Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad sent search interest from 1 to 100

Google Trends interest in Novig sat at 1 out of 100 on September 8. By the 9th it had climbed to 17. Four days later, on the 13th, it hit 52, and by the 14th it topped out at the maximum score of 100, holding at 93 the day after. That’s a search-interest curve most brands never see outside a major scandal or a Super Bowl spot, and Novig got there off a single ad featuring Sydney Sweeney. Russian search interest followed the same shape with a one-day lag, peaking on the 15th instead of the 14th.

The spike wasn’t from praise. The ad drew immediate backlash from professional female athletes, including Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, who called it infuriating and asked how sexualizing women’s sport was still considered acceptable marketing. Surfer Felicity Palmateer described it as actively damaging for young girls looking to get into sport. The core complaint was consistent across athletes: the ad barely resembled anything close to how women’s sports actually get played, leaning instead on Sweeney covering parts of her body with footballs and other sports gear.

Novig’s response wasn’t an apology. CEO Jacob Fortinsky said the company anticipated exactly this reaction, and went further, revealing that Sweeney herself had shaped both the creative concept and the ad’s actual messaging. That framing matters because Sweeney isn’t a hired face here. She personally approached Fortinsky to negotiate an equity stake in Novig, making her a financial partner with a direct interest in whatever attention the campaign generated, controversy included.

The business logic tracks even if the athlete criticism lands. Novig’s brand mentions reportedly jumped more than ninefold after the ad went live, and a Google Trends score climbing from 1 to 100 in under a week is the kind of visibility spike most sports-betting-adjacent platforms spend years and much larger budgets chasing. Sweeney absorbed most of the reputational cost publicly; Novig walked away with the awareness. Other platforms lean on athlete endorsements to sell sports verticals too, usually through a straightforward sponsorship rather than an equity stake tied to a deliberately provocative campaign.