Budweiser is ditching the Super Bowl

Hi and welcome to Insider Advertising. I'm senior advertising reporter Lauren Johnson, and here's what's going on:

• Budweiser ditches the Super Bowl.
• The media SPACs to watch.
• Taboola plans to go public.

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Tips, comments, suggestions? Drop me a line at LJohnson@businessinsider.com or on Twitter at @LaurenJohnson.

Budweiser won't run a commercial during the Super Bowl for the first time in 37 years. Instead, it will channel money into boosting vaccine awareness.

• For the first time in 37 years, Budweiser won't air a Super Bowl ad during the game.
• Budweiser is typically one of the biggest Super Bowl advertisers and is known for big-budget campaigns like "Puppy Love" and ads with the Budweiser Clydesdales.
• Budweiser will instead donate funds to increase COVID-19 vaccine awareness.

Read the full story here.

SPACs are circling the media sector. Here are 11 high-profile blank-check companies to watch in 2021.

• A growing number of SPACs are focusing on acquiring media companies and taking them public.
• Lara O'Reilly and I identified 11 high-profile SPACs worth watching this year that are led by media vets like Joanna Coles, Ben Lerer, and Charlie Ergen.
• SPACs have been viewed critically by some as riskier for investors, but they have boomed over the past year.

Read the full story here.

Taboola is going public via a SPAC, aiming to raise $545 million to expand its content recommendations to TV, cars, gaming and ecommerce

• Lara also reported that ad tech firm Taboola plans to go public through a merger with a SPAC, valuing the company at $2.6 billion.
• The deal is expected to bring in $545 million in cash.
• Taboola says it intends to use the proceeds to grow into areas including ecommerce, gaming, connected TV, and in-car entertainment.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

• Chipotle's CMO reveals why it's running its first Super Bowl ad, how it's taking more advertising in-house, and how it's preparing for the ad targeting clampdown (Business Insider)
• A Netflix slide deck shows how it's trying to fix lofty problems in personalization like over-inflating a show's popularity and how to measure goals like 'joy' (Business Insider)
• The studio behind blockbuster 'Despicable Me' series just hired an ex-Beats and Vice exec as CMO (Business Insider)
• Andreessen Horowitz is not the only VC firm building its own in-house 'media machine', top VCs tell us. (Business Insider)
• Bernie Sanders' inauguration jacket is selling out as his mittens meme continues to dominate social media (Business Insider)
• Google says it may have found a privacy-friendly substitute to cookies (Axios)

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow! You can reach me in the meantime at LJohnson@businessinsider.com and subscribe to this daily email here.