The Impact of Online Ads for the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl. The mecca for advertisers, the playground of commercials, the make-or-break spot of the year, the favorite part of the Super Bowl for nonfootball fans, the biggest percentage of your marketing budget. Does it have to be? Is it worth the price tag?
Advertisers pay up to $5 million for a 30-second spot that reaches more than 100 billion people during the big game.
The commercial during the game is the big event – or is it really? Is that enough? Will the audience remember the commercial, the product, the brand? Does audience want more?
Digital ads and channels are extending the lifespan and expanding the reach of the Super Bowl commercial. More importantly, they encourage engagement and build relationships and trust with the audience.
Digital ads reach across a spectrum of channels: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with videos, hashtags, likes, shares and commentary. Hashtag #likeagirl was tweeted more than 400,000 times during the Super Bowl.
Another factor is the multi-screen world we live in. It is not unusual to watch TV while texting and posting on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. YouTube notes that viewers consumed around 300,000 hours of (digital) ads during the 2015 Super Bowl, a number that had doubled from the earlier year. In 2015, Budweiser’s “Lost Dog” ad drew more than 18 million views before the game even started.
These numbers scream that the audience wants more engagement. They want to be involved. They want to share their opinion. They want a relationship.
YouTube and their parent company Google have kicked off AdBlitz again this year. It gives Super Bowl advertisers yet another venue for their commercials, giving viewers a preview and another opportunity to engage. After the game, viewers will vote on their favorite commercial.
“YouTube claims that uploading the ads early does anything but spoil the surprise for fans, reporting that brands that put out ads before the game ended up with more than twice as many views and more than three times as many social shares.” That advertising budget just extended itself without adding a dime.
It is all about the tease, the buildup, the engagement, the relationship and then the big event.
Which brands are doing the victory dance now? Those that are utilizing digital channels. Watch Jake and Amir in the Art of the Touchdown Dance and share #YouTubeAdBlitz.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.