The modern Super Bowl is less a football event and more of an industry centered around the game’s sizable audience.
Last year’s Super Bowl 57 on Fox drew a broadcast audience of 112.17 million, making it the most-watched installment on linear television in roughly a decade. A strong streaming strategy pushed total viewership over 115 million, however, giving it the largest Super Bowl audience of all time. That allowed Fox to sell 30-second Super Bowl spots from the high $6 million to more than $7 million range, earning $600 million in total revenue.
This year’s broadcaster, CBS, virtually sold out of ad space by November, with brands still willing to pay a hefty premium for access to that massive crowd.
On the surface, it’s a vast sum for one ad. In reality, the Super Bowl sets an annual business agenda for multiple companies and industries. The Super Bowl allows brands to get their message out to as many loyal customers as possible, but its massive viewership gives companies a rare chance to introduce themselves to an entire nation’s worth of the unconverted. From there, Super Bowl veterans want to spread the field by turning short-term exposure into long-lasting sales, growth and brand-building that draws cheers from the CFO and finance team.
“You really have the opportunity to win the emotional support for your brand on the day,” said Andrew Sneyd, executive vice president of marketing at FanDuel, which is returning to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.
Sneyd should know how a brand and its industry can leave an enduring impression in a relatively short span. He recalls “a bunch of really fun Super Bowl Sundays” as a marketing vp for Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser brand, where he and his team created the “Puppy Love” Super Bowl ad that conjures memories of Passenger’s “Let Her Go.” That Anomaly-produced ad not only topped the USA Today Ad Meter when it ran in 2014, but it also led TiVo’s list of the top Super Bowl ads of all time in 2016—with Entrepreneur praising it as “distinct” and “emotional.”
Raising the stakes
FanDuel’s loyal bettors will place wagers throughout the sports calendar, but the online sportsbook’s Super Bowl marketing game plan looks to add new players to the team.
Last year, FanDuel brought in former National Football League tight end Rob Gronkowski to attempt a field goal as part of its Super Bowl campaign, only to watch him miss in 25 mph winds. The marketing attempt, however, was right on target.
FanDuel gave away $10 million to fans who placed wagers before Gronkowski’s kick. It averaged 2 million active users and peaked at 50,000 bets per minute before compiling roughly 17 million total bets.
Of the new online bettors available during last year’s Big Game, FanDuel grabbed 70% of them. As a result, FanDuel saw a 10% increase in brand awareness from more than 14 billion impressions. It’s also bringing Gronkowski back this year and letting fans place free wagers on whether he’ll make his latest kick attempt.
“All of the people that enjoy the FanDuel product throughout the year are also going to be there that day, but we see the opportunity to really connect with more recreational users,” FanDuel’s Sneyd said.
According to Global Wireless Solutions, the 5.2 million users on sportsbook apps during Super Bowl Sunday in 2023 represented a 43% increase from the year before.
Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association (AGA) estimated that 50.4 million U.S. adults (20% of the adult population) bet $16 billion on the Super Bowl last year. That’s 61% more people betting twice as much money as the AGA measured for 2022. With 38% placing their Super Bowl bets online in 2023 (compared to 34% betting casually with friends, 26% participating in pools/square contests, 18% betting in person at sportsbooks and 13% betting with bookies) and more states legalizing online sports betting each year (including Vermont earlier this year), FanDuel and the rest of the gaming industry didn’t wait for a Las Vegas Super Bowl to integrate their wagers into Big Game tradition.
“It’s a great opportunity to make sure that we’re a part of the experience, as opposed to just talking about our product or leaning into the game in a way that we would on a random Wednesday night,” Sneyd said.
A full plate
Few examples illustrate the Super Bowl’s ability to drive a marketplace quite like the open buffet it creates within the grocery and quick-service restaurant industry each year.
Industry groups salivate over the 1.45 billion chicken wings eaten (a National Chicken Council estimate), 12.5 million pizzas sold (American Pizza Community tabulations) and 112 million pounds of snacks added to the Super Bowl spread (counted by Snacking Nutrition Convenience International). The National Retail Federation placed last year’s Super Bowl consumer spending at $16.5 billion, with 79% of that allocated to food alone.
Squarespace helps build websites for businesses from the small slice shops to sprawling game-day delivery services like DoorDash. It has purchased a Super Bowl ad each year since 2014 (bringing in Martin Scorsese for this year’s installment) to take advantage of the timing—when more budding entrepreneurs look for their own piece of the pie.
“Business formation peaks at the top of the year—a bit of ‘new year, new me’ mentality—and as such, Q1 is when we have the highest interest in joining our platform to grab the most important real estate for a business—a website,” said Kinjil Mathur, CMO at Squarespace. “The big stage is timed perfectly with our customer purchase intent and interest, allowing us to deliver a poignant message that speaks to our very broad demographic all at once.”
While Mathur credits Squarespace’s creative team with building compelling Super Bowl commercials around websites—“a not-so-easy brief”—the company’s Super Bowl strategy has shifted dramatically within a decade.
The Super Bowl remains a consistently big stage in which viewers tune in to watch ads—a marketer’s dream.
Kinjil Mathur, CMO, Squarespace
What began as a single ad became a broader, more integrated marketing campaign launched with an in-game ad. Where Squarespace once measured only immediate Super Bowl traffic, it began focusing on ad effectiveness and followed consumers from brand awareness to conversion—tweaking that strategy for each campaign.
Squarespace also started its pregame party earlier—building buzz weeks, then months, ahead of the Super Bowl—and will linger a bit longer after the final whistle in 2024 to help the message find traction globally. Squarespace’s in-game spot is surrounded by activations across multiple channels that run during and after the game, using mobile, social and streaming platforms (like Paramount+, which is carrying CBS’ Super Bowl 58 broadcast this year) to find new audiences.
The game is a bit different, but a win looks roughly the same.
“Success is simple: We leverage this iconic, cultural moment to cut through the noise and make a lasting impression on our audience,” Mathur said. “In today’s attention economy, that’s not easily achieved, and the Super Bowl remains a consistently big stage in which viewers tune in to watch ads—a marketer’s dream.”
SIDEBAR:
Super Bowl vs. the World
The Super Bowl still has the biggest one-day audience of any televised event in the United States, but is its nearly $7 million price tag for a 30-second ad worth it for brands?
Sometimes.
According to TV advertising data firm EDO, Super Bowl ads have been 307% more likely to engage viewers than the average primetime broadcast program since 2019—compared to 126% for the second-place NBA All-Star Game. But not all Super Bowl ads hit quite so hard.
“I tell my clients, if you don’t have a really good, creative idea, don’t do it,” said Kevin Krim, CEO and president of EDO. “Don’t do the ad.”
For example, data and analytics firm System1 had only four Super Bowl ads register a Top 50 emotional response among viewers—Disney, M&M’s, T-Mobile and PopCorners. March Madness and the men’s and women’s World Cups had a combined eight ads on the list, matching the number of ads produced during the holiday season.
If brands can make the right cultural references, bring in recurring characters and let celebrities do their thing at just about any point on the calendar—including the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris—they can run the Super Bowl playbook at a discount any time of year.
“While we see the most creative ideas show up during the Super Bowl, we are starting to see some of the best practices that make these ads so effective show up in ads for other sporting events,” said Jess Messenger, head of communications for System1.
For the latest Super Bowl 58 advertising news—who’s in, who’s out, teasers, full ads and more—check out Adweek’s Super Bowl 2024 Ad Tracker and the rest of our stories here. And join us on the evening of Feb. 11 for the best in-game coverage of the commercials.
This story first appeared in the Jan. 30, 2024, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.
