How Marketers Can Leverage Super Bowl Ad Interest Without Spending $5 Million

In theory the Super Bowl is the showcase marketing opportunity for brands; over 100 million viewers watch the game annually, and saying “I’m more interested in the ads” isn’t just a stock joke. For instance, a 2016 HuffPost/YouGov poll found that millennials ages 18-30, actually preferred Super Bowl commercials (26 percent) to the game itself (24 percent).

However buying an official Super Bowl ad is too expensive for most brands. According to Kantar Media, a 30 second Super Bowl ad cost $5.24 million in 2018, with pricing similar this year. Additionally, there were 59 different advertisers during the Super Bowl LII broadcast, and while that seems like a lot, compared to the number of brands who would like the cachet of being considered an official advertiser it really isn’t. 

Meaning the limited amount of ad inventory is pricing out most prospective advertisers, but the good news is brands can still benefit from advertising around the Super Bowl as opposed to in it. Here are some of the ways brands can more frugally stand out during Super Bowl ad season. 

Release An Ad With A Social Message 

With the big game just two weeks away, the most talked about ad is Gillette’s controversial “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” spot about toxic masculinity which has already generated 18.5 million views on YouTube in just five days. Baring a last minute surprise, the We Believe campaign is digital only, and will not be appearing during the Super Bowl. 

However in recent years, brand ads tackling social issues have been increasingly successful during the Super Bowl, think the Always #LikeAGirl campaign from 2015 or 84 Lumber's pro-immigration commercial in 2017. The audience has come to expect these socially relevant brand ads and in the lead up period, has little context for which ads will actually be featured in the game. As We Believe illustrates, a well timed brand campaign that connects on a social issue can benefit from the association of feeling like a Super Bowl ad, even when it’s not. 

Buy Cheaper Online Ads Around The Game 

During the 2018 Super Bowl, the online streaming audience peaked at 3.1 million concurrent streams, and those numbers will only grow in 2019 as for the first time CBS will allow people to stream the Super Bowl on the CBS Sports' website and mobile apps without a sign-in. 

While CBS has not publicly disclosed if they’re selling streaming ads separately for this year’s game, in years that option is available, the cost of a 30 second ad is considerably cheaper. For instance, in 2017 when Fox sold digital only advertising packages for that year's Super Bowl, the price of a 30 second spot maxed out at $700,000.  

That said, you don’t have to literally advertise on the Super Bowl stream to reach a qualified digital audience during the game. A 2016 Salesforce survey found that 73% of viewers planned to use at least one device in addition to their TV during watching the Super Bowl; while during the 2018 game, Nielsen reported there were 170.7 million social media interactions related to the game across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Even when the audience is watching the game on TV, they’re still engaged on second screen devices and reaching that audience online is quantifiably cheaper. Lyle Schwartz of GroupM calculated the average CPM for a Super Bowl LII ad ended up being $109.48. By comparison, the cost of reaching 1,000 people via Google Display Ads in Q1 2018 on Google Display Ads was $2.80 per thousand impressions. 

There’s no denying the earned amplification of a broadcast Super Bowl ad is unparalleled, but especially depending how niche the target audience of your brand is, advertising online around the game is definitely more cost efficient. 

Focus On Real-Time Optimization, Not Newsjacking 

In 2013, the power went out at the Super Bowl for 34 minutes, Oreo Tweeted how "you can still dunk in the dark” and in a sense, expectations around Super Bowl marketing have been unrealistic ever since. It’s not that war rooms or newsjacking efforts can’t pay off, but so far no unplanned brand Super Bowl Tweet has had the same impact and waiting around for lightening to strike twice is a tremendous waste of brand resources.

Yes, the Oreo blackout war room specifically was effective, but Shane Snow crunched some numbers, and estimated the cost of a major brand running a real-time war room around the Super Bowl is between $50,000 - $100,000. Considering most war rooms will end without creating a huge viral moment, more often that’s going to result in horrible ROI. 

A better game plan would be to focus on optimizing existing collateral. For example in 2017 when their brand ambassador Tom Brady unexpectedly reached the Super Bowl, Beats By Dre had enough budget for an online campaign only. Choosing audience retention as their key metric, Beats through A/B testing found that by moving up the logo and talent introduction to earlier in their Brady “#BeHeard” video, retention went from only 62% of viewers watched the full first quartile of video to an average view duration of 97% for the clip, with nearly a million people seeing the ad on YouTube. 

Additionally, through utilizing big data solutions, brands can be far more agile in optimizing the timing of activations. 

Around the 2018 Super Bowl, Google launched a real-time triggers program for DoubleClick Bid Manager, where advertisers can run display and video campaigns activated by moments or actions that happen online and in the real world. Other examples include Amobee offering a Triggers product where a campaign is reactivated when interest in a topic passes a predetermined threshold, and Helio by Analytic Partners, which uses predictive weather forecasting to more accurately determine when campaigns will be most effective. 

Conclusion 

While broadcast ads will always be more high profile around the Super Bowl, marketers don’t necessarily need a war chest of cash to compete with a best-in-class campaign. Using such strategies as creating timely and social relevant content, focusing on more cost efficient online campaigns, and leveraging big data analytics to optimize that collateral, Super Bowl timed campaigns can stand out regardless of the budget.