It’s time to answer the most important question on everyone’s mind after Super Bowl LI: what type of regulatory approvals and deviations were required to enable Intel’s massive display of 300 choreographed unmanned drones that kicked off Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show?
While the New England Patriots would not be stopped in their comeback over the Falcons, Atlanta local news stations won the day over Boston — at least in engagement per post, according to Share Rocket data. With Boston as DMA 9 and Atlanta as DMA 10, the Super Bowl made for an interesting matchup in terms of market size.
The overtime contest contained 51 minutes and 30 seconds of advertising and promos; ads accounted for 23% of the total broadcast. Anheuser-Busch InBev was the top advertiser with 3:30 minutes of ad time. Auto was the lead category during the game, accounting for 8 spots and 7:00 minutes of ad time. Marketers sharply reduced their use of 60-second+ ads, perhaps as a concession to the rising cost of ad time. Only 14 spots were at least this long, the fewest since 2011.
National advertising sales from Fox’s Super Bowl LI generated $432.4 million, according to iSpot.tv. This total came from 62 brands, with 89 spots, airing 91 times — including four extra commercials that ran in overtime.
With the nation on edge politically, the NFL had little taste for a halftime show that would ruffle feathers. Gaga plainly listened. She was patriotic from the start, opening with snippets of God Bless America and This Land is Your Land, before guide wires delivered her to the stage below. Her hit Born This Way became a gay rights anthem but in the context of Sunday’s show fit into the idea of accepting differences, a thread through much of the game’s commercial messaging.
Exclusives
From the first live ad to the first virtual reality broadcast to the first local spots sold on the online broadcast, this game is shaping up as a pioneering one, if not a ratings smasher.
After a busy weekend in which it locked in a handful of its remaining Super Bowl spots, Fox’s ad sales team heads into the home stretch with just two or three in-game units left to move.
Fox has asked for changes to a 90-second commercial from building supply company 84 Lumber because the ad featured a border wall.
Director Peter Berg will film, edit and produce the 90-second spot in real time during the game, the automaker says.
Stations: Be Wary Of Using ‘Super Bowl’
In addition to the monies it receives annually for the right to broadcast the Super Bowl, the NFL receives more than $1 billion in income from licensing the use of the Super Bowl trademark and logo. Not surprisingly, the league is extremely aggressive in protecting its golden goose from anything it views as unauthorized efforts to trade off the goodwill associated with the game. Broadcasters have latitude to use the phrase “Super Bowl” in their news and other editorial content, but they need to wary of engaging in advertising and promotion that the NFL may view as trademark or copyright infringement.
More than half of first-time advertisers eschew the big game the following year, which doesn’t speak well to the upcoming game’s ability to offer a strong return on investment.
Toyota will not advertise in Super Bowl, ending a five-year run of advertising in the big game. Jack Hollis, group VP for marketing at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, said the timing did not work out for 2017. “We’ve always had a timing of a product launch really close to the game where that could really be a strategic kick-off point,” he said. But for 2017 “we moved our strategy to late spring and summertime for two launches.”
The NFL and Pepsi announced Thursday that the pop star will take the stage Feb. 5 at NRG Stadium in Houston. The game will be broadcast by Fox.
