The Superbowl Spike

It's that time of the year again when bars and pubs throughout this fine land fill up with confused and bemused drinkers from 7am on, all of them keen to catch the Super Bowl. While the popularity of NFL is growing in Australia, the majority of people turning up to watch the match will be fuzzier about the rules than their heads will be by the time the match finishes. One thing they all know though is that the ads are going to be amazing. Most places in Australia will sadly not be showing the American stream with their over the top creatives, but in America over 100 million people will be tuning in, which is why 30-second ad spots this year are going for around $5.5m to $5.6m USD ($7.22m to $7.35m AUD), with companies forking out in the hopes of seeing a Super Bowl Spike in sales.

Certain people will suggest your entire marketing strategy for a year should be to run an ad in the Super Bowl and then just use Social, but most businesses will need to see some actual returns.

What we looked at

To understand the actual outcomes we looked at the annual performance of companies that have run an ad and also looked at how it has impacted their Share of Search. We looked at this in three industries that should normally be kept well away from each other: beer, automobiles and telecommunications.

Challengers gain, leaders do not

One clear takeaway was that if you are a challenger or new brand, advertising in the Super Bowl is a great idea. The majority of challenger brands we looked at that ran an ad saw an uplift in their overall annual sales in the years they ran an ad, while the majority of leading brands that ran an ad saw sales stay flat or drop that same year. Naturally there are a lot of other inputs that affect this, but it was consistent across these three industries. Michelob as a challenger brand provides a perfect example of this against Budweiser.

What this means is that if you are a leading brand, you may be better off saving your money and, like Budweiser is this year, putting that money towards advertising the fact you aren't advertising. This can be cheaper and far more effective if the messaging is right than running a 30-second ad. If you are running an ad, it makes sense to focus on brand rather than a specific product as well.

The spike itself

With that said, one thing that was consistent across all the brands we looked at that advertised, regardless of the market share of the brand, is the Super Bowl Spike. If you look into the Share of Search for companies by hour, you will see a huge spike in Share of Search when the ad runs, but in most cases literally just for a single hour. This did not lead to a consistent overall increase in Share of Search over the following days, weeks and months.

What this does do though is provide marketers with enormous potential. So long as everything in the back end of the business is set up to capture people searching, this creates a great opportunity to grow a funnel and focus on remarketing efforts.

The questions to ask first

Is potential worth paying for? Is your business set up to make full use of that potential? These are the questions leading businesses need to ask themselves before deciding if running an ad in the Super Bowl will be a touchdown play. Naturally in Australia we don't have an event of quite this size and significance, but many of the methods and lessons could be used to understand what works and what the value is.