Marketers use their Super Bowl commercials to gain awareness, make a splash and create buzz. Smart marketers start the process before the big day in social media, and then again after the game for a week or two to achieve the maximum exposure. Is it worth it? Many still use the original Macintosh commercial as the benchmark which is unrealistic.

I have never understood the ROI of a Super Bowl ad and how a company would quantify it. It’s certainly a brand builder (the first time I heard of GoDaddy was a tacky Super Bowl commercial it did, now, they control our DNS information), but beyond that — I KNOW there’s no pop in sales.

Long and short, I don’t know how success should be measured. I mean, Pepsi and Budweiser have plenty of name recognition. Do I care about Clydesdales?

The question we should ask ourselves is: Are Super Bowl ads simply a vanity play for advertisers?

I think we need to expand the definition of the timeframe that is involved in looking at Super Bowl ads. Here we are, two weeks out, discussing (and viewing) intended Super Bowl ads, which either are already available or are in their run-up/preview stage. Just looking at the impact of the day itself is a very old school/old media way of thinking about something that has expanded to pretty much every social channel out there, and for weeks before (which is likely more important than any of the time after).

At least one thing promises to be good for advertisers this year: practically every playoff game ended in overtime or at least went right down to the wire. Hopefully the big game will follow suit – blowouts are bad for advertisers!

I can see a payback in brand awareness. That is hard to measure in immediate spikes in sales. This increased brand awareness has a longer life and long-term impact on sales that cannot be directly attributed to this or last year’s Super Bowl. It could be due to the Super Bowl ad of two years ago!

I’d go to principles to address this. The first principle is that research has shown that if an ad doesn’t drive sales lift in the short term, it doesn’t work in the long term either. Second principle — when you see a spike in searches, that actually might not mean much. On two brands I studied, a pet food and a laptop brand, the conditional probability of an add to cart event was low given a branded search. One thing I notice about Super Bowl advertising is that it tends to be high art. They save the branding moment for the crescendo a lot of times too. I think this is a mistake. Super Bowl ads should follow good creative principles and you should not assume that your brand is as interesting to consumers as it is to you.

The motivation behind splashy Super Bowl ads, and the outcomes, depend on the type of brand or product being advertised. A movie studio wants to create buzz, and ultimately sell tickets (or views) for its big summer releases; on the other hand, a new brand may need to go all-in on the ad expense to create awareness.

Finally, the legacy brands (think Anheuser-Busch) have a twofold reason: First, to introduce new products to the marketplace; and, more importantly, to establish that they are the “alpha” brands.

As the Mecca of marketing, the Super Bowl helps advertisers differentiate and amplify their brand story.

Expect payback in higher brand awareness, social media engagement and search rank visibility. Yet don’t expect an immediate spike in sales. Consistent quality, word-of-mouth and glowing reviews will drive sales long after the big game.

Advertisers can measure success with share of search on Google and Amazon, and social media impressions and shares. User generated content inspired by Super Bowl ads also improves a brand’s top-of-mind status.

I have three words for anyone wondering whether Super Bowl ads are worth it: 100 million impressions. Nothing else in today’s fragmented media landscape comes close to offering that kind of reach. So, if impressions and awareness are the key metrics, Super Bowl ads are likely a good investment. Beyond those two metrics, I am not sure how much Super Bowl ads will move the needle. People are, ahem, partying and not necessarily engaging with deeper content!

I read in Ad Age that ALL sports ads are premiums because they’re the only shows that people don’t record and skip the ads. Makes sense. So when you literally have billions of eyeballs on your ad for sure, yeah, it’s worth it. You just can’t do that anymore.

With the continued growth of the number of social media platforms and the corresponding growth in importance a Super Bowl advertisement that generates positive buzz is probably worth the money. Keeping a brand top-of-mind can be a key factor in retaining customers. In this highly competitive market, retaining customers is often as important as seeing sales growth. Also, skipping an add can be a negative for some brands that have become associated with Super Bowl advertisements.

The good news is that you get incredible reach with just one showing of an ad. The bad news is, there’s never been much evidence to say you get any increase in sales. It’s all well and good to say you build buzz or, as Dick puts it, solidify an alpha dog position, but you spend a lot of money – you’d like to see some return for it. Anheuser-Busch has created memorable ads for years (my favorites, usually) but I don’t know that they are selling more Bud because of it.

Super Bowl ads are mostly about product recognition, entertainment and agency recognition. Among advertising agencies, this is their Super Bowl and it is critical to win the war of consumer favorites and compliments. It is an important, wild and critical competition. Underlying this battlefield, manufacturers are demanding that these campaigns will fight for and generate, great top-of-mind awareness for their products — they better!

A 30-second spot in the Super Bowl is a way for any advertiser to put their brand in the national dialogue, enter consumer consciousness and, in many cases, introduce a new product or service with associated impressions in other media. It is a fulcrum point or anchor for the overall campaign. It fuels production value investment. It creates buzz through general consumer outreach (Doritos amateur spots) or is a way to launch a new TV series following the post-game. Lots of eyeballs. Payback on its own? Absolutely not!

Variety says that a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs $6 million. That’s a drop in the bucket for large companies, and if the ad is well-received it will gain millions of new viewers on late-night programs and the Internet. Sounds like a sound investment to me.

As Mr. Lovinger stated, the Super Bowl is the only place where you might reach 100 million people with one ad. The value of the ad may not be justified by its expense when measured against an immediate sales response, but good ads tend to have a longer life than just their appearance during the Super Bowl.
They are discussed by viewers and even non-viewers, and in the media for a period of time after the game. They also can be reused by the advertiser. Are they worth the cost? Not sure, but it certainly appears the advertisers believe they are.

Eyeballs are the key metric for the Super Bowl. A company’s messages reach one of the largest audiences either via TV or Internet connected devices. While this exposure might not translate into immediate sales, the memorable commercials will be talked about and remembered for a long time.

Viewers don’t ignore ads while watching Super Bowls. Instead of switching channels during intermission, viewers, in fact, pay full attention to each and every commercial. So, Super Bowl is an excellent opportunity for marketers to enhance brand recall.

IMO, the success of Super Bowl ads is immeasurable. A creative and relevant ad helps marketers create an impression that would last long even after the game’s over.