The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots aren’t the only ones focused on their performance.
Marketers are running their own plays during and after the Super Bowl, seeking proof of performance from their streaming campaigns to justify their investments.
But getting a clear read on results isn’t easy in today’s fragmented media landscape.
“It’s becoming harder as a media buyer to figure out how to buy live sports because there are so many access points,” said Alex Block, EVP of global programmatic at Jellyfish, an agency owned by The Brandtech Group.
And so marketers are adjusting their playbooks to look beyond game-day metrics and build longer-lasting impact.
More than a reach play
Because live sports can help marketers do more than just reach a ton of people at once.
When it comes to the Super Bowl, “everybody knows the reach is there,” said Adam Schwartz, SVP and director of national broadcast, video and sports at Horizon Media.
In other words, eyeballs are a given.
This year, the highest-performing brands will be those that expand their Super Bowl campaigns beyond the four-hour game, said John Scurfield, executive director of sports and gaming partnerships at WPP Media.
As streaming becomes the go-to for live events and attribution models get more advanced, marketers can tap into more data, including via clean rooms, to measure the impact of their TV commercials beyond reach.
“Historically, the Super Bowl has been viewed as a purely upper-funnel awareness play, but that’s an approach most modern marketers can no longer accept,” said Shasta Cafarelli, SVP of media investment at indie agency Tinuiti.
“While a Super Bowl ad does an enormous amount of heavy lifting for brand awareness and emotional storytelling,” Cafarelli said, “we’ve also seen it have a material impact on immediate business outcomes.”
This year, according to Schwartz, expect marketers to focus on metrics like brand lift, search lift and site visits, “which are always going to spike from the actual Super Bowl spot.”
Based on the data that comes back, marketers also have the opportunity to retarget consumers who seem more interested in their ads, Schwartz said.
Advertisers can extend their Super Bowl investments by reengaging interested viewers post-game via channels that generate stronger intent signals than TV can, such as online video and social media.
Is this thing working?
Realistically, though, few marketers expect sales and other business outcomes to happen while people are glued to their TVs with their faces still covered in wing sauce. According to a recent survey by Adtaxi, only 1% of consumers say Super Bowl ads lead to an immediate purchase.
But, in better news, the Super Bowl is a “performance trigger,” said Schwartz. The commercials build a level of brand awareness and affinity, and the actual sales usually happen later.
Adtaxi also found that 43% of viewers say Super Bowl ads increase their interest in learning more about a brand or visiting its website.
The brands that see the biggest returns from the Big Game are the ones that treat the Super Bowl as a “three- to four-week-long ecosystem with strategic convergence points before, during and after the game,” said Jeff Gagne, SVP of sports marketing for Havas Play North America, a division of Havas Media Network.
Before and after Super Bowl weekend, many advertisers are running shorter-length creatives across online video and social channels to stay top of mind with consumers. The real performance payoff – and the data that proves whether a pricey Super Bowl commercial was worth it – will come during the postgame period.
And as advertisers look for more measurable ways to sustain that momentum, interactive formats are emerging as a popular tactic.
That said, QR codes aren’t likely to be a centerpiece of Super Bowl commercials this year, which viewers watch to be entertained. Asking someone to whip out their phone to scan a QR code can ruin the overall enjoyment.
But, as Super Bowl campaigns extend beyond the game itself, expect to see more “performance-driven” ads, said Ryan Zia, SVP of Dentsu Media Sports, as well as interactive formats, such as shoppable ads and even, hey, a few QR codes.
According to Zia, QR codes are becoming more popular because they generate useful data while encouraging consumers to take action. A viewer, for example, might scan a QR code on-screen just to learn more about a brand, and that conversion data gives marketers a chance to better understand and “home in on” the audiences that seem most receptive to their ads, Zia said.
Ready to rumble?
For advertisers, TV’s role in an omnichannel marketing strategy underscores its status as a performance marketing channel – even if it doesn’t behave like digital platforms.
TV commercials clearly have a downstream effect on the probability that someone will eventually buy something. But connected TV is “not like other performance channels,” said Erin Firneno, SVP of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions.
Advertisers agree that CTV helps drive performance metrics, she said, like an increase in store visits or online searches for a brand. “But that takes time – it doesn’t happen immediately.”
It’s also “harder to connect the dots” from an attribution perspective, Firneno added. People don’t click on TV screens the way they do on individual devices like cellphones and laptops.
Performance may therefore have a different meaning – and timeline – depending on the channel, but what matters is that marketers have confidence TV drives business outcomes.
The Super Bowl is short. In order to win, marketers need to play the long game.
