Topic: Digital strategies to support your Super Bowl commercial
Opportunity: Maximize your Super Bowl commercial investment
Channels Impacted: TV, paid search, organic search, mobile, social, display
This year, Super Bowl advertisers will spend a record $3.5 million per 30-second spot. This investment positions advertisers in front of the largest television audience of the year; for instance, Super Bowl 2011 drew a record 111 million U.S. viewers. And this year—for the first time ever—the big game will air online (including on mobile devices). Football fans—and commercial fans—won’t miss a second of the action, even as they run to the fridge and the bathroom.
A Super Bowl commercial buy is the ultimate branding play. But getting your product/service in front of 100+ million people doesn’t mean your job as a marketer is done. Your Super Bowl ad boosts brand awareness, thus spurring people to search online for your brand or talk about your commercial on social networks. Once this happens, you must maintain the connection that your Super Bowl commercial created with your participant.
We’ve provided five tips to strategically optimize your Super Bowl investment and position your brand to capture the demand created by your 30-second spot:
1. Ensure 100% Search Coverage, Especially on Mobile
This year more than ever, Super Bowl viewers won’t be glued to their television screens. They’ll be multi-viewing—using their tablets and smartphones to see online-only camera angles, in-game highlights, live stats, commercial replays and behind-the-scenes access. Since last Super Bowl, we’ve seen an explosion in mobile device usage, and smartphones and tablets were among the top holiday gifts. Super Bowl 2012 is the perfect time for viewers to complement their TV with tablets and smartphones.
In particular, we expect mobile search usage to spike during the game as viewers seek out their favorite commercials. This means that brands must support their Super Bowl commercials with paid search campaigns on desktop, smartphones and tablets. Ensure that you have ample paid search budget allocated to support potentially huge traffic spikes—Super Bowl commercial keywords are always among the hottest Google search terms during and after the game. Bid on brand and brand + “Super Bowl commercial” keywords on the engines and YouTube. Align your Super Bowl search campaign with marketing/PR plans to ensure coverage and ad rank during commercial launch, as well as two to three weeks post-Super Bowl to extend shelf life. Test your commercial on smartphones and tablets to ensure an optimal mobile experience for your viewer.
2. Beware of Hijackers
You’re the one investing $3.5 million for your 30-second spot. But your competitors may seek to steal your thunder. The most notorious example of hijacking occurred in 2006 when Pontiac ran a Super Bowl commercial that encouraged viewers to Google “Pontiac.” Competitor Mazda took advantage, aggressively bidding on the “Pontiac” keyword and driving searchers to a landing page that compared Pontiac to Mazda.