Super Bowl Ads Win Big Online

During this year’s Super Bowl, advertisers paid in the vicinity of $5.25 million for every 30-second spot they ran (don’t get me started on the so-called demise of advertising). That number seems especially high when you consider that the amount is a nearly 60% increase from what advertisers paid in 2008, and that television viewership declined around 5% from last year. However, you can’t look at that number, nor the shrinking television audience, in isolation or without broader context. Many of the ads (and in the best cases, the big campaign ideas) were teased or premiered online before the games—and as it turned out, those were the ads that garnered most views. Brands that strategized their Super Bowl campaigns around the lead-up to the event and lead-out of the event were the most successful. Duh.

According to Forbes, which published a study by video analytics firm, Pex, ads which were published online before the game garnered an enormous viewership. “On Thursday and Friday before the Super Bowl,” writes Forbes columnist Nelson Grandos, “the 28 ads tracked [by Pex] had already been viewed about 105 million times across the original YouTube ads and more than 1,000 videos, including on the brands own accounts, organic re-uploads, and pre-roll views (ads that play before a YouTube video, for example). 65% of the re-uploads included the full commercial.”

Those numbers are important—especially for a game with the lowest broadcast viewership since 2009. To lend some context, in 2016, the game averaged about 112 million viewers, in 2017, 111 million. Televised viewership dropped off steeply in 2018, with 103.4 million. That being said, Reuters reports that “the number of people who streamed the game on a computer or mobile device was up 20 percent [this year], to 7.5 million.” What this means, as you already know, is that television ratings for live events cannot be limited to the broadcast information from the event. Specifically, what it means is that brands cannot and should not measure commercial cost-value or success against the television ratings alone. We know online matters, and we must include the value in our calculations.

I have often professed (and still stick to) my belief that calling Super Bowl ads a “pre-release” and putting them online is a waste of time and money. We aggregate big audiences without the targeting we are supposed to be doing. However, what is clear is that if you use social media to tease the ad or campaign before the game, and the ad is good enough, and you lead out of the event with more, you have maximized (and beyond), the power of the Super Bowl. This is true for any important or widely broadcast event for that matter.

As all Olympic or other big game sponsors know, buying a sponsorship is only the first step. It’s the activation that’s key. A Super Bowl spot is merely purchasing a sponsorship. It’s the activation that’s critical, and today, that activation is about pre and post spots, allowing people to be excited, entertained, and in a position to buy. Listen:

"If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think." - David Ogilvy

We don’t just speak in one language these days, we speak in a multitude. As advertisers have known for a long time, online advertising spots and strategies are vital in today’s media landscape, and we must speak them all. The question is, have we created the Tower of Babel or are we truly listening and understanding the language of persuasion. What do you think?