple is attending Cannes, too, as it builds an ad tech platform for iPhones and Apple TV. Apple’s data-sharing policies, in the name of privacy, have flummoxed Meta, Google, Snap and all the big platforms that rely on iPhone visitors to fuel their ad businesses inside apps. Google and Meta have both been rebuilding their ad platforms to keep advertising operational as data-sharing becomes more restricted. Google Chrome plans to remove third-party cookies from the open web next year.

Snap, in particular, has been in a tight spot. Last year, Snap announced it would cut 20% of its workers in a major reorganization, and this year its first-quarter revenue declined by 7%. Snap is still going to Cannes, working on an art installation with Disney.

Michael Kassan, CEO of MediaLink, the management consulting firm, said Cannes has bounced back to pre-pandemic prominence. Last year was the first year Cannes was in-person since the pandemic began. Kassan has heard rumblings about layoffs as it relates to the optics of heading to Cannes but said that should not deter brands or tech platforms.

“You’re looking at it through the wrong lens,” Kassan said. “If you look at Cannes as a place that you drink rosé and get a suntan, then it’s never a good look, whether you’ve had layoffs or not. If you look at Cannes as the most efficient four days or five days of your year, then it’s a different story.”