Watch any film or television show closely and you’ll notice that brands vanish. Labels face away from the camera. Post-production blurs logos. Products appear in generic packaging. That’s not a prop department accident. For decades, studios kept brands off screen and brands preferred it that way.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day shows how that dynamic has flipped. Brands that once hid from the big screen are now paying millions to get on it.
The Tom Holland and Zendaya-led blockbuster earned a record-breaking $72 million in Thursday previews, surpassing the $60 million record Avengers: Endgame set. But the more telling record came before anyone purchased a ticket.
The film’s promotional partner campaign generated $309 million in worldwide media value across 165 brands, beating the previous benchmark of $288 million that Spider-Man: Far From Home set. Several of those brands paid to be inside the film.
Why Brands Historically Stayed Off Screen
The old model had a straightforward logic. Trademark law protects distinctive brand identifiers—like words and symbols—that tell the public exactly who is behind a product. When a studio puts a recognizable brand on screen without permission, it risks implying a commercial relationship that doesn’t exist.
Brands can pursue legal action for that unauthorized use, so studios turn labels away from cameras and keep them generic. The law hasn’t changed. What changed is what brands want.
What Changed
Social media and streaming have fractured the traditional advertising model in ways that are impossible to ignore.
The percentage of U.S. households subscribing to cable dropped from a peak of 88% in 2010 to below 50% in 2026. Meanwhile, users spend an average of 2 hours and 21 minutes daily on social media—time they don’t spend watching commercial breaks. The 30-second commercial is losing its audience.
Brands have chased that fleeing attention into influencer marketing, which grew from a $1.7 billion niche in 2015 to a projected $25.62 billion industry in 2026. But influencer marketing has a ceiling. No creator can guarantee millions of viewers, sitting in the dark with no skip button.
A theatrical blockbuster can. And that changes everything about why brands want in.
What ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Looks Like From Inside
Of the 165 participating brands, only a handful secured on-screen appearances. The placements were deliberate. Spider-Man himself uses Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip. Other characters use Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Watch. Sony wove the devices into the plot.
Little Caesars appears by name. Liquid I.V. sits on a shelf in Spider-Man’s apartment. ASUS ROG computers appear in multiple scenes. BMW vehicles move through the city.
And then there’s Bero, Tom Holland’s own non-alcoholic beer brand, which launched a limited-edition Spider-Man can and appears briefly on bodega shelves in the film. The actor’s own brand, inside his own blockbuster. The line between star, character and brand ambassador has disappeared.
The clarity of a brand on screen is the tell. When you can read a label, see a logo or identify a product, someone made a deliberate decision to put it there.
The New Model
Spider-Man: Brand New Day didn’t invent in-film brand integration. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial featured Reese’s Pieces in 1982. Top Gun put Ray-Bans on Tom Cruise in 1986. Cast Away made FedEx a plot device in 2000.
But those were exceptions. What Spider-Man: Brand New Day represents is scale: 165 partners, $309 million in media value and multiple brands integrated into the story itself. The industry isn’t treating this as an experiment anymore.
The skip button killed the ad break. The blockbuster filled the void.
