As TVNewsCheck recently observed, in the months leading up to the Super Bowl fans are focused on which teams will play the big game, while chatter amongst marketing and advertising professionals is centered on the TV commercials that will air during the game.*
The months before Super Bowl Sunday are typically filled with reports of how much it costs to buy a 30-second spot, which Kantar Media reports has increased by 75% during the past decade to reach $4.5 million last year. As we near game day, the focus turns to the brands that will use those spots to connect with the event’s 160 million live viewers worldwide.
Then, as the week’s festivities begin to unfold, we get our first glimpses of the creative that corresponds in talent and execution with the superior performance expected of the NFL athletes that will be competing for a Super Bowl win. Take, for example, this week’s uproar about the GoDaddy puppy ad set to air during Super Bowl XLIX. While the content is controversial, the creative certainly struck a cord with viewers. The buzz resulted in potentially more exposure than GoDaddy could have enjoyed with a $4.5 million dollar spot. And, with only a few days until the Super Bowl, coverage of the spot eclipsed talk of the game in some markets.
Given the importance of the creative in these much coveted avails, advertisers and their agencies are beginning to focus on another performance component: the asset management solutions they rely on to deliver their creative. The growing importance of fast, reliable and robust asset delivery systems - especially on Super Bowl weekend - can be attributed to several media trends affecting ad management.
One of these trends is the role of cross-platform ad campaigns in reaching desired audiences. When selling its platform to this year’s Super Bowl advertisers, Facebook cited a Nielsen analysis, which found that Microsoft extended its reach to the 18-49 demo from 35% to 57% during the 2014 Super Bowl by using Facebook in tandem with a four-day TV buy. “Evidence shows that reaching people on multiple channels (ex: TV and mobile) results in valuable message duplication that reinforces campaign themes and creative,” the research concluded.**
Another trend is the need to place media across this variety of audience delivery platforms at both local and national levels. With New England and Seattle facing off in this year’s Super Bowl, advertisers are looking to take advantage of local media opportunities that will appeal to fans of the home team. In fact, one analysis cited by Medialife found that Seahawks playoff games surpassed 90 shares in key demos and may reach 100 shares in the market during certain quarter-hours.*** As a result, local TV spots for the Super Bowl are reportedly selling for more than $250,000 each, and media buyers are exploring additional opportunities on local TV, radio and online/mobile outlets delivering these higher-than-average audience shares.
Typically, it takes something like a Gatorade ad to remind us about the link between a function like hydration and athletic performance; or a controversy like “Deflategate” to get us thinking about the affect of a football’s air pressure on successfully throwing and catching it during inclement weather. But as these trends affecting the delivery of our advertising also remind us, mechanics that happen off the field can factor heavily into a successful game-day performance.
Happy Super Bowl XLIX!
*www.tvnewscheck.com/article/82205/decade-of-super-bowl-spend-tops-2b
**fbinsights.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/fb-tv-whitepaper-1121141.pdf
***www.medialifemagazine.com/seattle-big-bump-super-bowl/