A video began circulating on social media this week showing Times Square covered in Spider-Man webs, a subway car suspended mid-air in an elaborate CGI tableau, crowds below apparently oblivious to the spectacle above them. The post from @ytv.news captioned it "Times Square is covered in webs as NYC gets ready for the new Spider-Man movie," generating 1,600 reshares before the same account clarified that the image was AI-generated artwork by digital artist @why.cgi: concept art, not a Sony campaign, not a real installation. One commenter had already posted: "I thought it was real, shared it, found out it was AI after posting, then deleted it." Another, with 752 likes: "Would have been cooler if it was real."
Both reactions are worth sitting with. The question the Spider-Man situation raises is not whether this specific image was official or unauthorized (it wasn't) but whether the underlying format (CGI activations designed to go viral before anyone asks if they exist) is a legitimate campaign tool, and what the industry should do with it.
What FOOH is and why brands have been doing it for years
The format has a name: FOOH, or Fake Out-of-Home. FOOH is a CGI-built advertisement that imitates a real-world out-of-home placement (a billboard, building, or street stunt) that never physically existed, then publishes the clip on social media where its surreal scale drives shares and reach. The category accelerated in 2023 when Jacquemus posted an eight-second clip of its Le Bambino bags on wheels cruising the streets of Paris, created by 3D artist Ian Padgham. The post topped nearly 40 million views as many questioned whether the bus-sized leather bags were real or CGI; Jacquemus confirmed they were digital after the video had already gone viral. Maybelline placed mascara wands on London buses and showed them applying lashes as the vehicles moved through the city: 9.3 million views, entirely fake. Apple used FOOH for the iPhone 15, showing a giant glass enclosure with pink balls slowly spilling into New York City streets: 7 million views and 4,000 shares on Instagram. HBO wrapped Marina Bay Sands and the National Gallery in Singapore in CGI House of the Dragon banners for Season 2, generating 14.2 million views across platforms.
The core appeal is cost efficiency combined with social amplification. Traditional large-scale OOH installations in major urban centers are expensive, require permits, and reach only the foot traffic that physically passes them. FOOH achieves a similar visual impact and then distributes globally through shares, likes, and comments. A real Times Square takeover with webbing and rigging would require city permits, MTA coordination, structural engineering, and significant production budget, and would be seen by whoever happened to walk through Times Square that day. The CGI version reached everyone who encountered the post or its reshares, without Sony spending a dollar or making a decision.
The case for using this deliberately as a film campaign tool
For film marketing specifically, FOOH has a structural advantage that brand FOOH does not. Films already operate in the world of CGI spectacle. The entire premise of a Spider-Man movie is that impossible things happen in recognizable cities, and a CGI activation showing that premise playing out on a real New York street is not misleading in the way a fake mascara lash application is misleading. It is a visual demonstration of the film's own logic. The Times Square webs image does not promise a product that will perform differently than advertised. It shows what it would look like if Spider-Man's world were real, which is precisely what the film promises to do for two hours.
The argument for using FOOH deliberately is compelling on several grounds:
Reach without a media buy. A single shareable clip can outperform weeks of physical placements at a fraction of the cost.
No logistical ceiling. Physics, safety codes, and real-world permits no longer constrain the creative idea. A webbed subway car is achievable in CGI in days.
Built-in measurability. Views, shares, and saves are tracked natively on social, with no guesswork about foot traffic.
Creative freedom to demonstrate premise. For concept-driven films, a FOOH clip can show the film's world colliding with the real world in a way a poster or trailer cannot.
Budget flexibility. For smaller films with big premises and limited media budgets, a $15,000 CGI clip showing the film's central concept on a landmark in every target city could generate more awareness than a six-figure OOH buy in one location.
A Jacquemus-scale creative brief for Brand New Day (executed by a studio VFX team, labeled as concept art, seeded through fan accounts) would have generated the same reach with full creative ownership.
The case against, and where the line actually sits
The backlash to the Spider-Man image points to a real tension. The commenter who shared it, found out it was AI, and deleted it describes a specific kind of betrayal: they became an unwitting amplifier of content they did not know was fictional. Audiences inevitably ask whether a FOOH stunt is genuine. The decision lies in whether to keep the illusion intact or to reveal the creative process as a way to extend reach. When a studio uses FOOH transparently (labeling it as CGI, featuring it as a "what if" creative piece), the audience's relationship to the content is honest. When it is deployed ambiguously (as the Spider-Man webs image was, by a fan artist reading as official), the people who share it before the clarification arrives feel burned.
The antagonist argument is also real: physical OOH activations offer something FOOH cannot replicate. The person who went to the Papa Johns Pizza Planet pop-up in West Hollywood had an embodied experience. The Passenger windshield flyer worked precisely because it was real, on an actual car in an actual parking lot, generating genuine dread. The Obsession billboard campaign escalated over real days in real locations that real people walked past. FOOH generates social reach for a concept. Real OOH generates a physical experience. A campaign that uses both (a CGI "what if" reel seeded two weeks before the real activation) uses each format for what it is actually good at. A campaign that uses only FOOH and lets audiences believe it is real is borrowing the credibility of real OOH without earning it.
Sony got the reach this week without spending a dollar or making a decision. Whether that is a problem depends on who you think is responsible for managing the line between a film's fictional world and the real one it is being marketed in. The more useful question for the industry is what Sony could have done if they had planned for this format intentionally.
Movie marketing intel: This week in trends
CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 📋 FOOH advertising has become a mainstream tactic; major studios are starting to build it into official campaign plans (Ellie Motion / Maverick Frame) The trend accelerated in 2023 and 2024, when major global brands adopted FOOH. What began as experimental content soon became a mainstream tactic for companies wanting to achieve cultural relevance. The format aligns with how audiences consume content: quickly, visually, in short clips optimized for mobile. For film marketing, the format's native advantage is that movies already trade in the currency of impossible spectacle. The risk remains disclosure: campaigns ambiguous about whether the content is real borrow credibility from real OOH without offering the physical experience that credibility is built on.
EXHIBITION 🎬 Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking $185-215M domestic opening, placing it among the top three MCU openings ever (Box Office Pro / Deadline) Box Office Pro's latest long-range forecast puts Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $185-215M for its July 31 opening, which would place it behind only Avengers: Endgame ($357M) and Infinity War ($258M) in MCU opening history. The film's official trailer hit 1.1 billion views in 24 hours, the most-viewed trailer of all time. Whether the fan-made FOOH Times Square moment contributed to that momentum or simply benefited from it, the campaign as a whole has generated pre-release cultural saturation that makes opening weekend a near-certainty for the core audience.
This week's movie review: The Invite ★★★ (3/5)
The setup is efficient and the central couple has real chemistry, which carries the film through its second act even as the script starts running out of ideas. The third act relies on a twist the audience has enough information to see coming about forty minutes earlier. Worth watching, does not quite earn its ending.
