Leveraging a Super Bowl Ad

The Super Bowl is still almost a week away. 

That hasn’t stopped many brands from publishing teasers or their full ads well in advance of the big game. 

The preemptive posts help build excitement for the ads and give people a sense of what to watch for when brands’ big moments come.  

It reflects a new reality around the Super Bowl and what it means for advertisers.  

The game represents one of modern society’s last and largest shared experiences. As algorithms and abundant content options segment audiences, the Super Bowl is still something millions of people all experience at the same time. 

That universal exposure is what keeps brands paying more and more each year for 30 seconds of screentime (ads this year run as much as $8 million). 

Playing the Long Game 

Even with that massive real-time audience (127 million viewers last year), the game (and the ads) have turned into a media moment far greater than just the broadcast or a single commercial within it.  

Ads are dissected and discussed before, during and after the game via PR coverage and social media, as well as in countless living rooms and water coolers nationwide. That engagement can be more impactful than the exposure during the game itself.  

It’s still a choice. If viewers know the ad in advance, it can diminish its ability to create intrigue or excitement with that first reveal.  

But for many brands, the more of that broader conversation they can be a part of, the more likely to are to realize a return for the significant time and resources that go into an ad.  

So what’s the takeaway for brands that are never going to invest in a big game ad? 

Unless it’s highly time-sensitive or surprising, more exposure and touchpoints for a marketing push are rarely a bad thing.  

That doesn’t mean simply showing the same asset more times. Often there are opportunities to adjust the format to align with messaging and channel strategy .