In February, during Super Bowl LVIII, sports company Vuori released a 30-second commercial called “A New Perspective on Performance Apparel.” It featured active and diverse young adults exercising, surfing, and playing volleyball against the backdrop of California’s mountains and coastline, with the company’s logo overshadowed by the setting sun.
Over the past several years, the fast-growing brand has been opening more stores and showcasing its eclectic collection of products in various advertisements. But this TV station was different. As Vuori founder Joe Kudla told Modern Retail, the ad was “an affirmation of how we’re inspired by the active coastal California lifestyle that we live every day.”
In other words, the original purpose of the multi-million dollar ad was not to sell anything. It was to build on its brand and draw traffic to its website.
It is a modern strategy for a large audience. It wasn’t long ago that companies planned a chunk of their advertising budgets around 30-second Super Bowl commercials. However, as the digital environment has continued to grow along the line of news, many companies have begun to rely on online channels – websites, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok – to connect and engage with their customers.
Collabstr explored some of the marketing options that go into Super Bowl ads, from media acquisition techniques to star power and tea.
And with today’s Super Bowl ads receiving the kind of freedom reserved for the showing of films, full of trailers and shared a lot, the 30-second commercial is just part of a larger type, drawn ad advertising, using and repeating its greatness- of the game before and after the middle of February.
It’s a huge investment before the big game
Before brands drop millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads, they can spend months figuring out how the campaign will fare. Using surveys, experiments, and summaries, brands learn whether different types of advertising will appeal to viewers. They then share the results with investors to explain their willingness to spend more money on a creative idea.
Once they get the first few numbers, marketers look at a wide range of key indicators such as brand awareness and perception, accessible and social media, and tangible sales. That way, they can compare the difference before and after the game.
“You explain [the core brand metrics] first, and then set benchmarks against that,” José Aniceto, SVP and head of operations science at MullenLowe US, told Marketing Brew. have a system that you can measure against.”
“Afford” is a relative term when it comes to big-ad spending. In consecutive years, the average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl spot has been $7 million, a far cry from the first Super Bowl in 1967, when the ad cost $37,500 (or about $350,000 when adjusted for inflation). Expect more of the same in 2025: Fox is already seeking nearly that amount if the network hosts the Super Bowl again.
But brands have to be bold to compete for more than 120 million eyeballs. CBS even sold its commercials three months before the Super Bowl, showing the important role of sports in the media.
To get more bang for their buck, brands add more functionality
The most effective Super Bowl ads put new spin on tried-and-true ideas. Star power, for example, never gets old. High-profile ads increase credibility and increase the reach of an ad, but they don’t work unless there’s a connection between the celebrity and the product they’re selling.
Consider the 2024 Dunkin Donuts ad featuring Ben Affleck, the Boston-born actor who was regularly spotted with the brand’s coffee around town—sometimes by hand. Boosting Affleck’s public image, the coffee chain cast him as a drive-thru cashier—and it paid off. The site generated thousands of online posts after the game and had a potential reach of 1.2 billion viewers, according to DECisionOne insights.
The site also capitalized on the inherent humor of the situation, another element of marketing success. Like actor-comedian Will Ferrell driving through scenes from “Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things” in electric cars at a General Motors location, brands often use unexpected juxtapositions to get laughs—and attention—from viewers.
Even when ads create buzz, measuring their impact on sales and brand recognition is different. In 2014, Bank of America paid for a Super Bowl spot that solicited donations for RED, the nonprofit founded by U2 frontman Bono. After downloading every U2 single, the bank pledged a dollar to the nonprofit, which is fighting to end AIDS, raising $3 million—and burning the bank’s reputation. The dollar amount was a concrete metric, but quality refresh is difficult to measure.
Results were measured differently at Jimmy John’s in 2021, when the sandwich company created a “Goodfellas” spoof ad and used online consumer surveys before and after it aired to gauge its reach. Although Jimmy John’s Chief Marketing Officer Darin Dugan said he couldn’t tie the ad buy to the company’s improved brand awareness and sandwich sales, “it put us on the map,” he told Marketing Brew.
Finally, different metrics measure the success of Super Bowl ads. Long before YouTube, Super Bowl ads had the power to attract attention. However, the digital format has allowed brands (and movie studios) to tease ads and trailers before launch, turn ads into QR codes and website links, and use the middle of the game as a single point of contact in an “omnicampaign” aimed at the entire audience. their digital.
Although they may not be sitting on the couch in front of the TV, people still watch, in one way or another: Americans spend 4.5 to 5 hours a day watching live, time-shifted, and streaming TV and the same amount of time. there are other types of news, according to Nielsen’s 2024-2025 Upfronts/NewFronts report. And that’s good news for advertisers—and, in part, why the demand for Super Bowl ads has only grown.
In August 2024, Variety reported that even though the big game was six months away, Fox had already “sold out all but a handful of commercial spots.” That’s another sign of the game’s power. While Super Bowl ad values, timing, and success continue to change, 30 seconds with your brand and product in front of the world is still too good to pass up, no matter how you spend it.
Story editing by Alizah Salario. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Paris Close.
This article first appeared on Collabstr and was created and distributed in collaboration with Stacker Studio.
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