---
title: "The Next Spider-Man Carries a $309 Million Promotional Campaign, a Studio-Reported Record"
description: "Sony puts the worldwide media value of the brand partnerships behind 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' at $309 million, beating the $288 million its own 'Far From Home' campaign claimed in 2019. The figure is not the studio's marketing budget, and nobody independent audits it."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Julian Mercado"
published: 2026-07-31T04:55:30.000Z
updated: 2026-07-31T04:55:30.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/the-next-spider-man-carries-a-million-promotional-campaign-a-studio-reported-rec
tags: ["hollywood", "sony-pictures", "marketing", "spider-man", "film-business"]
---
# The Next Spider-Man Carries a $309 Million Promotional Campaign, a Studio-Reported Record

Sony puts the worldwide media value of the brand partnerships behind 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' at $309 million, beating the $288 million its own 'Far From Home' campaign claimed in 2019. The figure is not the studio's marketing budget, and nobody independent audits it.

The number attached to the marketing campaign for "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" is
$309 million, and it is
[being called an all-time Hollywood record](https://deadline.com/2026/07/spider-man-brand-new-day-marketing-campaign-record-bmw-1237013669/).
Before that figure travels any further, it is worth being precise about what it
measures.

## What the $309 million is

It is worldwide media value contributed by promotional partners. That means the
estimated cost of the advertising, packaging, signage and in-store presence that
other companies are putting behind the film through their own channels: a
fast-food chain's national campaign, a phone maker's product launch, a carmaker's
placement.

It is not Sony's marketing budget. No part of that $309 million is money Sony
spent, and no part of it is cash paid to Sony. It is an estimate of what the
studio would have had to pay to buy equivalent exposure. Notably, the figure also
excludes licensing revenue, which studios sometimes fold into comparable
announcements, and which makes this number and the ones other studios publish less
comparable than they look.

It is also self-reported. Promotional media value is calculated on behalf of the
studio and its partners; there is no independent auditor and no standard
methodology across the industry. That does not make it wrong. It makes it a
marketing claim about marketing, which should be attributed rather than repeated
as a measured fact.

## The comparison

The record it beats is Sony's own. "Spider-Man: Far From Home" claimed $288
million in promotional partner value in 2019, which was itself billed as a record
at the time. So the headline is that a Spider-Man film has broken a Spider-Man
film's record, on a metric a studio defines.

## Who is actually in it

The named partners include McDonald's, Little Caesars, Samsung, BMW and Liquid
I.V., with the fast-food component running across dozens of markets and the
technology and automotive partners tying the film to product launches.
[Marketing Dive reported that Samsung and Liquid I.V. are using the film to spotlight new products](https://www.marketingdive.com/news/liquid-iv-samsung-spider-man-to-spotlight-new-products/825212/)
rather than simply buying association with it, which is the shape most of these
deals now take: the brand gets a launch vehicle, the studio gets reach it did not
pay for.

## Why studios keep doing this

The economics are straightforward. Theatrical marketing is expensive and
front-loaded, and a wide release lives or dies on awareness in the ten days before
it opens. A partner campaign buys that awareness on someone else's budget, in
places a trailer cannot reach: a drive-through, a phone store, a supermarket
aisle.

The risk is that the partnership becomes the story. When the number announced
about a film's marketing is bigger news than anything about the film, the campaign
has started marketing itself.

Deadline separately
[projects an opening in the range of $425 million globally](https://deadline.com/2026/07/spider-man-brand-new-day-box-office-projection-1237005824/).
That figure, unlike the promotional one, will be settled by ticket sales within a
few days of release.

## Sources

- ['Spider-Man: Brand New Day's $309 Million Promo Partner Campaign Is A Hollywood Record](https://deadline.com/2026/07/spider-man-brand-new-day-marketing-campaign-record-bmw-1237013669/)
- ['Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Eyes $425M Global Box Office Opening](https://deadline.com/2026/07/spider-man-brand-new-day-box-office-projection-1237005824/)
- [Liquid I.V., Samsung swing into Spider-Man to spotlight new products](https://www.marketingdive.com/news/liquid-iv-samsung-spider-man-to-spotlight-new-products/825212/)