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Hyping the Hype Around Super Bowl Ads

Despite a $4 million price tag for a thirty-second spot and nearly three months until the big game, Fox’s Super Bowl inventory is expected to sell out by Thanksgiving.  Fox is even holding a social contest for brands feeling left out to submit proposed commercials for fan-voting, and the winner gets a coveted thirty-second spot during the 5 p.m. ET pregame programming.

The Super Bowl is pretty much the one time of year advertisers can bank on such a large captive audience (110 million viewers, by estimates), but still, is the spend really worth it?

According to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder it is – and it has nothing to do with the creative or how effective the ad is.

The researchers found that the mere news of running an ad during the Super Bowl is enough to move stock prices higher for advertisers. If stock prices can be used as a proxy for brand equity, the ads are working long before they even air.

So in addition to using digital outlets like social media, blogs, and YouTube to tease their Super Bowl ads in advance, perhaps brands should start hyping the news around their Super Bowl plans before a single second of creative is revealed…

For more on making the most of your press coverage, check out our 5 tips for promoting earned media.