UPDATE: The campaign has reached its last beat with the movie’s official final trailer, showing Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ having moved on while Peter watches from the sidelines.
Sony’s marketing machine has found its unlikely MVP for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and it isn’t Tom Holland. It’s Jacob Batalon.
The latest proof dropped today: a new ad for Liquid I.V., the movie’s exclusive “functional hydration” partner, starring Batalon back as Ned Leeds.
The spot follows Ned through a brutally hot New York City day, hunting down a cold drink while — and this is the whole joke — Spider-Man quietly saves him from disaster at every turn without Ned ever noticing.
Ned goes looking for one “hero” (a raspberry electrolyte packet, naturally) while the actual hero keeps the city, and Ned, alive just off-camera. Everyday heroes come in many forms, and so on.
It’s a cute, well-made 60 seconds — directed by Alen Petkovic out of agency Blue Raven — and it’s already running across TV, digital, and social, tied to two limited co-branded flavors. On its own, it’s an ad. But drop it next to the last Ned campaign and it gets a lot more interesting.
This Is the Exact Inverse of the Spidey Tracker
A month ago, Sony and Samsung brought Ned’s in-movie “Spidey Tracker” to life — a real website where Ned, billed as its “CEO and Founder,” runs a global surveillance operation to log Spider-Man’s every move and catalog his enemies.
In that campaign, Ned is the one secretly watching Spider-Man.
Now flip it. In the Liquid I.V. spot, Spider-Man is the one secretly watching over Ned, and Ned has no clue he’s there.
Two national campaigns in a month, and both run on the same premise: Ned and Spider-Man orbiting each other, neither one actually seeing the other.
One has Ned chasing a hero he can’t find. The other has the hero shadowing a friend who doesn’t know he’s being protected. Sony didn’t have to make either of those the hook. It did anyway, twice.
Why Does Sony Keep Making Ned the Face of This Movie?
This is now the third promo beat built around Batalon’s Ned: the Spidey Tracker, the in-character “message from CEO Ned Leeds” video, and now this.
For a movie whose marketing has kept its actual villain pointedly off-screen, Sony sure keeps handing the spotlight to the guy in Peter’s orbit who’s already been a secret villain once in the comics.
We’ve been tracking that thread for weeks. Post-No Way Home, the world forgot Peter Parker exists, including Ned, who no longer remembers his best friend at all.
Sony’s own synopsis hypes “a powerful villain no one can even see.” A near-stranger quietly building tech to find Spider-Man, then installed as the smiling face of the film’s marketing, fits that phrase in a way the studio has to know it’s inviting.
Is a hydration ad a spoiler? No — and the Liquid I.V. spot doesn’t confirm a frame of the theory.
But it’s one more piece of marketing that keeps Ned front and center and keeps dramatizing the exact thing this movie seems to be about: two people who can’t see what’s standing right in front of them.
Keep an eye on Ned.
For the full villain lineup, cast, and every leak so far, check our Spider-Man: Brand New Day guide. Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters July 31, 2026.
