Last Sunday’s Superbowl on CBS delivered the second highest overnight rating on record for the Super Bowl — behind only last year. With digital ratings expected to shatter records by going free on Apple TV for the first time, Jacques de Cock, faculty member at London School of Marketing, argues why $375m will be spent on about 30-75 second advertisements each costing a cool $4.8m.
The Superbowl is a phenomenon unsurpassed in the world. 190 million viewed the game this weekend withmore than 50% of US households watching.
It is one of the few national social events which is also why social media traffic during the game is so high. Over 285m Facebook status are posted during the game, compared to that the 28m tweets pales into insignificance.
What is also remarkable that advertising is not viewed as something to skip but is seen by 77% of viewers as part of the entertainment and therefore more watched and engaged with than any other television advertising during the year.
The advertisers are as judged just as much as the players and the coaches and the half time entertainers.
This explains why $375m will be spent on about 30-75 second advertisements each costing a cool $4.8m. In fact it is about 2.5 cents per potential viewer. Not a bad price compared to many other adverts in print or on television or on the internet.
One element that is important is that the click rate at 9% is very high for ads and the conversion rate is 415% higher than on a normal Sunday. But to be truly successful the advertisement is part of a major campaign.
The ads are typically launched on YouTube up to two weeks ahead of the game. This guarantees more views, they have been viewed more 140 million times already on You Tube this year.
They also are more viewed and interacted with, up to two times according to YouTube.
YouTube already has 40 game ads and 120 teaser ads in its Superbowl 2016 channel. They are integrated with offers on the web site for 50% of advertisers. They are also linked, or should be, with purchased online advertising positioning and purchases as well a intensive social media retweeting and interactions to both start and continue the conversations.
Another element of success is the choice of themes. This is also why you should not always listen to what your audience wants.
According to viewers the themes they want in order are by far humour and uniqueness followed by cute animals. However what seem to work best were, again in order, cute animals, children and sex appeal. In fact the Victoria Secret ad had a higher viewing percentage than the game itself.
Positioning also appears to be important with ads before and after the game having more interaction and a higher conversion rating.
So who are these advertisers? In terms of industry auto motives is the largest one with $100m spend in 2015 with Fiat Chrysler alone spending over $30m. This is followed by Brewages with a spend of $50m over $30m of which is by Anheuser Busch usually the biggest spender at least since 2000.
The third major spenders are in the tech sector, but this only since 2014. With all the investments in big high potential companies this is bound to increase and keep pushing prices upwards. The biggest spender last year was Microsoft with $18m. But the top place changes rapidly for this segment. In 2013 Samsung spent $16m and in 2014 Intuit $13m.
This can even work very well for a start up brand. For instance Mophie a small California company started in 2006 spent $4.5m and increased its brand recxognition by a massive 36% simply through its Superbowl campaign. In 2016 squarespace, a big web development platform, appears to want to make a big push. I assume they want to recreate the success of Wix.