The turning point was 1993. For the 26 Super Bowls preceding, the halftime show had been little more than a glorified station break: 20 minutes to run to the bathroom, fetch a beer and stir the onion dip. While the occasional fading star made an appearance (Carol Channing in 1972, for example), the early halftimes–however…
In 2014, racing driver Danica Patrick set a record for the most Super Bowl appearances by a celebrity in her 13th ad for web hosting platform GoDaddy. Eight years later, a surprising contender is hot on her heels: Amazon’s digital assistant, Alexa, which is about to make its seventh consecutive turn in a Super Bowl…
Perish the thought, but for many viewers, the Super Bowl is about more than the ads. With linear TV viewing down, fewer people are seeing them. And when they do, the social chatter is likely to be critical–or worse, neutral. An analysis of online conversations during the last five Big Games by Influential, an AI-powered…
Sometimes a Super Bowl ad doesn’t have as much to do with raising awareness as it does establishing legitimacy. A brand’s ability to spend up to $7 million for 30 seconds of national airtime means it must be doing something right. Right? “It shows investors and consumers that a company is in a position to…
After Dan Lovinger successfully executed the ad sales version of the triple axel in 2018–the NBC Sports Group ad sales chief oversaw more than $1.2 billion in sales for Super Bowl 52 and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, held just four days apart–he took a weeklong break. But he soon found himself contemplating his next gargantuan…
It was mid-December 2009. Procter & Gamble had an extra 30 seconds of ad time in Super Bowl 44 and a giant warehouse full of Old Spice body wash that was collecting dust. If I remember correctly, the plan was to sell the lot with the help of a Big Game spot, and then retire…
It’s hard enough to measure a Super Bowl ad’s effectiveness, but it’s another debate entirely when it comes to an ad’s influence. Over more than five decades, very few Super Bowl ads have left a lasting mark on the creative industry. We asked veteran creatives, most of whom have made Super Bowl ads, to discuss…
The need for gender equality is at such a critical point that one platform is willing to give up ad dollars to fight for it. To promote and encourage gender equality, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit announced a new advertising mandate which will only allow brands driving the cause forward to be featured in the magazine’s annual…
After going virtual last year, the largest technology trade show in North America is making an in-person comeback. The 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show is set to take place in Las Vegas from Jan. 5-7, ending a day earlier than originally planned. As the world continues to navigate the ongoing pandemic, the show…
Last year’s most significant TV transaction by far occurred in March, when the NFL completed eye-popping new rights deals for all of its TV packages, worth an estimated $10 billion annually over the next decade. Not only did the agreements keep the NFL games on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN and ABC–ensuring that linear TV will…
As ecommerce continues to soar amid a pandemic boom, some companies are betting the next venue for selling products will be in your text messages or DMs. Startups are increasingly experimenting with how sales interactions and transactions can be conducted entirely within chat windows. These efforts are made possible by advances in AI natural language…
Over the past two years, TikTok has triggered a fundamental reinvention of both creator culture and the way people interact online. Originally a teen haven filled with dance videos and sound-based memes, the platform’s horizons have expanded, drawing in 1 billion monthly active users across a broad range of demographics, according to company data. Early…
In 2016, a strange machine began appearing on the sidewalks of Manhattan. It was a tall wooden cabinet with glass windows, and inside, wearing a red tie and orange toupee, was the All-Seeing Trump, an animatronic character that predicted America’s future in the form of “misfortunes.” “When I’m president,” the automaton crowed at passersby, “we’re…
When our editorial team prepared last year’s Outlook issue, we started with a list of questions: What would the future of work look like? Would consumer habits change long-term? Would media spending rebound? Less than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, many of those questions remained unanswerable. This year is different. We’re beginning 2022 with…
Over the last 22 months of unprecedented change across media, marketing and tech, we’ve learned to work in new ways and to tackle the inherent challenges of doing so as they arise–always with an eye toward the future, as uncertain as it may still be. Forecasting the year ahead is no small task, but it’s…
On a list of most popular New Year’s resolutions, exercise ranks near the top. But what working out looks like has changed for many Americans after nearly two years of on-and-off gym closures, quarantines and the mental challenges of living in a changed world. In its wide-ranging biannual trends report, full-service market research firm Provoke…
Creatively, 2021 was a year of mixed signals. Hot off of what initially felt like a turning point in experiential, which saw marketers heavily leaning on digital tools to connect with consumers from a safe distance, the industry wasted little time shifting back toward in-person activations. Then came Covid-19’s delta variant. Then omicron. And amid…
Between Charmin toilet paper NFTs and Whoppers with a side of digital coins at Burger King, 2021 was the year cryptocurrency and the technology surrounding it became inescapable in the marketing world. While brand marketers have long talked about the transformative potential of blockchain–the digital ledger system that serves as the backbone of cryptocurrency–the concept…
If 2020 was a time when it became untenable for any marketer to avoid the deeply polarizing issues that upended life around the globe, from racial justice to sustainability to politics, 2021 forced a grand level of clarification about what a brand ultimately means. Marketers felt the force of consumers’ explicit demands to take declarative…
Almost every programmatic player has cast a line in the CTV ocean, hoping to reel in a piece of the $65 billion in linear media spend that many view as up for grabs in the new streaming reality. Their hooks carry the same bait that provoked earlier waves of programmatic adoption: identity, automation, perfect measurement….
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