Media Shower

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year…and the best day for advertisers. With a coveted 30-second Super Bowl ad spot costing 5 million dollars this year, advertisers have to bring their best material to the table.

Last year, 114.4 million people watched the Super Bowl live and that’s not even counting people who watched at Super Bowl parties. In an age where people watch TV anytime, anywhere, it’s rare to have such a big cultural event with that many people watching live. Super Bowl ads give us a relic of how important television ads used to be. Content may be ruling the web most days of the year, but traditional TV advertising still flourishes on Super Bowl Sunday. Here’s a preview of some things we might be able to expect this year, especially in terms of content marketing.

Teasers Online Already

Why are advertisers willing to spend $5 million for that TV slot, when they could just put a Youtube ad up for free? Turns out, this year companies are doing both. You can already find teasers online from some of the biggest advertisers. Google has said companies that put their spots on the streaming platform ahead of the Super Bowl attract twice the number of views than others who wait for game day. Multi-platform marketing helps content be seen by an even bigger audience, which is true on the day of Super Bowl 50 and every day of the year.

From the teasers so far, it seems this year funny ads are back in a big way, as are celebrity cameos. For example, Bud Light has an online teaser ad featuring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen getting ready for a Bud Light party. Surely, we can expect to see how this wild party turns out during the game.

Shocktop, Anheuser-Busch’s attempt to break into the craft beer world, has already uploaded a longer version of its Super Bowl ad featuring Silicon Valley star TJ Miller. In the ad, Miller gets in an insult-match with the Shocktop Orange. It’s a carefully nuanced ad, one that would benefit from rewatching (particularly if you’re a fan of Miller.) But as Variety points out, this isn’t necessarily what works for Super Bowl ads. It seems Anheuser-Busch is expecting this web ad to get lots of playback, but when it’s cut for TV we might lose some of its luster. Anheuser-Busch is hoping to use its 30 seconds on TV to encourage continued engagement with the brand online. We can expect to see a lot of ads pushing for viewers to keep interacting long after the final touchdown.

Calls To Action

With a typical ad, we don’t always see a call to action. Kit Kat commercials are meant to make you want a Kit Kat…they don’t need to finish by telling you to go out and buy one. Online content, however, often includes these calls to action. Content marketers want you to interact with the brand long after seeing the content. So, you might see a link to a company’s site at the end of an article, or a coupon code embedded in a blog post.

Ad content should leave football fans as satisfied as their football food!

This year, we can expect Super Bowl ads that tell us how to keep participating in the content. We’ll probably see lots of hashtags, such as Esurance Save30 hashtag contest from a few years ago. Many ads will likely end with calls to action saying to go on YouTube to watch the extended versions, such as the Shocktop ad. Brands need to think about not just providing content for game day, but how to milk that content further. In many cases, this means providing additional content elsewhere, such as social media.

Screens On Screens On Screens

One way advertisers can stretch their Super Bowl content even further is to be pushing real-time content on Twitter. Back in the 2013 Super Bowl (the last time Beyoncé performed in the half-time show), Oreo took advantage of that infamous stadium black-out by tweeting an image featuring an Oreo saying “you can still dunk in the dark.” Oreo was smart to have its social media team rush to create such a tweet. Real-time marketing is a way brands can engage with football fans without spending $5 million dollars. Of the 112 million people that watched the 2014 Super Bowl, 83% used a second screen during the game. Fans are keeping up with Twitter or Facebook, so advertisers can use this time to get people’s attention on the web. They can plan special content to release throughout the came, or have a team prepared to create real-time content like that Oreo tweet.


The Super Bowl ads may not function the same as content marketing pieces like blog posts, but a lot of the general principles you need for success still apply. As we saw last year, ads that make us laugh or tugged at our heartstrings (remember that Nationwide ad about a dead child?) will be the most talked about, just as emotional content is more likely to be shared. Given the short 30-second time frame, the ads will need to excel at capturing your attention AND making a point succinctly. This is the same idea as a 500-word blog post; when you have a limited chance to make an impression, you’ll need to make sure it’s a good one. Super Bowl ads should be creative, captivating, and memorable: just like all good content.