This Sunday will be a first
for the Super Bowl. In the game’s 48 year history, this will be the first Super
Bowl that is played in a cold-weather, open-air stadium. For football purists,
it is about time. Enough with the suntanned crowds with their fashionable short
sleeves, sitting in their luxury seats, sipping on expensive wine. Football is
a blue-collar sport meant to be played out in the elements of winter.
The cold weather game is not the
only first. In many ways, this is a first for Super Bowl Commercials as well.
The telecast of the Super Bowl has always commanded the highest advertising
dollars of any TV show throughout the year. This year a 30 second spot costs $4
million. But the price of releasing your commercial early via social media has
eclipsed the TV spots. It was reported that carmaker Jaguar paid a whopping $5
million to Google for ads to let viewers know about their TV ad. In other
words, they made an ad for their ad! They are not alone. This year more than
any other, Super Bowl ads are being put on YouTube weeks before the big game.
Ads for brands such as Audi, Volkswagon, Budweiser, Axe, M&Ms, Butterfinger
and Doritos have been leaked via YouTube before we even knew which two teams
would be playing this Sunday. Leaked may not be the correct term for what has
happened. The early release is part of the overall campaign now. If you were to
do a Google search for Super Bowl Commercials, you would find that there are
several paid ads at the top of the first page, all with the YouTube links to
the new crop of ads that will run on Sunday.
There was a time when Super
Bowl ads were kept under the strictest code of silence. You might get a teaser
ad out early, but marketers were counting on the wow of seeing the ad for the
first time to keep viewers in their seats during time outs. People had contests
for their favorite Super Bowl commercials. You could even wager a bet in Las
Vegas for the best commercial. All of that changed with social media. The early
release has been spurred by the use of social media. It was reported that last
year, 265 million people viewed Super Bowl commercials on YouTube. That is over
2.5 times what was viewed the year before. And one third of those views came
before the kickoff.* This year has promise to eclipse those numbers.
But the use of social media
in Super Bowl commercials is not limited to what is happening prior to the
game. Take a look at the way the ads will entice viewers to take an action step
via social media after the commercial. Marketers will try to keep the viewer
engaged past the 30 second spot with an invitation to like, tweet, follow, and
view more. Expect that engagement to keep perpetuating itself. With the new
media and the obscuring of the old lines between search engines and social
media, expect that any such connection you make via social media will be
followed up with countless ads to engage with the brand again. It is part of a
strategy to define your likes and dislikes so your particular tastes can be
advertised to specifically. And in this way, Super Bowl ads have changed. No
longer is the advertiser just after your attention for 30 seconds, they want to
drop a cookie on whatever device you are using so the ad campaign can come back
to you over and again.
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*How Google Gets Its Piece
of the Super Bowl Ad Blitz, by Kyle
Stock, Bloomberg Business Week, January 27, 2014