Is a Super Bowl Ad the Equivalent of Lighting Money on Fire?

Three years ago, Tim Sullivan and Ray Fisman claimed in The Harvard Business Review that “a Super Bowl ad is the equivalent of lighting money on fire.”

Were they right?

Well, it depends on how you measure your results.

Digital marketers know that there are a ton of metrics out there. And they understand why you should use a different set of metrics as KPIs for a brand campaign than you would for a performance campaign.

(As Albert Einstein explained, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”)

So, what can we learn by analyzing this year’s relatively “bland” Super Bowl ads?

Hey, that’s not just my opinion.

Senior editor Jeanine Poggi wrote in Ad Age:

“Once again, this year failed to produce very many commercial standouts. The desire to not provoke controversy and steer clear of anything divisive, resulted in bland ads that utilized recycled material and quite literally borrowed from each other.”

It’s hard to imagine that any brand wrote a creative brief that told their outside agency or in-house team to produce a “bland” ad.

So, what was this year’s group of Super Bowl advertisers trying to accomplish?

Well, it appears that far too many of them were using vanity metrics to justify spending $5.6 million on a 30-second TV spot during a “Big Game” that reached less than 100 million people.

Now, it won’t help our cause to call these brands “stupid” for using the wrong metrics to “judge a fish.”

But, maybe it’s time to (politely) tell the vast majority of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers how they can lift brand awareness, consideration, favorability, and purchase intent by redeploying $5.6 million to $41 million from their TV advertising budgets to their digital advertising budgets next year.

The Super Bowl Is ‘the Last Hurrah’ for the ‘Mad Men’ Era

One of the reasons why so many brands continue to over-invest in creating a TV commercial that under-performs during the Super Bowl is the myth that mass marketing gives you the best bang for your buck.

It doesn’t.

Mass marketing was a classic strategy back in the 1960s during the “Mad Men” era when it was a popular practice for a brand to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one message.

But, the mass marketing era ended 40 years ago with the advent of cable TV. And these days, ignoring market segment differences doesn’t give you the best bang for your buck.

You could say that Super Bowl ads are “The Last Hurrah” for the “Mad Men” era.

The next time the highest paid people in the office (HiPPOs) get nostalgic about their favorite commercials from the Big Game, digital marketers need to intervene, or they will end up leaving money on the table.

How much money?

Kantar Media estimates that in-game ad expenditures for Super Bowl 2020 totaled $435 million.

This is the largest amount spent in history, eclipsing even the $390 million shelled out during Super Bowl 2017, which went into overtime.

Advertisers bought a total of 51 minutes, 15 seconds of national commercial time on the NFL and Fox-owned networks.

In fact, Kantar Media reports that ads accounted for 24% of total broadcast time.

Excluding the promotional messages aired by Fox, 52 different advertisers ran a total of 62 in-game spots during Super Bowl LIV.

Anheuser Busch InBev was the top advertiser, spending an estimated $41 million for a total of four ads, each 60 seconds long, during the Big Game.

PepsiCo was the runner up at $31 million, followed by Procter & Gamble at $30 million, and Amazon at $26 million.

Auto manufacturers were the leading category of advertisers during the game, accounting for an estimated $77 million of spending and 7 minutes and 30 seconds of commercial time.

The technology was the second-largest category with $51 million and 5 minutes of messages.

Food finished in third place at $46 million and 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

There were 7 first-time advertisers during this year’s Super Bowl, which is the same number as last year.

The 2020 rookie roster included Facebook, Walmart, Michael Bloomberg, and Donald Trump, who is already well known, as well as Little Caesars, Sabra, and Quibi, which viewed advertising during the Big Game as a way to increase their brand awareness.

According to Neilson, 99.9 million viewers watched the Kansas City Chief beat the San Francisco 49ers by a score of 31-20.

And, I admit that I was briefly one of those 99.9 million viewers.

I started to watch the Big Game along with my oldest son and his two kids until my oldest grandchild declared, “This is boring.”

So, who got the biggest bang for their buck?

According to the USA Today Ad Meter, Here Are the Top 5 Super Bowl LIV Ads

If you use the USA Today Ad Meter to measure success, then this year’s top 5 Super Bowl ads were:

1. Jeep | ‘Groundhog Day’ | Bill Murray | 02.02.2020

What’s significant about this year’s Ad Meter winner, is Jeep’s score (7.01 out of 10), which was the second-lowest score for an Ad Meter winner since the rankings were established in 1989.

As the video’s description says:

“It’s ‘Groundhog Day’ all over again as Jeep brand debuts a Big Game spot starring Bill Murray (in his first-ever national television commercial). But this time reliving the same day over and over again is always a new adventure when you’re driving the 2020 Jeep Gladiator. Jeep. There’s only one.”