Making sense of Insanely Expensive TV Ads
Impress Your Friends at the Super Bowl: A Fun Breakdown of Why Insanely Expensive Super Bowl Ads are Worth it.
Life-Changing Money for You = 30 Second Super Bowl Ad for Brands
Think of all the things you could do with $6.5 million cash today. Buy a home, maybe 2. Definitely a few cars. Hell, I’d go for a boat. That kind of money would be not just life-changing, but would bring a new meaning to the phrase “generational wealth” for your family.
… That’s what companies spend for a 30 second Super Bowl ad. Money that would change your entire life is blown in 30 seconds for some silly commercial.
The question is, is that marketing exposure worth it for brands? Is ad space on the Super Bowl really that likely to drive traffic to their stores? Check out this fun, simple breakdown that makes sense of why brands would be willing to throw so much money for a 30-second spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday!
Think in Terms of “Cost per 1,000 Viewers”
In the marketing world, promotional efforts are evaluated based on cost “per 1,000 viewers” – expressed in the acronym CPM. (Actually CPV, but we’ll get back to the difference between CPM and CPV in another article).
Now, you have to remember, the Super Bowl is the most-watched event of the year in the largest market in the world – the USA.
$6.5 million for a 30-second ad may sound ludicrous at first, but consider the fact that 117 million people watch the Super Bowl. That is a lot of eyeballs on your product.
To calculate CPM on this, follow the simple math below:
$6,500,000/117,000,000 people = $0.055 so just about ~5 cents a person
$0.055*1,000 viewers = $55 spent for 1,000 viewers of your ad
When you break it down like that, the value of super bowl ads starts to make a little more sense… but still. The sheer scale of this money is hard to wrap your head around. Furthermore, you have to consider reruns and “viral moments” on social media, bringing further exposure to the brand message. Imagine your friend makes some silly meme on a commercial, and it gets viewed millions of times… that value of that ad just shot up exponentially.
Thus, when factoring in reruns and the viral nature of social media, we can guesstimate that the CPM of a super bowl is probably 2-3 times lower: maybe around $20-22 for 1,000 viewers.
Want more details on how we got to the result, here is a YouTube video we recorded on this topic:
…Only $20 to reach 1,000 likely buyers? Now the Super Bowl ads are starting to make a LOT of sense. And hey, bring this up at your next Super Bowl watch party, and you’ll definitely sound like the smartest kid in class 😉
How can Smaller Businesses Achieve the Same Value for Their Ads?
For most business owners, this may seem like a moot point. Few companies, even large ones, are willing to dole out that kind of cash for a single 30-second ad spot. However, there are ways online to achieve even better CPM, regardless of the size of your business.
If you’d like to know more, stay tuned for tomorrow’s article. We’ll explain some alternatives for small business owners to run much cheaper but potentially more effective ads.
Do you want to know more today about running clever ads for a fraction of the cost of Super Bowl ads? Contact Ad360 for a free demo and 24/7 support today. Ad360 is a fully automated promotional platform that streamlines all your ad campaigns to one place. We can set up your highly targeted ad campaigns, find the best customers… and then you can brag not only about knowing the CPM of Super Bowl ads next year. You can celebrate sales of your Shopify store multiplying several times over – that’s what we call a game-changer.