This week's winners, losers and newsmakers.

Winners

Travel ad sellers: As consumers return to taking trips and the omicron variant recedes, a spate of travel brands are running new campaigns. This week, brands such as Priceline and Alaska Airlines began campaigns, joining Expedia, Booking.com and Vrbo, which will advertise next week on Super Bowl Sunday. Priceline’s new multichannel campaign stars longtime spokeswoman Kaley Cuoco. The online travel agency is also running a promotion offering deal discounts. Alaska Airlines released a spot with TV star Tan France, a Care Bear and Mother Nature all debating on the merits of inviting the airline to join the “Care Coalition.”

Publicis Groupe: Good news this week came to employees at the holding company, as they are set to get bonuses in the wake of the company’s strong 2021 showing, which included a 10% jump in organic revenue.

Volvo: Auto brands have been finding a way around canceled auto shows since the beginning of the pandemic, but Volvo’s newest effort gets major points for creativity. In the wake of the postponement of Brussels Motor Show 2022,  the brand and agency FamousGrey developed an app, "Volvo Street Congifurator," that's aimed to "turn the streets into one giant showroom." Find out how they did it here.

Losers

American Airlines: On Feb. 1, as part of an announcement that it will be showcasing how its team is celebrating Black History Month, the airline updated its brand logo on social media to include a frame of yellow, red and green—the colors associated with the month. But the move caught backlash from people on Twitter with some accusing the brand of tokenism.

Ad industry: While U.S. employers added 467,000 jobs in January, the ad economy did not share in the gains: Employment in advertising, public relations and related services dropped by 5,900 jobs in January, reports the Ad Age Datacenter. But don’t worry too much—ad jobs have fallen every January since 2000, according to the Datacenter’s analysis of BLS data.

Meta: The company formerly known as Facebook lost $232 billion in market cap on Thursday after its stock slid in the wake of a disappointing ad forecast. Apple’s new privacy framework is partly to blame.

Read more: What Meta and Google earnings reveal about Apple’s data crackdown.

Tweet of the week

Number of the week

301%: The increase in the amount spent on advertising in 2021 by “buy now, pay later” brands including Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, Zip and PayPal, to more than $110 million in 2021 compared to 2020, according to MediaRadar.

Quote of the week

“There’s a laundry list of items where all of them on a one-off basis can be explained, but they’re all piling up at the same time.”—Bernie McTernan, a senior analyst at investment banker Needham & Co., on the headwinds facing Peloton.

On the Move

Just days after naming a new chief marketing officer, DraftKings is building up its media team with the hire of Stacie McCollum as head of programming. She had been VP of programming and acquisitions at ESPN. The brand also hired Todd Dubester as VP, media strategy and business operations. He was most recently CEO of Academy Sports Media, which he founded.

Gympass named Ryan Bonnici CMO. He had been CMO at G2.

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