
Which Companies Wasted the Most Money on Super Bowl Commercials? - arthurgibson
http://blog.embed.ly/post/110269131101/which-companies-wasted-the-most-money-on-super
======
mbesto
Good analysis of available data, but there lots of flaws in how the conclusion
is drawn:

1\. Using YT as a proxy for overall attention. There are so many variables
here at work, it's hard to begin to start why this number isn't a perfect
science.

2\. Advertising isn't a straight line number of attention to sales (even
though most geeks in the FB era seem to think so). There are many of factors
at play here (branding, image, communication, loyalty, engagement etc) and
many are immeasurable.

Believe it or not, effectiveness (and therefore "waste") of ad campaigns are
not _just_ how many eyeballs see the ad. I reckon most CMO's wouldn't take
this type of napkin math very seriously.

Note - I understand this type of content is for inbound marketing for Embedly,
so this is probably quite effective. I'm personally pedantic about the data
science behind it so others don't feel betrayed by it.

~~~
kwntm
You bring up great points!

>1\. Using YT as a proxy for overall attention

'Overall' attention is never a claim. This is simply building upon the views
data with what is measured around how far people watch in a video.

>2\. Advertising isn't a straight line number of attention to sales

There is no mention of sales in the post. It is comparing the price of the
superbowl spot with the number of attention minutes. There are many factors
which can serve as a measure of success, in this case it is looking at how
people are watching the video after the ad spot.

>most CMO's wouldn't take this type of napkin math very seriously

Attention minutes is a fairly powerful measure. Ex. Upworthy uses it to
determine which videos are most likely to be shared. The goal here is to show
one way it can be used. In practice, it would be used among other measures an
agency or company has- as you describe above.

~~~
mbesto
> _In practice, it would be used among other measures an agency or company
> has- as you describe above._

If this is the case, then why is the conclusion that their super bowl ad
dollars are a waste?

> _We’re going to use this to see who got the most bang for their buck, and
> more importantly — who messed up and what lessons there may be to learn._

Maybe I'm just being pedantic about your misleading title and lede....

PS - I assume you're the author. This is very good inbound marketing for your
company...I do applaud you for that.

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RVijay007
I'm not sure how well this metric works for Supercell and Clash of Clans. I
sometimes play that game, and I can tell you that during the Superbowl, there
was an in-app notification sent to all it's players to watch the youtube ad,
which greatly increases the number of views of the ad beyond what the other
company ads could do.

~~~
driverdan
> there was an in-app notification sent to all it's players to watch the
> youtube ad

Mobile platforms really need a way to report spam. Notifications to watch an
ad should get apps removed from the push notification system.

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ctdonath
Recalls a SB ad years ago, during the original Internet bubble: E-trade showed
a dancing monkey, then the text "Well, we just wasted two million dollars.
What are you doing with your money?"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg)

Gotta wonder what that cost them in lost business (you gonna invest with a
group that brags about throwing money away?).

~~~
icefox
Gotta wonder what that won them in new business (you gonna invest with a group
that had an add people were talking about more than a decade later?).

~~~
arthurgibson
Kinda amazing they still are producing Super bowl ads. I'm guessing they're
not spending too much on production with babys and cats.

~~~
afarrell
Don't they have an 'embrace your inner micromanager' ad campaign now. Isn't
that basically the opposite of what you are supposed to do?

Maybe they are targeting dumb money.

------
benjaminpv
Coke's #makeithappy campaign ended up being pulled thanks to an effort by
Gawker, that's gotta have some marketing folks upset.

Here's wondering if the gossip mongers like Nick Denton might have to pay the
price for their tomfoolery.

[http://www.jta.org/2015/02/07/news-opinion/the-
telegraph/whe...](http://www.jta.org/2015/02/07/news-opinion/the-
telegraph/when-gawker-trolled-coca-cola-with-mein-kampf-messages)

~~~
freehunter
I thought Coke's commercial was a great response to last year, when there was
such a backlash against including a gay couple in their advertising.

It's one thing for 4chan to come in and ruin the day, but for an actual
company with actual managers and employees to ruin another company's
advertising campaign by quoting Hitler? That's crossing a line, unfortunately
one that Gawker has crossed many times in the past. How have they not been
sued out of existence...

~~~
urda
The commercial last year was the one with 'America The Beautiful' and the
backlash was having it sung in other languages besides English.

Not really sure where you're pulling the gay thing from.

~~~
freehunter
There was a controversy over America the Beautiful being sung in other
languages, but also over the same commercial featuring a gay couple.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/coke-commercial-
gay...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/coke-commercial-gay-
family_n_4717635.html)

------
smackfu
Seems odd to use Youtube views to determine whether the Super Bowl spending
was worthwhile. You have to choose to watch a YouTube video, while the Super
Bowl ads are pushed to everyone.

~~~
kwntm
The idea here is that if people connected with the video while watching the
superbowl, they shared it online. Commercials were uploaded to YouTube by
their respective company, and included a hashtag- deliberate pushes to form a
conversation online. There are a lot of ways to measure engagement/impact of a
commercial, this is one of them.

~~~
arthurgibson
We thought that Youtube was a good gauge of general internet interest in the
ad. If you liked the ad or ended up talking about it after, you probably
pulled it up on Youtube to see it again.

~~~
taeric
Though, the only real data point that probably matters is what sales were like
for the companies. I'd imagine they are at least a little correlated, would be
neat to see some actual numbers.

~~~
arthurgibson
We probably could get Clash of Clans downloads, interesting they're not
necessarily selling anything.

~~~
bostonpete
Really? Have you played Clash of Clans? They sell gems!

------
PhantomGremlin
I've got a _major_ disconnect with the "facts" at the beginning of this
article:

    
    
       Super Bowl ad spots are expensive —
       ranging from $20M to $135M.
       ...
       The cost refers specifically to the
       Super Bowl ad spot, and not to production
       of the commercial.
    

But Wikipedia[1] (and countless other links e.g.[2]) claim that a 30 second
commercial cost about $4.5 million for the most recent Super Bowl.

So how does an ad cost $135 million? Did I sleep thru a 15 minute ad? The
numbers just don't add up. (pun intended)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_advertising](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_advertising)
[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/01/29/yes-a-
sup...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/01/29/yes-a-super-bowl-
ad-really-is-worth-4-million/)

~~~
arthurgibson
Wow, bank error in your favor. It looks like we had everything inflated by
10X. Appreciate you pointing this out and surprised no one else caught this
including us. We're updating the post to reflect and will throw a mention in
there.

------
kwntm
TLDR: highest to lowest cost per minute
[https://superbowl.firebaseapp.com/s/watched/costminute-](https://superbowl.firebaseapp.com/s/watched/costminute-)

~~~
arthurgibson
This uses ad spend for the tv spot and correlates it to its effectiveness on
the internet.

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hayksaakian
Is this an example of "professional trolling" ? Gawker trolled coke into
cancelling their campaign, and the whole fiasco became a story in and of
itself.

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Relaxx
Sick, and tight as well. Interesting to see that this kind of data surface too
often -- either no one is doing it or they're playing it close to their chest.

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iamleppert
Has very little bearing and a lot of sample bias. How many of you actually
viewed the commercials via Youtube?

The is a connection, and the data is applicable, but only casually.

~~~
samsnelling
The real gold here is how Embedly tracks content engagement all the way
through the video, and how that information can correlate to content success.
Regardless of how casual the connection may be.

Disclosure - I run a competitor to Embedly

------
ivanca
As a side note, Clash of clans makes 5 million dollars per day so what they
spent in this ad is like pocket change for them.

------
redmattred
Neat breakdown

~~~
arthurgibson
You can go through the data on each ad here:
[https://superbowl.firebaseapp.com/s/view-/cost](https://superbowl.firebaseapp.com/s/view-/cost)

The Budweiser and Clash of clans would have had roughly $3-$4 cost per minute
on Youtube views. Where as Weight Watchers was at $1233 per minute for Youtube
viewers.

------
_almosnow
Very nice analysis of the effectiveness of advertising. Things like this are
really needed in the field.

~~~
fl0wenol
Except I take issue with this statement from the article, especially as it
applies to Superbowl Ads: ___A successful video will have more views, higher
engagement, and resulting lower cost per minute._ __

The only thing that matters when putting forth a Superbowl commercial is that
the viewer stood around long enough to figure out who sponsored it, even if
they didn 't stay for the whole thing. On air this is complicated by several
factors.

The Youtube attention statistics are a nice proxy for it but it didn't take
into consideration the likelihood that a potential viewer lost interest before
they knew what it was 'about' (a particularly poor example of this would have
been the Nationwide commercial-- people tuned out before the reveal and if
they did find out who sponsored it after-the-fact, they heard it in a negative
context).

And of course none of this translates directly into brand awareness, but
having a talked-about Superbowl commercial is usually the point; the question
is did you achieve the buzz you were looking for.

I feel a better measure of the utility of the commercial (answer the question:
"what was my bang for buck vs. competitors?") would be to measure the trending
of hashtags / mentions / youtube views of the commercial in the days following

~~~
kwntm
>The only thing that matters when putting forth a Superbowl commercial is that
the viewer stood around long enough to figure out who sponsored it

>The Youtube attention statistics are a nice proxy for it but it didn't take
into consideration the likelihood that a potential viewer lost interest before
they knew what it was 'about'

Great points, and agreed. This is what the attention plot ventures to take
into account

>measure the trending of hashtags / mentions / youtube views of the commercial
in the days following

This would definitely be useful to see.

