One of the year's biggest events in marketing is about to happen. Of course we are talking about the Super Bowl.

With pending developments on the COVID-19 pandemic, the game is scheduled to be played on February 7th 2021, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida and as usual, it is the commercials that are shown during the breaks that have people talking. Though the game is about two weeks away, some companies have already started releasing their commercials for the biggest TV event of the year. It’s an even bigger event this year, since so many 2020 events were cancelled, postponed or downsized. The brands advertising on the CBS broadcast will include Vroom, Toyota, M&Ms, PepsiCo’s Cheetos and Doritos, Fiverr, Kellogg’s Pringles and Intuit’s TurboTax. The companies that fight for these commercial spots are many and to get their commercial shown, they have to pay a lot. This year, the advertising spaces were sold at prices of $5.6 million per 30-second commercial.

That someone should pay so much for an ad during the show is not so strange. The match is watched by over 100 million viewers worldwide, but it is mostly thanks to social media that these commercials now get such a wide spread.

Bluefin Labs has analyzed how Super Bowl talks are on social media and has come up with a lot of interesting statistics. With approximately 12.2 million comments so far on social media, this year's edition of the Super Bowl is going to be the largest social TV event ever to take place. Compared to last year's Super Bowl, this year's circulation has grown by almost 600% (!), in terms of the number of 'social media comments'.

On Twitter, activity is the highest. As we are getting closer to the match and people are discussing which team would win. Last year, over 10,000 tweets were posted per second when the Kansas City Chiefs won, this compared with 5,000 tweets per second when it was announced that Osama Bin Laden had been shot and 6,000 tweets per second when Steve Jobs passed away.

Once the match is over, the commercials are still rolling via the popular video sharing services such as YouTube and Vimeo and others.

Several large analysis companies are now working feverishly to find out which commercials will be the most popular by analyzing comments on social media, views on video sharing services, fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter, etc.

How companies use Social Media

In most commercials, we find companies that have developed a holistic concept around their commercials. They have adapted their website, launched hashtags on Twitter (#SoLongKansas, #Gopackers, #BigGame etc.), created Facebook applications for the visitor to land on etc. To give the viewer access to more information, the commercial started to include its web address and in several cases also its "Facebook address".

Many companies today create a presence in social media without combining this presence with traditional media marketing. To be on e.g. Facebook is a big step to take - if you do it half-heartedly, you will be punished with bad activity and, if you are unlucky, disappointed customers who are expected more from the company in social media.

Show that you are serious about your presence in social media and let your web address for your Facebook page, Twitter page etc. be visible on your website, in your email signature, on your business cards etc. and make sure that the customers and visitors who want to have a dialogue with you can easily do that. A combination of marketing in traditional media and presence in social media has proven to be the best way to go if you want to reach out with a stronger message.

What type of offers should we focus on promoting during one of the biggest events in marketing?

Here at Advedro, we have looked at the GEOs our advertisers and affiliates were targeting for their Super Bowl campaigns during 2020. Although, some of the leading GEOs we could have easily predicted, such as USA and Canada, some locations came as a big surprise to us – for instance Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, France and Germany.

While it’s obvious that betting offers are among the most popular offers to promote during the Super Bowl, we have definitely seen other verticals being pushed as well, mainly due to complicated betting legislation in the USA. Some of the verticals that have performed best are:

• Betting
• Health & Beauty
• E-commerce & Retail
• Sweepstakes
• Email Subscription
• Crypto

As seen, not all these verticals are directly connected with sporting events. However, it is very clear that many affiliates worldwide used Super Bowl themed campaigns to promote their offers and get their content highlighted.

Ad Methods to look for:

• Push Notifications
• Native Ads

One of the most promising tools to increase customer engagement and overall CR has to be Push Notifications. Using Push Notifications you are able to instantly inform the customer and bring their attention in the right moment, especially as most of the users are already on a mobile device. That is the power of push notification to reach out to customers instantly and have a direct line to them.

When it comes to Native Ads, the reason why this ad method has proven to be so effective is that they are usually better received by their target audiences. This ad method helps to combat ad fatigue and further engages the audience. Because they don't “feel” like advertisements, people are more inclined to view them, consume their content and interact with them.

Running out of content ideas?

We all at times run the risk of sitting behind our computers thinking we have the next big idea, the next great lander or funnel. We think it's funny, because we think we know funny. Then one day, along comes someone doing what we thought we did, but doing it better than we did it. We're stuck scratching our heads and wondering, "Why didn't I think of that?" And why didn't we?

If you need to break out of that same old same old and get out from behind your computer and look at the coffee getting ready in the coffee machine in your kitchen. Talk to your customers, and talk with your affiliate networks who deal with similar problems or why not discussing with ad networks what is hot right now, what works, what doesn’t. Do that, and the ideas will come crashing through your door like a hungry pug.

Don't want to be left out? Reach out to us today and let us help you get your Super Bowl campaigns off the ground.