Online video played an immense role in the 2014 Super Bowl bonanza. Many brands launched teaser campaigns leading prior to the main event. Did online video ads steal the show? That’s debatable but online video viewing has certainly changed the game – pre, during and post event.
While 100 million fans tuned in for the game, millions more began to discover, watch, and share their favorite 2014 Super Bowl commercials on the YouTube Ad Blitz channel back on January 16th and it will continue until February 14th. Last year, YouTube’s data revealed Super Bowl ads generated over 265 million views for over 3.2 million hours! This year’s stats are even more staggering. Pre-game data from YouTube indicated that video ad views were up about 2.2 times above last year. The day after the Super Bowl, YouTube reported that there were over 212 million views of Super Bowl commercials and that video ad content jumped from 50 to 100 Super Bowl related commercials.
Just who will come out on top? Well we’ll have to wait another week to find out. On Monday the leaders were:
- Budweiser Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial — “Puppy Love” with 37 million views.
- Duracell: Trust Your Power - NFL’s Derrick Coleman, Seattle Seahawks with 16 million views.
- Hyundai Elantra | Big Game Ad | “Nice” with 12 million views.
- 2014 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial: Wings with 11 million views.
- Sorry, Coke and Pepsi. (Uncensored) with 10 million views.
You might be asking yourself why brands chose to release their spots ahead of the game when they had paid $4 million for 30 seconds during game time. The answer doesn’t seem obvious at first but this shift reflects that brands are embracing consumer viewing habits. In fact, Tubular Labs reported that the 15 worst performing Super Bowl spots on YouTube were all held off the Web until they aired during the Super Bowl. The element of surprise seems to be far less valuable these days than the element of hype.
This year, brands that weren’t official Super Bowl sponsors still made a big splash online. For example, Newcastle stole headlines with their “Behind the Scenes” ad featuring Anna Kendrick which the company stated has been viewed over 9 million times. Brands don’t need to spend $4 million for an ad or to wait until Game Time to score a touchdown with consumers. In fact, they can’t wait, with over $6.8 billion in consumer spending at stake, according to eMarketer, brands are going head to head to capture as much revenue as possible.
To do this, brands have to entice consumers early on, across a multitude of platforms – online, mobile, and social. Savvy marketers recognize that they can get more buzz with less money online by employing economical digital marketing tools. “Big time brands” also used some “small time marketing tactics” to get ahead. Socially, brands used a myriad of hashtags (#BrandBowl, #SuperBowl) to engage consumers Super Bowl conversations, i.e. Intuit’s Small Business Big Game promotion with #TeamSmallBiz. Many brands, official and unofficial, used pay per click campaigns to target football fans on AdWords at an average cost of $7.50 (that sure beats $4 million!) and/or they leveraged flat rate online contextual advertising platforms to target their ads alongside relevant content and reach football fans at scale. And last but not least, they used 15 and 10 second video ad teasers on Vine and Instagram to help drive views and generate shares of their content. What this all comes down to is brand engagement: early and often on through a plethora of digital platforms on consumer terms.
While the post-game Ad blitz has yet to conclude and the final stats have yet to come in, digital marketers can still learn a few lessons from this year’s Super Bowl advertisers and apply them to any big event:
- Start promoting your brand early and often. In this age of digital and social media, the volume of content digested by the average consumer is much higher, so get ahead of the pack by starting promotions early.
- Recognize the power of online video and use it to engage your consumers pre, event day and post event. The best part about online video content is that people can more easily engage with it, re-play it, and share it with friends instantaneously.
- One video isn’t enough. Create different teasers from your video ad that will work for you leading up to the event and post to platforms like Vine and Instagram to generate buzz.
- Use cost effective advertising methods to reach consumers. Million dollar brands tap into pay per click advertising, like Ad Words and NTENT. Be creative and tease out your campaign over the course of the event.
- Join a conversation on social. Use common event hashtags to engage fans. And if Oreo’s, JCPenny and Doritos taught us anything, it is that it is ok to engage in brand to brand conversation on social. Don’t be afraid to tweet big spenders during the next event when you are trying to reach an audience and step into the limelight. Just be very tactful and creative about how you do it.
- Embrace the trifecta – digital, social, mobile. As consumers’ attention becomes divided across multiple screens and platforms throughout the day, post your video to this trifecta to ensure you’ve reached your audience.
Take a look at these Online Video Stats You Can’t Ignore.
Written by: Kerstin Recker, Head of Marketing at NTENT
What other lessons do you think we can learn from this year’s Super Bowl advertisers? Share them in the comments below.
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