Super Bowl Viral Videos – Facts & Favorites
It’s that time of the year again…the Super Bowl is upon us! Regardless of if your team made the Super Bowl, or you even like football in general, one thing that everybody loves about the Super Bowl is the commercials.
My wife’s favorite Super Bowl commercials are always the Budweiser Clydesdale commercials. Here is one of the most recent ones prepared for the 2013 Super Bowl.
One of my favorite all time Super Bowl Commmercials was Terry Tate – Office Linebacker.
For another Terry Tate video – on sensitivity training visit this link.
I also always found this Bud Light commercial to be Hilarious…
And…Who can forget the Doritos Commercials. Here’s a really funny one that aired last year:
Super Bowl commercials like these have the ability to entertain us, but they don’t come cheap.
Super Bowl Ad spending per year
Kantar Media, a provider of strategic advertising intelligence, reports that Super Bowl spending reached $1.85 Billion over the past ten years. I’ve added a chart below that displays the spending per year from 2003 to 2012.
So what is the cost of a being in a 30 second Super Bowl commercial in 2013? Well, according to the New York Times the average 30 second spot is going for $3.7 to $3.8 million with a some of the spots priced over $4 million.
Why Spend this much?
According to Tony Pace, Subway’s Chief Marketing Officer…
You can’t get 110 million people” anywhere else. “That’s an audience we can’t ignore.
If a brand can afford to spend $4M on a Super Bowl commercial…chances are they don’t really need that exposure and are already a well known and successful brand. So why do it?
Let me explain…
There are two main reasons why people advertise, or market in the first place.
1) Direct Response: A business want to obtain an immediate result typically a phone call, contact form submission on a website, internet purchase, etc. You reach X number of people and expect X % to convert. It costs $X to produce and distribute / broadcast the ad. Direct Response advertisers should also have a grip on how much their average price per sale is and what the life time value of a customer is. This way they can understand the ROI (return on investment) of their advertising or marketing initiative. Types of Direct Response marketing tactics could include – SEO, PPC, Infomercials, Direct Mail, On-site sales promotions, etc.
2) Branding: A business that wants to utilize advertising for a branding purpose wants to “break through the clutter” of marketing messages thrown at a person everyday and carve out a specific positioning in a prospect’s mind. They also seek to gain “top of mind” awareness so that when you do have a need you think of their brand and the products / services they offer.
The companies that invest in Super Bowl Ads are typically very large companies that are already well-known brands. They simply want to reinforce their brand positioning, educate key prospects / customers about new offerings, or remain “top of mind” by keeping people entertained and talking about their brand.
Continued Exposure Outside of the Super Bowl Ad Slots
Though $4M may seem like a very large amount of money for a 30 second Super Bowl slot when you consider the amount of people that can be reached during the Super Bowl (110 million+) and the amount of people talking about and sharing the commercials on social networking websites – Advertising through this medium is an amazing way to accomplish the branding goals of big companies.
Let’s dive in deeper and examine the exposure of Super Bowl ads outside of their Ad slot on the Super Bowl.
The website Viral Video Charts, owned and operated by Unruly Media tracks the hottest “viral videos” on the internet.
Once you visit Viral Video Charts you’re able to see:
- When a video was discovered
- How many times it has been shared overall
- Breakdown of shares per network, or medium
- Number of shares graphed over time
- and more!
The Budweiser Clydesdale commercial was just released 3 days ago and already has over 3 million views online and 1 million+ shares.
This is quite astonishing when you think about it. Before the commercial was even viewed online it went viral in just 3 short days.
Statistics on Super Bowl Viral Videos
Unruly Media took the time to prepare an infographic, which I added below, that reveals some great social stats on Super Bowl commercials.
These stats are quite impressive and reinforce the notion that the value of advertising on the Super Bowl continues overtime, long after the commercial is ran in it’s respective multi-million dollar 30 second ad slot. A perfect example is the Terry Tate commercial I shared above that Reebok originally aired on the Super Bowl in 2003.
I hope that you enjoyed this post on Super Bowl commercials. My team – the Pittsburgh Steelers are not in the Super Bowl this year…they didn’t even make the play offs actually. To make matters worse…the Ravens, one of our biggest rivals, are in the Super Bowl. Blah. Nevertheless, I will be attending a Super Bowl party with good friends and good food. Even if the game isn’t entertaining…I’m sure the commercials will be!
What are some of your favorite super bowl commercials?
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