Ikea is frequently cited as a master of branding, marketing and advertising, and it has a portfolio of campaigns and creative to justify the compliment. The latest: the company's Retail Therapy website, which is part of its Where Life Happens campaign. The website takes a clever SEO-focused approach to promoting some of Ikea's wares. Slightly gimmicky, slightly cute.

What's the scariest thing Burger King could do for Halloween? Dress itself up as McDonald's, apparently. In a stunt, Burger King wrapped an entire store in Queens, New York, in a ghostly white sheet emblazoned with the words "McDonald's." Boo-ger King.

PayPal is expanding its ties to the Facebook Messenger platform with new services aimed at closing the gap between mobile and social commerce. Customers will be able to link their PayPal and Messenger accounts at PayPal checkout, and they'll also receive payment notifications directly within the Messenger app. So money.

“Advertisers looking to reach Xbox’s massive audience should think less about advertising in video games themselves and more about off-line integrations,” said Brent Coyle, Microsoft’s global lead for Xbox. When consumers are immersed in their games, the last thing they want are brands popping up in signs or other awkward places within the digital worlds. And out of the basement.

Launched in the 1980s by Grand Canyon river guide Mark Thatcher, the sandal was initially designed to stay on feet during water sports. But in recent years, a rising trend of nomcore and “ugly-chic” footwear, a category in which Birkenstocks also fall into, has taken the sandals from what was arguably thought of as a fashion faux pas to being included in high end fashion shows. And that’s when Teva, in particular, began capitalizing on its new-found trendy status. I can't.

Let’s get this out of the way: if you watch television at all, you’ve probably watched the Games. But chances are, the way you’re watching the 2016 Rio Games is markedly different from the way you watched the Games when you were a kid, or even the 2012 London Games. Before, watching the Olympics just meant turning on your TV. Not 2016. This was the year of the truly on-demand, a la carte, multi-platform, hyper-social, super-streaming Olympics. What, when, and where you want it.

Twitter has introduced its first "#Promoted Stickers" campaign, with Pepsi as its inaugural customer. Starting today, 50 Pepsi-themed stickers will be available for consumers to slap on their photos and tweet out. The designs are basically jumbo-size emojis that consumers might be familiar with from Pepsi bottles, which have featured them since February. Visual hashtags on the way.

Instagram's new Stories feature, ripped right from the Snapchat experience, already is a brand favorite. That's partly because Instagram is more welcoming to brands, and partly because it's just bigger. Nike, for example, generated 800,000 views in 24 hours for an Instagram Story that it posted on Tuesday, the first day the feature was available. On Snapchat, Nike's best video got 66,000 views. Size does matter.

Comcast and NBC shocked the television and sports worlds by outbidding their closest competitor, Fox Sports, by nearly a billion dollars, offering $4.4 billion for four Olympics ending in 2020. And they followed that with a second deal to secure the rights for six Olympics through 2032 — at a cost of $7.75 billion. Team Comcast bet the store, but this year the risk is starting to make sense. A lot can go right.

Facing headwinds, Lufthansa has quietly listed seats on its planes on Airbnb. “Our cabin isn’t in the woods, but in the sky!” exclaims the ad, offering a roundtrip ticket from New York to Frankfurt for $885, including taxes, in premium economy. Lufthansa isn’t just being cute by tapping the Airbnb platform. It’s trying to fill its planes. Doorman not included.